Books and Media

my book reviews - ramblings of a pathologically eclectic generalist
a film diary - with brief comments and the occasional review
Australian bookshops and publishers
rec.arts.books.reviews - book reviews on Usenet
Reading Notes - including Harry Potter criticism.

Support my book-buying habit by buying books - or music, etc. - from Amazon

Links and News

Boccaccio on the coronavirus pandemic - BostonReview

Decoding the Ancestry of the English - The Origins of the Anglo-Saxons [my review]

Arnhem: another sad example of British military incompetence - NYROB

the real Lord of the Flies: nothing like Golding's vision - Guardian

a spiralling Taiwanese exploration of memory and history - The Stolen Bicycle [my review]

Springer has made hundreds of books freely available online, including Aigner+Ziegler's fantastic Proofs from THE BOOK! - Springer

Soviet caricatures of Nazis - UniverseDiscourse

From Pythagoras to Schoenberg - Music by the Numbers [my review]

the dancers of the French National Opera perform at home - Instagram [video]

Camilla Grudova's short fiction: bleak and grimy but uplifting - The Doll's Alphabet [my review]

Alfred Russel Wallace and the Search for Evolution - Darwin's Rival [my review]

"'All right,' said the Gruffalo, bursting with laughter. 'You go ahead and I'll follow two metres after.'" - Guardian

(For more, see my blog Pathologically Polymathic or the latest book reviews.)

Other Resources

I don't really follow the publishing industry, or the latest in book gossip - I prefer to wait till five or ten years after a book's publication, when the fuss has died down a little and a longer-term perspective is available. If you're after book news I recommend the Complete Review's Literary Saloon, which also has links to other literary weblogs.