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Just got back from a visit to Tate Britain, ostensibly to see the Sickert et al exhibition. That was all preety much first class - lautrec, degas, bonnard, whistler - genuinely thrilling stuff , finishing off with 'ennui' as the final picture reminded me of just how good sickert could be and how...

Prompted by comments on another thread with regard to the pixies and husker du i got to remincsing about the golden days of the melody maker - in particular 88 or thereabouts. reynolds, wilde, roberts, stubbs, the studs...(parkes and price later on) in particular i rememberthe studs with...

i knew i shouldn't have posted last week about my ipod cos saturday night my hard drive wiped 2000 songs. so now i have a pod with more songs on it than my itunes library - so is there a way of loading my pod stuff back into my library so that both match again? Or ,failing that, a way of...

i know slightly discussed on the mitchell thread but i am trying to keep things tidy here. on the back of jed's recommendation i read this with mounting disssatisfaction - this was the best novel ( with all the usual restrictions the booker places on these things) of last year???? how?? WHY...

i've got a compulsory one night stop on the way back from sydney in tokyo in august. i arrive at 18:00 and am out again the next day at 12:00. what, feasibly, could i get done in that time to give me the merest glimpse of japan? otherwise i'm going to come over all bill murray and go look for...

I have just finished Cloud Atlas, now i'm trying to work out how it didn't win the booker (ok line of beauty may well be good but is it as inventive and so damn readable - i doubt it!) it's been a while since i've been so enthusiastic about a contemporary novel (eugenides middlesex possibly) -...

i know you guys usually only listen to pirate radio but is anyone else out there absolutely fixated by the relegation battle, absolutely rivetting radio.

As is obvious from my posts on the RUIU&SA threads i have no real listening experience of this band. i have read reams on them in all the right places but haven't followed it up with actually going out and buying some stuff. This is to do with:the sheer quantity of releases; the difficulty in...

anne widdecombe has just tried to give my son a balloon - i stepped in quickly and explained i'd rather not. she's in town for david amess (remember basildon 92?) - he's still got the same grin. then had to explain why he couldn't have a balloon - had a go at explaining asylum denying and the...

it's the school holidays here and i've just taken the kids to see robots - christ the animation is stunning. i don't understand just how these things are done but they have created a credible environment that manages to feel 'real', very flashy stuff with curves and shadows and sense of...

what do we know about this guy? just picked up his latest Pieces for the Left Hand published by Granta. i am seriously impressed. what are his novels like? he's just been reviewed in The LRB but has somehow snuck under my radar. these are all very short stories written with great precision and...

i was talking to a scientist friend of mine recently who was absolutely shocked that i would want to re-read anything. his take was that when a book was finished it was done with. i tried to explain to him the pleasures of re-reading, for example i once read the great gatsby 6 ttimes in a year...

so a few years ago i read no logo and it reactivated a dormant politic within me. it clarified and placed a number of ideas into one coherent argument and i vowed to 'do something' what this was amounted to was examining how i spent my money - in particular looking at where the things i bought...

Having spent a little time on this forum i thought i ought to listen to some of the music championed by the grime-istas etcers. so last night i let the radio settle on a pirate station - 88.4. anybody out essex way know what the name of teh station might be and what was being played between 8.30...

before christmas there was some interesting stuff on here about whether we think about humans as pretty poor as a race but quite ok as individuals - reductive in the extreme , i know, but i want to quickly contextualise this. during the holidays i got burgled - didn't take much, smashed up my...

to be honest i mainly read novels and poetry and i am someone who managed to get through H E without reading any theory - yes i am that old! recently i hav read Eagleton's After Theory and found it enjoyable, if, at times slightly perplexing, so i thought i'd visit my bookshop to try and bone up...