Archive for November 2010
“We’re Here To Listen And To Work With You”
Posted by: danhartland on: November 27, 2010
The developing view of David Cameron is as a reasonable pragmatist. To confirm this, one need only look at two recent BBC radio productions: 5 Days In May was a rather ponderous dramatisation of the coalition negotiations following the General Election, in which Nick Clegg was cast as a dithering bride, and Gordon Brown as [...]
The World Will Not Moving: “Queen of Denmark”
Posted by: danhartland on: November 23, 2010
- In: albums | music
- Leave a Comment
One of my favourite records of 2005, and indeed of recent years period, is Sorry I Made You Cry by The Czars. It’s not an album which redefines music, though it redefines its songs – largely nostalgic, lovelorn ballads such as ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’ and ‘I Fall To Pieces’ – by dint [...]
Every Man Dies Alone
Posted by: danhartland on: November 22, 2010
Hans Fallada’s novel of resistance to the Nazis, Alone in Berlin, has been sitting unread on my shelves for a while. I picked it up, entirely coincidentally, the day before BBC Radio 4 began its two-part serialisation of the novel, by Shelagh Stephenson. Even more coincidentally, I stumbled on the dramatisation by accident whilst driving. [...]
Francis Spufford’s “Red Plenty”
Posted by: danhartland on: November 5, 2010
- In: Books
- 5 Comments
Booker kerfuffles come in two sizes: a given book or genre has been excluded and should not be (we’ll call this strain the Kim Stanley Robinson); or a shortlisted book is a bit edgy, a bit weird, for some (we’ll call this strain the Tom McCarthy). In reading Red Plenty, Francis Spufford’s fabulist account of [...]
71 is the number of an apartment we return to regularly in Whinfell Forest, Cumbria. We like it there.
‘We’ are Anna French and Dan Hartland. The Story and the Truth is a sort of inadequate catch-all term for what goes on here: we tend to talk about novels, history, food and fashion, politics and music, but there may also be photographs of soft toys and musicians. Stick around and see.
Search
Words We Like
The Weird, ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
An astounding work of collecting-as-art, this compendium of 800,000 weird words is easily one of the most consistent genre anthologies I have read. Heterodox yet focused, it is fated to be the canonical text of weird fiction studies for some time to come - and deservedly so. The first-rank stories here - and there are many, not a few - are not excellent weird fiction. They are simply some of the best 20th century writing available in any mode. Not without its faults - but that is, ahem, the nature of the beast. Essential.
Sounds We Like
Sonik Kicks, by Paul Weller
I haven't paid much attention to Weller - an artist who hangs heavy in my musical tutelage - since 2000's Heliocentric, an album of diverse interests which felt like a shot of crisp elegance in that year of Steps and 'N Sync. The records that followed it - particularly Illumination - were enough, however, to make those achievements a distant memory. There have been rumblings of a renaissance - 22 Dreams got great reviews - but only the sounds of Sonik Kicks have brought me back. Energetic, fierce and, best of all, creative, this sounds like a record from a much younger man. Weller has a lesson or two in him yet.
Dan's Latest Flickr Photo
|
Chatter @#71