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The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna Translated by Herbert Lomas It's spring in Finland and Kaarlo Vatanen, a jaded journalist approaching middle age, is having a row with his photographer and they drive to a job. Distracted, his colleague hits a hare in the road. Vatanen leaps...

Completely agree! And with a great deal of style too. Unfortunately, some people seem to thing that story and plot are not that important. Which might explain why (in the UK at least) there is such a division between literary and popular fiction.

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne I read a great deal of Jules Verne when I was a youngster – it was considered 'acceptable' – but haven't touched any for at least three decades. And I don't recall ever reading this. I know the plot, of course, thanks to repeated TV screenings of...

Spot on.

:blink: :blink: :blink: Oh I get it ... it's a joke. :rofl:

Happy Birthday, Lenny. Hope you have a good one.

Don't they just! I got really bored with mainstream, English-language films a decade or so ago – primarily because, when I want to be entertained, I still want to be treated as though my brain is switched on. Both these look like total entertainment – but without treating viewers like...

Trailer here, Lenny. The Dark Knight looks promising too – not least because Heath Ledger's Joker looks as though it will obliterate from memory the absurdly OTT Nicholson version.

I can only assume that you've hardly ever seen any films. :) Just for starters, Ron Perlman made a very good Hellboy – let's face it, he can actually act, and he brought pathos and humour to the sort of character that is usually treated like a piece of wood (or a game sprite, if it's Hulk)...

I've already been picked up on this elsewhere. For me, it's not the most individually impressive story – it's important in the context of the book because it draws the strands of the other stories/snapshots together. Here you find death and life, violence bubbling beneath the surface and rising...

Dubliners by James Joyce Most of the time, when we come to read a previously unread author, it's because we've seen a specific recommendation – in a newspaper or on a forum like this – or because we see a particular work in a shop and it appeals to us. But there's another scenario – when...

Actually, I've noticed the misuse of 'of' in print – it occurs at least a couple of times in F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, for instance. As to text speak – well, it had (or had) a point when text messages were charged by the letters used and screens were tiny. I personally find it...

Bad spelling is, well, bad. But a complete lack of familiarity with punctuation and the use of capital letters really annoys me. And what people forget when they start claiming that 'it's only the internet', is that such things are not just there to look pretty. They help us quickly understand...

Hi Anamnesis, Not yet, although I ordered the next four from Amazon and they arrived last week, so they're sitting on the shelf just waiting. :) With any series of books, I always leave a break between volumes, otherwise you get through them too quickly.

I really couldn't agree with you more. I got completely cheesed off with cinema some years ago – and then accidentally 'discovered' foreign-language cinema. The joy has been the rediscovery of cinema and the reminder that films can be entertaining without expecting you to switch off the brain.

I very rarely venture into a cinema, and I am not a particular fan on mainstream Hollywood, but I am looking forward to The Dark Knight and Hellboy II.

As has been said elsewhere, the Telegraph headline is sensationalist and misleading. I don't see a problem with identifying children and young people who appear to have violent, aggressive tendencies/interests, but lumping them in with terrorists is crackers and to imply, as this does, that...

I think that the politically correct thing to do about airplane cutlery would be to demand a 'proper' knife and fork – most airlines will use plastic because it's disposable and they don't have to waste time and man hours – sorry, people hours – washing it and drying it after use. That would be...

So let me get this right: it's "political correctness" to search everyone getting on a plane, but it wouldn't be "political correctness" to not search certain groups because one decrees that, simply because they are who they are, they couldn't possibly be a danger. And Chris, you had to eat...

Another British terrorist who happens to be white.