ZMKC enjoys a modern classic, available for a penny on Amazon.... I think I may be the last person in the world not to have read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Indeed, it is possible that the only reason the book is actually available for 1p on Amazon is that the market for it ... Read More...
The 1p Book Review
Books for a penny
Nige discovers 'a true giant among comic characters'... Having enjoyed and admired Masters of Atlantis so much, I've been reading another of Charles Portis's novels - The Dog Of The South (available for 1p from Amazon). This is the story of one Ray Midge, who takes off on a long and eventful ... Read More...
Laugh-out-loud funny but undeniably rum, Nige discovers a true original... Does anyone read Rose Macaulay these days? She seems to be one of those writers who figure large in their own time - their books sell well, they know everybody, are in everybody's memoirs and letters - and then, after death, ... Read More...
Nige recommends the 'autobiography' of one of our greatest thespians... 'Acting is the supreme test of physical and mental courage. It is like climbing Everest single-handed in the dark. It is like painting the Sistine Chapel with a shark on your back. It is like being asleep on a helter-skelter with ... Read More...
Nige is dazzled by the debut of a now largely forgotten author... William Gerhardie's Futility, published in 1922 (and available for 1p from Amazon), was a dazzling debut novel. Here's how it begins: And then it struck me that the only thing to do was to fit all this into a book. ... Read More...
Nige recommends a 'jolly kind of nightmare'... I don't know why I had never got round to reading G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday - or, come to that, The Napoleon of Notting Hill. I've now repaired the first omission - and great fun it has been. Subtitled 'A Nightmare' and ... Read More...
Nige enjoys a flawed but enthralling masterpiece by an 'almost wilfully obscure' author... It's not often I come across a novel that I can truly say is like no other I've ever read - but The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is one such book. An old friend has been recommending it ... Read More...
Spiritual enlightenment and the wisdom of the Zen masters - yours for only a penny!... Keen Dabbler readers may recall my fondness for the joke about the man who has an orange instead of a head. In fact it is not a joke at all but a profound Zen parable. And ... Read More...
In this 1p Book Review, Nige enjoys visiting "a world of strenuous hymn-singing in chapel and front parlour, huge teas and hellfire sermons"... I'm not sure how long ago I first read J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country - maybe 20 years - but when I spotted a copy of ... Read More...
As the Leveson Inquiry trundles interminably on, guest poster Michael Noble (aka @Contact_Light) revisits Evelyn Waugh's classic novel about hack behaviour... One of the favoured resorts of tabloidese is the word ‘tragic’, easily inserted into a pithy headline, or appended as an adjective. It would be all too tempting also to apply ... Read More...