For the first time in what feels like months – and probably is – I rode my bike five miles to work and five miles back. I’d been starting to feel like a lardy, cranky bastard, but working up a sweat on the bike (mostly on the way back home) makes me think I’m back [...]

In A. S. Byatt’s Little Black Book of Stories there is one about a woman who turns into an beautiful and bewildering assembly of stones. Naturally she ends up in Iceland, where the stones are still very much alive. Talking to her Icelandic sculptor friend shortly before her final transformation, he tells her the story [...]

My friend Dr. Ellis Jones has just published a new book, The Better World Shopping Guide. He’s launching it at the Varsity on Saturday 18th November. There’s also a new website, Better World Shopper. It’s a very handy reference if you’d rather avoid buying products from companies whose practices are unethical, like Nestlé. You can [...]

In his review of The God Delusion in the London Review of Books, Terry Eagleton plays Devil’s Advocate for theology in order to make some pointed criticisms of Dawkins’ rhetoric. As a firm atheist, I’m looking forward to reading The God Delusion over the festive season, and as someone who respects Terry Eagleton’s scholarly work, [...]

It’s very good for homesickness. I can see all the locations. I know Jason Taylor’s route to school. I remembered that he would have attended the Hill School (it’s called Upton upon Severn Comprehensive in the novel), and not Hanley Castle until he was older.
I’m amused at the way Mitchell has turned place names from [...]

From the Random House website:
From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War [...]

…and stuff him where the sun don’t shine. Courtney has finally driven me mad with her Harry Potter fetish. I don’t think she’s uttered a single sentence in the last week that hasn’t started with “Dumbledore,” “Snape,” or “Rowling.” I swear I will destroy any copy of the book I see, other than Courtney’s [...]