Ray French is a novelist and short story writer. His latest novel, Going Under (Vintage), is set in a dead-end Welsh town, where the last major employer is about to close its factory and relocate to India – until one of its employees, Aidan Walsh, buries himself alive in a coffin in his back garden [...]
Archive for January, 2010
Ray French’s top 10 black comedies
Posted in Literature on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Alison MacLeod’s top 10 short stories
Posted in Literature on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Alison MacLeod is the author of two novels, The Changeling and The Wave Theory of Angels. Her short stories have been published by Prospect, London Magazine, Pulp.Net and Virago, and her first collection, Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction, was published by Penguin last month. She lives in Brighton and teaches creative writing at the University [...]
Wesley Stace’s top 10 ventriloquism books
Posted in Literature on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Wesley Stace is the author of by George (published by Jonathan Cape). His first novel Misfortune was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book award. He is also a singer songwriter, under the name John Wesley Harding. 1. Dumbstruck: a Cultural History of Ventriloquism by Steven O’Connor Ventriloquism? The image that springs to mind is a [...]
Kate Colquhoun’s top 10 unusual cookbooks
Posted in Literature on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Kate Colquhoun’s latest book is Taste: The History of Britain Through its Cooking – a chronicle of this country’s food and times from Roman dinners through Anglo-Saxon feasts and Tudor banquets, to Dickensian excess and deprivation, and beyond. She is also the author of A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton. 1. [...]
Rachel Seiffert’s top 10 books about troubled families
Posted in Literature on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Rachel Seiffert is the author of the Booker-shortlisted novel The Dark Room and an acclaimed collection of short stories, Field Study. She was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British writers, and one of 25 ‘women writers to watch’ in the Orange Futures promotion. Her most recent novel, Afterwards, is published by Vintage on [...]
Bob Menendez, Birther
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics, Strange but true on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
“Democrats are looking for someone to blame for their electoral woes — and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Robert Menendez is working hard to make sure it’s not him,” Politico reports. Menendez, who is from New Jersey, plans to “distribute a memo Tuesday advising Democratic campaign managers to frame their opponents early–and to drive a [...]
Moody Blues
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Barack Obama, the Angry Left and the politics of intellectual contempt. Last week Boston Globe columnist Renee Loth described the election of Scott Brown as “a collective primal scream.” It’s an old trope, reminiscent of the late Peter Jennings’s classic declaration after the 1994 election: Some thoughts on those angry voters. Ask parents of any [...]
Apocalypse literature now, and then
Posted in Literature on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Writers have been imagining the end of the world since soon after it began, but today’s practitioners deliver a new kind of bleakness A climate activist dressed as a horseman of the Apocalypse at the World Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. Humanity has always imagined its own destruction. Each generation believes the end [...]
Mystery as Edgar Allan Poe’s famously dedicated fan misses anniversary
Posted in Literature on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Enigmatic ‘Poe toaster’ who has marked the author’s birth for the last 60 years failed to show up for yesterday’s celebration Cynthia Pelayo, of Chicago, leaves roses and cognac at Edgar Allen Poe’s grave, after the mysterious individual who has been doing so for the last 60 years failed to appear. Edgar Allan Poe would [...]
The first great balloon hoax
Posted in Literature on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
The Heene family aren’t the first to come up with a balloon-based con: Edgar Allan Poe did it in 1844, writes Aida Edemariam An artist’s impression of Edgar Allan Poe’s “aerial machine”, the Victoria Quite why the Heene family of Colorado thought pretending to lose their son in the basket of an airborne helium balloon [...]
Abusing Not Only Children, but Also Science
Posted in Health on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Given the vested interests lurking all over the current medical landscape, it is no wonder that the scientific method is so often mauled a little in transit. Cases of data ignored or manipulated to serve an agenda are like muggings in a bad neighborhood: you hear about them all the time, but in fact relatively [...]
Plant Switches Pollinators When Caterpillars Strike
Posted in Other on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
It is not a perfect situation, the relationship between coyote tobacco and hawkmoths. Sure, the hawkmoth does a good job of pollinating the plant, Nicotiana attenuata, which grows in the Western United States and flowers at night. But the hawkmoth has this habit of leaving behind its eggs, which develop into caterpillars that like nothing [...]
Slime Mold Proves to Be a Brainy Blob
Posted in Other on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
In 26 hours, slime mold built a tubular network after 36 bits of food were arranged like Tokyo and its environs. Let’s hear it for slime molds. Researchers in Japan have shown that a slime mold can design a network that is as efficient as one developed by humans over many years: the Tokyo rail [...]
Intelligence from Tehran Elevates Concern in the West
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion, tagged Iran on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
The Secret Nuclear Dossier The West has long been suspicous of Iran’s nuclear program. SPIEGEL has obtained new documents on secret tests and leadership structures that call into question Tehran’s claims to be exclusively interested in the peaceful use of the technology. A suspected uranium-enrichment facility near Qom, as seen in a satellite photograph from [...]
