Next up in this series of reviews of 2015 and those of its cultural treasures that fell my way is reading. I’m always astonished by those sections in ‘quality’ newspapers in which the great, the good, and journalists tell you the best of what they have read during the year. They all seem to haveRead More
Some thirty years ago, when I had little money but a great urge to discover all the writers not then known to me, I would scour the second-hand bookshops and would hope to pay 20p for some battered paperback, 40p if it looked to be of special interest. One day, while browsing through the fewRead More
I am not a bibliophile. I do not collect or revere books for their own sake. I am not a book collector. The fact that I own quite a number of books stretched out across a fair number of shelves is because at each an every time of acquiring those books I needed to readRead More
The Times Literary Supplement used to have a weekly competition which invited its readers to identify three literary quotations on a connected theme. It was difficult, so it was a small triumph if I knew one of the quotations, an annual occurrence to spot two. One day, some years ago, I recognised one of theRead More
I’ve had enough of these long, infrequent posts. I spend ages deliberating over what to write, then still longer putting off writing itself because it takes up so much time – and once I’ve started I can’t stop. Shorter, pithier, more frequent – that’s what’s required. In the interim, here’s a photo from today, takenRead More
It’s that time of the year when people start producing lists of their books of the year. This year the choice ought to be an easy one. The book of 2012 is one collated between 1937 and its author’s death in 1950, then not published until 1985, left to dwindle into obscurity except in theRead More
Here’s number 4 in an occasional series that reviews unfamiliar or neglected books on film. Today’s choice is Leslie Halliwell’s Halliwell’s Film Guide (London: Granada, 1977, 2nd ed. 1979, 3rd ed. 1981, 4th ed. 1983, 5th ed. 1985, 6th ed. 1987, 7th. ed. 1989). At first sight, Halliwell’s Film Guide may not seem a suitableRead More
Sight & Sound has published a poll of the most useful and/or inspirational film books ever written. Not the best books ever, but those which have proven of the greatest value or which are most important to the fifty or so critics invited to take part. I was one of those invited to contribute, thoughRead More
Here’s number 3 in an occasional series that reviews unfamiliar or neglected books on film. Today’s choice is Hanns Zischler, Kafka Goes to the Movies (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Was at the movies. Wept. Lolotte. The good pastor. The little bicycle. The reconcilitation of the parents. Boundless entertainment. Before that a sad film,Read More
Here’s number 2 in an occasional series that reviews unfamiliar or neglected books on film. This time we take a look at Neil Sinyard, Filming Literature: The Art of Screen Adaptation (London/Sydney: Croom Helm, 1986). “The legacy of the nineteenth-century novel is the twentieth-century film”. The opening line of Neil Sinyard’s Filming Literature is typicalRead More