Courage and Truthfulness: Ethical Strategies and the Creative Process in the Novels of Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul
Fluttering Butterflies (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
...Another trip to the library! Sorry about the terrible photos. Bad lighting, bad angles. Oh well. Some interesting looking books though... First up we have The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver which I snatched up from the New Releases shelf. I try to be dignified about it all, but failed pretty miserably. I got looks. Then we have Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer , which was...
Underbelly (Free subscription) | 14/11/2009
I think of Jan (formerly James) Morris as the energizzezr bunny of travel writers: 83 she is, if not nercessarily still going, at least still assessing and evaluating and appreciating ( link , for which thanks to Joel). I've read a lot of her stuff over the years but the one that sticks on my shelf is a little item that I gather irritated some of her faithful readers. That would be Last Letters from...
The Tart of Fiction / FictionBitch (Free subscription) | 08/11/2009
Same old story from Robert McCrum as he adds fuel to the ageism of our literary culture once again . ( It's always the same old story , Observer, today.) Old authors ought to shut up, is his basic message, pointing to the thinness of Roth's latest novel, the disappointment of Nabokov's recently revealed last, and the fact that Doris Lessing is remembered for the novels she wrote in her forties rather...
bookfutures (Free subscription) | 02/11/2009
HERE are the contents of the DIGITAL FOCUS section of the Bookseller magazine guest edited by if:book. Cartoon by Toni In the digital age the book can no longer be defined as a stack of paper glued together at the side—it's a unit of culture, a container of ideas that requires a certain kind of attention from its consumer. Reading on iPods and e-readers reminds us that however we receive it,...
King Louie II (Free subscription) | 25/10/2009
From Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook ... Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice...
Koluki (Free subscription) | 24/10/2009
Doris Lessing was on the headlines earlier this year for saying, at the Hay book festival, such interesting things as (and they sound as if I am hearing myself...):- "I have not noticed that women, when they get to be prime ministers are particularly peaceful. (…) On the contrary, some of the worst crimes have been committed by women. (…) We like to think we are motherly and kind...
Pete's 'Today In History' Quiz (Free subscription) | 23/10/2009
The deal has been signed - Birmingham will be the base for the American athletics team for the 2012 Olympic Games . This will mean that 160 athletes and their families and coaches will be here in Birmingham for several weeks. This is great news for the city and should bring in plenty of spending power and be a great showcase for Birmingham and the region! Your Friday questions are: - The War of Jenkins'...
Baxojayz - Centricity (Free subscription) | 22/10/2009
aesthete \ES-theet\, noun: One having or affecting great sensitivity to beauty, as in art or nature. Aesthete is from Greek aisthetes, "one who perceives," from aisthanesthai, "to perceive." Selective Fatigue Syndrome Fatigue which is used as an excuse when one does not want to perform undesirable tasks such as work. My co-worker claimed her Chronic Fatigue Syndrome kept her from...
The Untrusted (Free subscription) | 22/10/2009
In 1383, a two year-long civil war was sparked in Portugal when King Fernando died with no male heir. André-Jacques Garnerin made the world's first recorded parachute descent in the Parc Monceau in 1797. Sam Houston became the first president of the Republic of Texas in 1836. The Cuban Missile Crisis began in 1962, when President John F. Kennedy announced that surveillance planes had found Soviet...
Want to be a Free Thinker (Free subscription) | 19/10/2009
Doris Lessing had an interesting article in the Times last weekend about Tolstoy's wife and how hard her life with him was. Here's an excerpt: It makes me laugh to read my diary. What a lot of contradictions — as though I were the unhappiest of women! But who could be happier? Could any marriage be more happy and harmonious than ours? When I am alone in my room I sometimes laugh for joy and cross...
Wine ~ Wein ~ Vino ~ Vin (Free subscription) | 19/10/2009
so I just re-read her space fiction masterwork, Canopus in Argos Archives— felt as before, that of the five novels, Shikasta is the most masterly and Marriages the most magical, but I found something fun in the Sentimental Agents, that I had not noticed before—and that was this: in the large scheme of things over the series of novels, two long-lived galactic empires interact, Canopus and...
Wing's World Web (Free subscription) | 18/10/2009
Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing My rating: 4 of 5 stars Is it a novel, that is, fiction? Is it non-fiction, a twin biography of her parents? In fact Alfred & Emily is both. It is kept in the fiction shelves, among other true works of that genre, in the National Library (KL); the librarians presume it to be this. The first half of the book reads just like fiction. It tells the story of
ricklibrarian (Free subscription) | 16/10/2009
Since 1982, librarians Janet G. Husband and Jonathan F. Husband have been helping librarians and readers everywhere identify fiction books in series with their reference books. Now in 2009, the couple have finished the 4th edition of their Sequels: An Annotated Guide to Novels in Series , published by the American Library Association. Of course, the guide has grown much in the ensuing years. The first...
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 12/10/2009
This year a record five women were honored by the Nobel committees. In total, only 40 women have won the prestigious prizes, including Marie Curie who took the 1903 physics prize and the 1911 chemistry prize. The 2009 winners include: _ Elinor Ostrom, 76, who made history by being the first woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, sharing it with fellow American Oliver Williamson...
People Daily (Free subscription) | 12/10/2009
The following is a list of winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature since 2000: 2009: Herta Muller (Germany); 2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (France); 2007: Doris Lessing (Britain); 2006: Orhan Pamuk (Turkey); 2005: Harold Pinter (Britain); 2004: Elfriede Jelinek (Austria); 2003: J.M. Coetzee (South Africa); 2002: Imre Kertesz (Hungary); 2001: V.S. Naipaul (Britain); 2000: Gao Xingjian (France)....
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