It turns out, and why would you have doubted it, that ABBA are good for even more than just stellar classic classic pop songs and an almost assailable position at the very heights of the pop pantheon. They are, in fact, warm and engaging storytellers; well, at least we have Continue Reading
Books
Book review: The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan
Grief does strange things to a person’s life. Often without warnin, all the old certainties are upended and you are plunnged into a chaos borne of sadness, loss, pain and a sense that everything good you have ever known is gone. In reality, it’s not extreme of course but such Continue Reading
Book review: Saving Missy by Beth Morrey
Missy Carmichael needs saving. Though at the time we meet her, at the start of Beth Morrey’s delightfully warm and insightful debut novel, Saving Missy, she would no doubt disagree with any assessment that she needs any kind of help at all. A 78-year-old English woman whose 79th birthday is Continue Reading
Book review: Oasis by Katya de Beccera
Do you think you’re a good person? That might seem like a strangely invasive question to begin a book review with but the truth it is wholly germaine to the salient ideas that fill Katya de Becerra’s illuminatingly creepy (in all the best ways) new novel, Oasis. For while on Continue Reading
The wonder of books and dreaming: New documentary The Booksellers
SNAPSHOTAntiquarian booksellers are part scholar, part detective and part businessperson, and their personalities and knowledge are as broad as the material they handle. They also play an underappreciated yet essential role in preserving history. The Booksellers doc takes viewers inside their small but fascinating world, populated by an assortment of Continue Reading
Book review: Jane in Love by Rachel Givney #ValentinesDay
You might imagine that when it comes to a writer of Jane Austen’s towering and enduring fame that there must be almost nothing we don’t know about her. But in fact, thanks to the destruction of letters between Austen and her sister Cassandra, for reasons unknown, and no doubt history’s Continue Reading
Book review: This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
Growing up as the son of a Baptist minister in a family heavily involved in the church, the world was presented as a starkly illuminated contrast of black and white, a demarcation between Christian morality which was, naturally enough, presented as good, and worldly values which were quite obviously and Continue Reading
Book review: When We Were Vikings by Andrew David MacDonald
We all want a simple life. One in which goodies are goodies and baddies are baddies and there is no massive murky grey zone spreading out between the black and white which are never close enough or as well defined as many of us would like. But that’s life – Continue Reading
Book review: Inland by Téa Obreht
In our rush to make some sort of liveable accommodation with the vagaries and contradictions of life, we often fall into the trap of lionising it without paying sufficiently heed to its drawbacks, losses and complications. It’s understandable – while the business of living might feel like a short and Continue Reading
Weekend pop art: Be My pop culture Valentine says PJ McQuade
Cole Porter knew that everyone was into love, declaring in his iconic song, “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love)” … Birds do it, bees do itEven educated fleas do itLet’s do it, let’s fall in love. Someone else who knows about the universality of love and romance is PJ Continue Reading