The finding of yourself is never an easy thing. Oh, some people make it look easy, decided in utero that they will be firefighters or orators or presidents and never once faltering from their prodigious path. But for the rest of us, mere mortals that we are with a lot Continue Reading
Books
Even further back in time … It’s time for stories from Star Wars: The High Republic
SNAPSHOT“‘Star Wars: The High Republic features the Jedi as we’ve always wanted to see them — as true guardians of peace and justice. This is a hopeful, optimistic time, when the Jedi and the Galactic Republic are at their height. But of course, into this glorious new era something wicked Continue Reading
Book review: The Cruel Stars by John Birmingham
If there’s one theme that emerges loudly and clearly from the genre of science fiction, it’s the idea that for every moment of advancement and rebirth, whether technological or cultural, there’s often a matching cataclysmic moment of destruction. Life has rarely has one without the other and so it makes Continue Reading
Book review: The Last Day by Andrew Hunter Murray
While the world seems obsessed with all things apocalyptic at the moment, the truth is that a darker and far more troubling future for humanity is one in which the world doesn’t end so much as slide, ingloriously and with every last shred of idealism shorn from it, into bleak Continue Reading
Book review: Tweet Cute by Emma Lord
Social media is supposed to be the great unifier of far-flung people, like-minded souls and connection-hungry 21st century denizens. And in many ways it is, bring people into contact who might otherwise never meet, spreading ideas that can make the world better and and helping people to feel just that Continue Reading
Goodnight, ABBA: Björn Ulvaeus reads a bedtime story to the inner child in all of us
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
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