‘I don’t see that it would be possible to live in a more exciting age,’ said Calamy. ‘The sense that everything’s perfectly provisional and temporary – everything, from social institutions to what we’ve hitherto regarded as the most sacred scientific truths – the feeling that nothing, from the Treaty of Versailles to the rationally explicable […]
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Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley (1923)
And how did she spend her time?… Well, she read a lot of books; but most of the novels she got from Boots’ seemed to her rather silly. ‘Too much about the same thing. Always love.’ (chapter 12) ‘You bore me,’ said Mrs. Viveash. ‘Must I talk of love, then?’ asked Gumbril. ‘It looks like […]
Posted by Simon on July 1, 2020
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/07/01/antic-hay-aldous-huxley/
Work Suspended by Evelyn Waugh (1942)
Work Suspended was the title give to the fragments of a novel Waugh abandoned to take up active service during the Second World War. It was published on Waugh’s return, in 1945, in an edition of 500 copies. Waugh clearly put a lot of effort into the 100 or so pages of what was intended […]
Posted by Simon on December 28, 2021
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2021/12/28/work-suspended-evelyn-waugh/
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (1928)
‘Besides, you see, I’m a public school man. That means everything. There’s a blessed equity in the English social system,’ said Grimes, ‘that ensures the public school man against starvation. One goes through four or five years of perfect hell at an age when life is bound to be hell anyway, and after that the […]
Posted by Simon on December 3, 2021
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2021/12/03/decline-and-fall-evelyn-waugh/
Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day by Eric Hobsbawm (1968)
Eric Hobsbawm (1917 to 2012) was one of Britain’s leading Marxist historians. Of Jewish parentage he spent his boyhood in Vienna and Berlin during the rise of the Nazis. With Hitler’s accession to power in 1933, the family moved to Britain in 1933, although his Wikipedia page is at pains to point out that, because […]
Posted by Simon on August 11, 2021
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2021/08/11/industry-and-empire-eric-hobsbawm/
Zero History by William Gibson (2010)
Zero History is a 400-page novel about has-been rock stars and pretentious advertising executives in search of a reclusive designer of ‘really cool’ jeans and jackets. It is mind-bogglingly shallow, pretentious and boring. Zero History is the third novel in William Gibson’s so-called ‘Blue Ant trilogy’, itself the third of Gibson’s three trilogies of novels. […]
Posted by Simon on April 23, 2021
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2021/04/23/zero-history-william-gibson/
Books & Boots 