Jamal

When I want to look at them all together I just go to the category, which is in the left hand menu, or under “categories” in the top right menu on mob...

In my former urban life, I needed a cobbler to replace my leather soles from time to time. I presume there is still a demand for that. For some reason...

Because Hanover.

I liked it. I enjoyed the descriptions, which evoke a damp drab British town. I like humid air being "tight". I like the idea of a new-found awareness...

Banned @"Varde" for low quality.

Great! Thanks :up:

I’ve submitted two already. Now I’m thinking it would’ve been better if we’d had two rounds, with author reveals and responses in the middle and again...

No, it’s when I’m forcing myself to read the stories of my dastardly adversaries in this competition. I know I know, it’s not a competition this time....

Also I don’t think your comments give too much away. I find them helpful to get into the stories, because I’m sometimes not a very good reader.

I’ve been enjoying your analyses and wish you’d keep it up, though I realize it’s a big effort and I don’t want to pressure you (much). Anyway, you co...

It's very likeable, but I had the same problems with it as Vera. I suspect that the setting or background could have been conveyed more adequately by ...

At first glance I wanted to dislike this, but it's very well-written and constructed. I have an idea who wrote it.

That was my reaction on first reading. This seems to set things up for an account of the narrator's escape, but it never comes, hence the confusion. B...

I’m not sure if you know but in this current competition, which is not really a competition but rather an “exhibition”, there is a maximum word limit ...

It seems you misunderstood frank.

Lewis was using it in the standard British English sense of fool. It’s like calling someone a donkey. An ass is a kind of horse, or just a donkey, so ...

:cool:

Murder on the Plum Pudding Express?

Ah yes, I believe they call it cosy crime, or cozy mystery. When it comes to crime I’ll take Raymond Chandler instead, which I guess is cosy in its ow...

In my experience, different cats have different tastes. Some will discard the stomachs, and it’s plausible that others might leave the heads. Perfect ...

:up: I don't mind a sweeping saga, but I didn't like Dune much.

Yes, Zamyatin’s We is a good one, highly influential. I’m not sure why I haven’t read Lem yet.

Anyway, I still feel that excitement you refer to even with “grownup” books.

If they do it well and they’ve got great ideas, it’s literature, in my view. I’d be tempted to put some Asimov in the list too, despite the clunky pro...

I’m for unilateral disarmament if you are.

Thanks for bringing it up. It was really annoying me but I felt it would be too petty to complain. I’m glad you don’t have such qualms.

At first, when I saw they were dancing around, I was sceptical. But yeah, it works!

Thank you, the one and only Caldwell.

:cool:

Some off the top of my head: Frankenstein, Mary Shelley Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin The Handmaid’s Tale, M...

Glad to see I’ve become renowned for blazing that trail. Hanover’s stories are far from straight realism, in my opinion. I’ll call it bawdy absurdism.

So long as you’re not a Kenny G fan, we can amicably agree to disagree.

At the risk of being too serious… This is a bit like saying “I can’t get into jazz and find such things as Kenny G hopelessly boring”. One can obvious...

Ligeti - Six Bagatelles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txMWXvD8kL4

The only piece by Boulez that I really enjoy, probably because he abandoned serialism to do it. Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna. https://www.youtube....

Thank you for this excellent advice, which I have decided to ignore. :grin:

Food update. Now that I'm in Spain, half way up a mountain with only a single speed bike or electric ladies' bike for transport, in a town whose onlin...

Just read Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. To begin with I found it a bit annoying, and even once I got into it I thought it was kind of forgettable a...

I recently discovered Escalator Over the Hill by Carla Bley, Paul Haines, and the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, from 1967. Weird and wonderful, I love it...

In defence of Alanis... The notion of cosmic irony (or the irony of fate) might be stretched to cover the unlucky situations that she describes in the...

"Hollywood" of course is a synecdoche or metonym for the mainstream film industry (in America). The cowboy is in Mulholland Drive not because there ar...

That’s terrible news. He was among the best contributors we’ve had, and he was a really nice guy.

There are other factors. Time of the week, subject matter, obscurity or difficulty. In this case, the title appears to be a bad translation, and that ...

Maybe about a year ago. It's 40 now, probably 20 before I changed it.

I don't remember that, but when do you mean exactly? I increased the number of discussions per page a while ago so that could account for it. There ar...

:ok:

Couldn't make it fit.

That would make him, according to you, a hotheaded ginger Dutch fish out of water in a cryptoworld he never made.

Same here! No problem Luke: right now I don't have any more words.

Yes, but as far as showing me your experience has any meaning at all, it means just the same as showing me the experience, which is why I put it that ...