Search results

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene Another novel (like The Great Gatsby earlier this summer) that I managed to come to without having read any other work by the author or having seen the film version. James Wormold is a single parent running a vacuum cleaner shop in Havana, Cuba, in the...

I've not met anyone from a book forum (yet), but I have met a large number of people from a sports-based forum that I help to moderate. Some of the people I've met have become friends – I'm going up to Glasgow in late September to see two of them get hitched.

So you solve that by keeping the children out of the classroom?

I don't see reading as some sort of job (well, apart from when I'm reviewing a book professionally, that is). I do it because I enjoy reading. How much I read in a given time period depends on many other things, though – how busy I am with work, how tired I am after work etc. I didn't read...

The Successor by Ismail Kadare Translated from Albanian to French by Tedi Papavrami and from French to English by David Bellos It's Albania in the 1980s, and the Successor's career has taken the ultimate downturn with his death. But was it the suicide of a traitor, as the government...

In case it contradicts a certain book that you do use?

I do indeed. Enjoy!

Comparative religion should be taught in schools. It's important to achieve any sort of understanding of what's going on in the world today. Religion from a perspective of 'oh, this set of beliefs is correct and you should believe them' etc should not. The state is not an extension of any...

I think it's like a lot of things, Peder – ultimately, your response to a work of literature will be subjective. Even if you have to study something for an examination, that isn't going to make you necessarily enjoy it. For many, indeed, that puts them off. I suspect that, with particularly...

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa Where does one start? At the most basic level, the novel chronicles a family's struggle and the history of their fictional town, Macondo, for a century. The family faces war – or...

Still avoiding actually answering any of the comments that you provoked with your thread?

It's very cute that you can copy and paste the same post in more than one forum Aquablue. Well done. Now, perhaps you've actually got some responses to the points raised by the responses to this thread (and even on the other forums where you've posted it)? Or can't you actually do debate unless...

Sparky, I assume you mean? So am I. hence the ~~sticks tongue out at Sparky~~ ;)

~~sticks tongue out at Sparky~~ Unfortunately, that's the way it comes across. And unfortunately, that's the impression that a lot of people outside the US have of the US in general. Now obviously that's not the case, but it can't half look like it times, not least because of White House...

Are those of us who don't live in the good old US of A allowed an opinion in this, since Aquablue only seems concerned with "our" nation?

Many thanks, angerball. Glad you enjoyed it.

... for Midnight's Children.

Libra, it's certainly the sort of book that leaves you with plenty to think about.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez "On the day they were going to kill him …" And so it begins. Between that opening line and the title, one is left in no doubt as to the outcome of this slender tome. After Bayardo San Román returns his bride, Angela Vicario, to her...

I'll take this prediction with as big a pinch of salt as Steve Jobs's claim that reading itself is dead. Or that newspapers will die with the development of the internet. Or that TV will kill cinema. The iPod illustration is a good one. I have one – and I still buy CDs and listen to those on a...