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atwood interview
There’s a very interesting interview from yesterday’s BBC Radio 4’s Women’s Hour with Margaret Atwood about her seminal text, The Handmaid’s Tale, which is twenty-five years in print this year. In the past Atwood has dismayed those of us who enjoy genre writing by trying to disassociate herself from science fiction, but thankfully when the issue of The Handmaid’s Tale being within a science fiction tradition was raised in the interview she didn’t argue against it – although she seemed more comfortable associating herself with the likes of Huxley and Orwell. I didn’t read the book when it first came out, but I was eighteen when it was lent to…
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All Hallow's Read
A new tradition for Halloween evolved this week via an idea Neil Gaiman proposed called ‘All Hallow’s Read‘. It’s a simple concept: give a friend/colleague/family member a scary book to read for Halloween. It’s not only to promote book-giving and reading, but also to remind us that the tradition of telling scary stories on his holiday run deep. You could make it as easy as giving a friend your favourite scary book, or perhaps you could read out frightful tales on Halloween to family members. It’s a fine idea. In a few years I hope this tradition cements so deeply in our culture that we will believe it was always…
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make room, make room
Recently I’ve been on a decluttering drive. I go through phases where I feel suffocated by the piles of stuff I accumulate. So, I thin it out. I pare everything back to the essentials, so I can see clearly, and hear my own thoughts without the pressure of those unread books and magazines, and the un-filed bills nagging at my mind. This time it’s been a steady pogrom in different areas of the house. I’ve cleared out my closets in a ruthless and hard-hearted fashion: if the clothes didn’t fit then they were donated to someone who could use them. Old dishes and useless pots were ejected from the kitchen.…
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on books and progress
A week ago or so a sudden panic seized me about the amount of time left until the MA begins. Certain things like reading for leisure might become a luxury I can’t afford come September. So, what did I do? I ordered books from Amazon. As if I don’t have enough novels already waiting to be read. Today the box arrived (I hate Amazon’s over-packaging, but I can recycle the box), unexpectedly early. Of the three novels I received, the one I most anticipate reading is Maelstrom by Peter Watts. I decided to read the first page or two, and then had to yank myself away at page 10 before…
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books: an expensive and cluttering vice
It’s dangerous to walk into Charlie Byrne‘s, the second-hand bookshop in Galway; though it’s quickly followed by the joy of rambling through the many floors of Kennys. Charlie Byrne’s is one of the best second-hand bookshops in Ireland–in my biased opinion–having trawled through a fair number of them in my day. Today I came away clutching fives tomes, and grinning from ear-to-ear. Three of them are academic film books that should prove useful next year, one is a book of Scandinavian folk-tales, and the final text is the perfect source material for one of the stories I’m hacking currently. The timing is so dead-on it’s suspicious. It’s a case of…
