Apparently it was more expensive than wine before the second world war, at least in Marrakesh.
http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/231038/
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett
The second best thing about Terry Pratchett is the jokes. I can never decide whether he's parodying Sword & Sourcery novels more than modern life, but it's always worth reading the footnotes for the little digs he manages to get in.
The best thing about Terry Pratchett is how angry he makes people. People will insist that he's a children's author, but not as good as Lewis Carroll, or Philip Pullman, who are Proper Children's Authors.
Anyway, the Last Continent isn't one of the best, despite having Rincewind in it. For some reason, Pratchett can't quite pull off taking the piss out of Australians, though they are an easy target. Maybe that's the problem; Pratchett's real targets are powerful people, and simple ideologies, and Australia, bless its little barbies, doesn't really have an ideology. All he can do is write pastiches of Aussie popular culture, because that's all there is to mock.
The best thing about Terry Pratchett is how angry he makes people. People will insist that he's a children's author, but not as good as Lewis Carroll, or Philip Pullman, who are Proper Children's Authors.
Anyway, the Last Continent isn't one of the best, despite having Rincewind in it. For some reason, Pratchett can't quite pull off taking the piss out of Australians, though they are an easy target. Maybe that's the problem; Pratchett's real targets are powerful people, and simple ideologies, and Australia, bless its little barbies, doesn't really have an ideology. All he can do is write pastiches of Aussie popular culture, because that's all there is to mock.
Thomas Paine's Rights of Man by Christopher Hitchens
I've got to stop reading books late at night - I don't take them in and I don't remember them properly. Still, you can always reread books, unless you've lent them to someone.
The main reason I wanted to read this was that it got a sniffy review in the LRB. John Lanchester (or someone) got terribly excited about the fact that John Frost wasn't the secretary of the London Corresponding Society. He's only mentioned once, in passing, and the London Corresponding Society is also only mentioned once. If it was really indicative of shoddy research, then I can't help but feel that JL would have actually found some slightly more significant errors as well. It looks more like he's trawled through the book, with google at the ready, and desperately tried to find errors.
It's not really an academic book, in that sense. It describes the history of The Rights Of Man (I seem to remember the review was aghast that Hitchens sometimes refers to it as Rights Of Man, and sometimes as The Rights Of Man. Which is clearly unforgivable.) but I wouldn't describe it as a history of the book. It puts it in an historical context, and talks about Burke's reflections on the French Revolution which it was written in response to, and it was definitely worth reading.
I suspect the problem is that Hitchens doesn't have the right view on Iraq. The big shibboleth of the media is saying the right things about Iraq, and if it varies even by a syllable then you can be cast out. I'll come back to this book when I've read it properly, and if I ever get my books out of storage, I'll reread the Rights of Man. Sorry, The Rights of Man.
The main reason I wanted to read this was that it got a sniffy review in the LRB. John Lanchester (or someone) got terribly excited about the fact that John Frost wasn't the secretary of the London Corresponding Society. He's only mentioned once, in passing, and the London Corresponding Society is also only mentioned once. If it was really indicative of shoddy research, then I can't help but feel that JL would have actually found some slightly more significant errors as well. It looks more like he's trawled through the book, with google at the ready, and desperately tried to find errors.
It's not really an academic book, in that sense. It describes the history of The Rights Of Man (I seem to remember the review was aghast that Hitchens sometimes refers to it as Rights Of Man, and sometimes as The Rights Of Man. Which is clearly unforgivable.) but I wouldn't describe it as a history of the book. It puts it in an historical context, and talks about Burke's reflections on the French Revolution which it was written in response to, and it was definitely worth reading.
I suspect the problem is that Hitchens doesn't have the right view on Iraq. The big shibboleth of the media is saying the right things about Iraq, and if it varies even by a syllable then you can be cast out. I'll come back to this book when I've read it properly, and if I ever get my books out of storage, I'll reread the Rights of Man. Sorry, The Rights of Man.
Monday, January 01, 2007
The White Lioness
Got this as part of my trawl through Foyles before NYE. It's the third in the series, and some of the events in it I knew from subsequent books. It's very good where it's in Sweden, though only Wallender comes across as a fully fledged character. The bad-guy (or at least the one with the most lines) is also slightly cartoonish - there's no real sense that he has a backstory or thinks in anything but Dr Evil clichés. Having said that, it's a good book. The atmosphere of provincial Sweden rings true, though obviously I have no way of knowing whether provincial Sweden's like that or not, and it probably isn't. At least when there aren't people being murdered left, right and centre.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
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