A rather exciting coup for the Dabbler Book Club this month as we have 5 copies of Man Booker longlisted blockbuster The Kills up for grabs... An astonishing landmark novel in four books, The Kills is both a political thriller and a bravura literary performance. The Kills is an epic novel of ... Read More...
Non-Fiction
Anyone fancy a 'curry te Kanawa'? Mr Slang enjoys a new lexicography of New Zealand words, even though it is a little clean for his tastes... Once upon a time there was the dictionary. It survives, of course, but not as we knew it, and those thick and squarish books are ... Read More...
As well as bringing you the best culture writing in the blogosphere, The Dabbler also gives away a lot of free books. Here's what we thought of a recent choice... We always like it when a book club member who wins a book takes a moment to send in their own ... Read More...
He was a friend of Keats and almost as fine a prose stylist - what a pity then, that Benjamin Robert Haydon wanted to be a painter... Keats, Bewick & I dined together, Keats brought some friend of his, a noodle. After dinner, to his horror, when he expected we should ... Read More...
Can Stalinism and good writing ever be compatible? As a fan of Soviet literature, one of my great frustrations is the lack of good writing from a pro-Stalin perspective. There is no shortage of books about the evils of Stalin and the system he created- Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov and Bulgakov all spring ... Read More...
'We seem to have lost any sense of what it is to be human'...Elberry reviews Lebanese intellectual Amin Maalouf's exploration of the post-9/11 world... In general, I try to avoid knowing anything about politics, foreign affairs, or the world; that way, I can’t have opinions and so avoid strife. I am ... Read More...
Sarah Ogilvie's new book on the Oxford English Dictionary, Words of the World, caused a stir recently when the mainstream media reported it as claiming that a former editor, Robert Burchfield, had deliberately purged it of foreign loanwords... Jonathon reads the book and sets the record straight... So my friend publishes ... Read More...
Elberry reviews Howard Jacobson's collection of essays. WARNING: Below the fold the language is very strong and unasterisked. But also very funny. What a f***er, I thought. What a grotesque, big-nosed, loud, clownish, apple polishing literary f***er. It was 2003 and I was looking at Howard Jacobson. He was sitting at a ... 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...
Jonathon enjoys a new 'tour d’whorison' by a blogger of historical bawdiness... Emily Brand (or Ms B—d as she signs in that manner created by the immortal Tom Brown see Heroes of Slang) is a young historian who writes the blog The Georgian Bawdyhouse, a thesaurus of choice information subtitled ‘an ... Read More...
