October 26, 2011
Authors
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A lot of avid readers would count escapism, imagination and depth among the most important factors that make a book a great read. These are factors that I’ve always found Graham Greene to deliver in plentiful supply.
Greene is a master at weaving imaginative stories with a dose of realistic depth thanks to his intensely human characters. The humanity of Greene’s characters in works such as The End of the Affair, The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American and Brighton Rock (to name a few famous examples) is perhaps their real strength, although the thrilling plots they must negotiate are lapped up by his massive readership.
Few authors are able to make thrillers feel as profound as Greene makes them feel. His studies of relationships and miscommunication lend his works a masterful sense of tragedy and realism whilst retaining much of the romance expected of novels read for pure escapism.
October 21, 2011
Book Advice
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Christmas is just around the corner and it is probably time to start thinking about buying people gifts. Books are great to give at Christmas provided you steer clear of the cookery books and autobiographies that bastardise most of the high street collections on offer.
Those books just demonstrate a lack of thought. It’s far more touching to pick out a book that you think will appeal to someone’s intelligence or personal interests. Perhaps you could pick out a book you love yourself. You could even give your own copy of a favourite, lovingly dog-eared volume that a friend has always shown great interest in. This is a particularly nice gesture.
Special editions and first editions, of course, represent the greatest literary gift you can give.
October 20, 2011
Book Advice
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Reading certain authors has an immediate effect on the way you approach language. It is funny to note how reading something by Nabokov, or any similarly gifted author with a great deal of flair and an outrageous vocabulary, often compels you to mimic their style with gleeful abandon.
Suddenly your work emails are awash with grandiloquent phraseology and delicious and tangential metaphorical ambulations, and your sesquipedalian text messaging habits result in frightfully extortionate bills.
There’s no harm in indulging yourself when a great author unleashes a verbal torrent in your imagination, but remember that there is a time and a place for such brazen rodomontade!
October 14, 2011
General
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If you are an avid reader then you’ve probably already faced the question of whether or not to buy an e-reader. Devices like the Kindle are enjoying a certain amount of popularity, but for book lovers they represent a real quandary.
On the one hand e-readers open up all sorts of opportunities. They are perfect for reading books when travelling and they are obviously more environmentally-friendly than physical books – but they evoke none of the romance of reading, render your lovingly amassed collection somewhat redundant and equate fiction with technogeekery.
It’s hard to determine whether the Kindle and its competitors are friend or foe in the literary landscape. A measure of balance is required in the debate. There’s certainly no shame in buying an e-reader for its practical advantages and the selection of free classics at online book shops is a major plus point.
However, you may have to content yourself with the odd snide remark about how it compares with ‘the real thing’, just to stay true to your reading roots!