Author: PGR
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something you get a gold star on
There’s a little aside in the last few paragraphs of Joanne McNeil’s latest newsletter which manages to totally nail something otherwise rather nebulous about contemporary fiction, a thing that I’ve been struggling to articulate clearly. After a re-read of China Miéville’s The City & the City, Jo wonders: Where are the writers with edges? I…
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maintaining my empire of kicking
Twice in one week for Philosophy Bear? Looks that way, yeah. If I kick Job three times and kick Rob once and then try to recruit Rob into maintaining my kicking scheme because he’s only getting kicked once, I think saying that Rob is privileged is wrong. But more than just wrong, it’s exactly the…
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24AUG / accessions
This appears to be getting a good reception—for a book billed as technothriller to be reviewed positively at Teh Graun, by no less a discerning gourmand than Adam Roberts, is quite the badge of distinction. But the institution has been meaning to get to MacDonald’s other writings for some time, which has prompted the department…
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thoughts on bear life
A here’s-a-new-site-to-follow post today, courtesy of some passing toot on Mastodon which I failed to bookmark, shame on me. Anyway, the site in question is the Philosophy Bear substack, and the post that had me dump the url into my feedreader is basically just 54 half-formed philosophical thoughts in one long scroll; the now-forgotten tooter—my…
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Skeleton crew: Zone One by Colson Whitehead
I was never much of an enthusiast, to be honest, but I swore off zombie novels for good after being obliged to read the execrable World War Z during my Masters. But last year I read and greatly enjoyed Harlem Shuffle, and figured that it would be worth seeing what Colson Whitehead could do with…