October 2015

Social Class in the 21st Century by Mike Savage

If you’ve ever thought the social class system in Britain was a thing of the past, think again. Professor Mike Savage of The London School of Economics (http://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/whoswho/academic/savage.aspx) shows in this book, Social Class in the 21st Century, that it is as entrenched as ever. The author, with a team of sociologists responsible for the […]

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The Crossing

Michael Connelly (http://www.michaelconnelly.com/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Connelly ) is back to entertain us with another detective thriller featuring Hieronymus (‘Harry’) Bosch. Bosch is named after the 15th century early Dutch painter known for his fantastic imagery. He painted detailed landscapes and illustrations of moral and religious narratives. Bosch is also the name of my washing machine, and I must say it’s been solid

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Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

Professor Clay Shirky (http://web.archive.org/web/20110102195231/ http://www.shirky.com/bio.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky) of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program offers us this analysis of a phenomenon which has rapidly become a feature of modern life – social media. Shirky argues that Web tools are now flexible enough to match and shape human social relationships. He shows we are flattening organisational cultures while assembling “rungs

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Oryx and Crake

Margaret Atwood (http://margaretatwood.ca/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood) is a hugely respected and loved writer, having been shortlisted for The Booker Prize five times. Her novel of 2003, Oryx and Crake displays her accomplished style, and profound meditations, to good effect. The summary is as follows. Snowman may be the last man on earth, the only survivor of an unnamed apocalypse. Once he

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Merciless Gods

Christos Tsiolkas (http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/10/christos-tsiolkas-melbourne-greece) was born in Melbourne, Australia to Greek immigrant parents. Tsiolkas’ first novel, Loaded (1995), was filmed as Head On (1998) by director Ana Kokkinos, starring Alex Dimitriades. In 2006, his novel, Dead Europe, won The Age Book of the Year fiction award and was adapted into a film in 2012. In 2009, his

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The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

Pat Conroy (born October 26, 1945, http://www.patconroy.com/) is an American bestselling author who has written several acclaimed novels and memoirs. Two of his novels, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, were made into Oscar-nominated films. He is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th century Southern literature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_literature). In The Prince of Tides

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Beyond the Limits of Thought by Graham Priest

Graham Priest (http://grahampriest.net/) (born 1948) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center (http://www.gc.cuny.edu/Home), as well as a regular visitor at the University of Melbourne where he was Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy and also at St. Andrews University. He was educated at Cambridge and the London School of Economics. His publishing record

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The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Eugenides (born March 8, 1960, http://www.whiting.org/awards/winners/jeffrey-eugenides#/) is an American novelist and short story writer. He has written numerous short stories and essays, as well as three novels: The Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2002), and The Marriage Plot (2011). Middlesex received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in addition to being a finalist for the National

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Dark Places

The author of Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn (http://gillian-flynn.com/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Flynn#Books) has also written this rural noir thriller which will entertain you. Dark Places (2009) has a summary is as follows. Libby Day was just seven years old when her Satan-worshipping older brother massacred her entire family while she hid in a cupboard. Ever since then she has been

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The Hours by Michael Cunningham

It’s always misguided to say that ‘the book was better than the film’ or vice versa. They are works of art in two different media, each with their own criteria for success and excellence. In the case of The Hours by Michael Cunningham (http://www.michaelcunninghamwriter.com/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Cunningham), no false comparison need be made between the novel and the

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