The Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom

REASONABLE TASTE - Aesthetics & Literary Criticism

‘Literature as a way of life’ is the theme of this 1973 work by the self-assured Harold Bloom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Bloom and http://english.yale.edu/faculty-staff/harold-bloom). It is also an on-going conversation across the generations and between authors. Bloom traces out the strands of influence which connect authors of poetry. His take on the concept of influence is that it’s all […]

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Chaos by James Gleick

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think, EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE - Science & Technology

James Gleick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gleick and http://around.com/) is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, writer and lecturer. He made his name in 1987 with Chaos. Chaos theory has made huge advances since that time but this is possibly still the best introduction on the subject for the layperson. It describes the Mandelbrot set, Julia sets, and Lorenz attractors without resorting to

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The Storm of War

PAST PRESENT - Readings in History

50 million dead. Western civilization shattered. The Second World War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_world_war) boggles the mind on every level. Of the hundreds of histories on either the whole, parts, or aspects of this recent conflict which should you choose? This is one that I really ‘enjoyed’ if that term is appropriate. Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Roberts_(historian)) sheds great illumination. His style

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The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think

Joseph Campbell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell) was the great comparative mythologist of the twentieth century. In this book (1949), from an astonishing range of examples, Campbell constructs the ‘monomyth’, a universal structure found in mythologies, folk tales, and fairy tales across the globe. This is the “Hero’s Journey”. In addition, Campbell explores the Cosmogonic Cycle, the mythic pattern of world

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The Hours of the Virgin

CRIMINALLY MINDED - Tales of the behaviourally challenged

Detroit is no place for virgins, or gentlemen. Walker, who is neither, follows the 50-year-old trail of a stolen manuscript across the bleak landscape of a dead city, coming face to face with the man who murdered his partner 20 years ago. Loren D. Estleman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_D._Estleman and http://www.lorenestleman.com/) published this in 1999. Loren D. Estleman 306

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