From John Edwards, lessons on celebrity and politics
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Some years ago, I was having lunch with John McCain in the Senate dining room when a new senator stopped by to say hello. He was John Edwards. His smile was capacious. He exuded happiness. He was articulate and friendly, and when he left, he got a behind-his-back endorsement from McCain: Keep your eye on [...]
Stampede Toward Democracy
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
IN just seven years, the Supreme Court has declared most of the fabled McCain-Feingold law unconstitutional. The court has struck down the law’s bans on contributions by minors, on independent spending by political parties and on issue ads within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election, as well as restrictions [...]
The Populist Addiction
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Politics, some believe, is the organization of hatreds. The people who try to divide society on the basis of ethnicity we call racists. The people who try to divide it on the basis of religion we call sectarians. The people who try to divide it on the basis of social class we call either populists [...]
Obama’s Credibility Gap
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on January 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Who is Barack Obama? Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon — or if they don’t like the answer — the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park. Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the [...]
Joanne Harris’s top 10 kids’ books with kickass heroines
Posted in Literature on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
Joanne Harris is the author of Chocolat and Five Quarters of the Orange, among other novels. Her latest book, Runemarks, is a young adult novel set in a universe of nine worlds, inspired by Norse legends. It features Maddy, a kickass heroine with magical rune powers. 1. The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman [...]
Gemma Malley’s top 10 dystopian novels for teenagers
Posted in Literature on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
Gemma Malley is the author of The Declaration, a futuristic, dystopian novel set in a world in which there are drugs which stop the onset of ageing and there’s no room left in the world for youth. With death no longer inevitable, children become an abomination and those that are accidentally born must live locked [...]
Catherine Sampson’s top 10 Asian crime fiction
Posted in Literature on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
Catherine Sampson’s latest novel, The Pool of Unease, is set in Beijing, where the author has lived for many years. Her earlier books, Falling Off Air, and Out of Mind, both featured journalist and single mother Robin Ballantyne. In The Pool of Unease, Robin Ballantyne investigates the murder of a British businessman in Beijing. The [...]
Thomas Bloor’s top 10 tales of metamorphosis
Posted in Literature on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
Thomas Bloor is the author of Worm in the Blood, the tale of a 14-year-old boy living in London who undergoes a fearful transformation. It won the Calderdale Children’s Book Award, and was shortlist for the Bolton Award and the Highland Children’s Book Award. Bloor continues the story in Beast Beneath the Skin and brings [...]
Obama and the Copenhagen Syndrome
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
It’s dangerous to believe in your own miracles. Stockholm Syndrome: “A term used to describe the positive bond some kidnap victims develop with their captor.” Copenhagen Syndrome: The peculiar psychology of Barack Obama’s first year in office. Let’s expand on that a bit. In September, Mr. Obama paid a semi-impromptu visit to Copenhagen to make [...]
Haiti: Obama’s Katrina
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health, Other, tagged Haiti on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
Many post-quake deaths could have been prevented. Four years ago the initial medical response to Hurricane Katrina was ill equipped, understaffed, poorly coordinated and delayed. Criticism of the paltry federal efforts was immediate and fierce. Unfortunately, the response to the latest international disaster in Haiti has been no better, compounding the catastrophe. On Tuesday, Jan. [...]
Bill Clinton’s Revenge
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
The former president casts a shadow over the State of the Union. He’s baaaaack. When the president enters the House chamber tomorrow night to deliver his maiden State of the Union address, members of Congress, the press, and the public will see Barack Obama at the podium. But they will have Bill Clinton on their [...]
Sebastian Beaumont’s top 10 books about psychological journeys
Posted in Literature on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
Sebastian Beaumont published his first mainstream novel, Thirteen, last year. The dark, surreal tale of a night driver for a Brighton taxi firm, it was described by Francis King as “an always stimulating and entertaining mix of comedy, pathos and the macabre”. Beaumont has previously worked as a literary journalist, and lives in Brighton where [...]
Neil Griffiths’ top 10 books about outsiders
Posted in Literature on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
Neil Griffiths is the author of two novels, published by Penguin: Betrayal in Naples, winner of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel, and Saving Caravaggio, shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year. “To be an outsider is to feel disconnected from life, from other people, from oneself, the sight lines of communication always just [...]
Sarah Salway’s top 10 books about unlikely friendships
Posted in Literature on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
Sarah Salway is a prize-winning short story writer, poet, and author of the acclaimed novel Something Beginning With. Sarah trained as a journalist at the London College of Fashion before working as a fashion PR in London and a freelance journalist in Edinburgh. She now lives in Kent with her husband and two children, and [...]
Adam Thorpe’s top 10 satires
Posted in Literature on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
Adam Thorpe is a poet, playwright and novelist. His first novel, Ulverton, a portrait of an English village, won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 1992 and was described by John Fowles, who reviewed it in the Guardian, as “the most interesting first novel I have read these last years”. Between Each Breath, his latest [...]
Jamie Ivey’s top 10 books about wine
Posted in Literature on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off
Formerly a lawyer in London, Jamie Ivey moved with his wife, Tanya, in the south of France, where he wrote a book about their search for the palest rosé in the country, Extremely Pale Rosé. His new book, an account of running the first rosé bar in France, La Vie en Rosé, will be published [...]
