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...
Novels
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...
His soldier Tommy is one of the great English archetypes. But did Kipling invent or merely popularise him? Mr Slang investigates... Kipling, by allusion, has cropped up regularly in these posts. Enough of the oily rags. It is time for the engineer. Yet Kipling is not at first sight a particularly ‘slangy’ ... Read More...
Mr Slang traces the original Dabbler - a 'babu' conceived by Rudyard Kipling... The lexicographer’s role being not to anticipate but to analyse I was not here for the creation, and am therefore unaware whether or not the quote that provides both rationale and motto for the Dabbler’s daily efflorescence was ... 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...
This week Mr Slang writes in praise of Simenon's great detective: "a very French policeman, compounded of French characteristics and set among the most clichéd of French backgrounds"... I am reading Maigret. Tout Maigret, since it is (a) Maigret in his entirety, and (b) in French. I am not showing off, ... Read More...
When we selected last month’s Dabbler Book Club choice, which you can buy here, we wondered whether the author was able to pull off what sounded like quite an outrageous proposition. Well does he? Brit: The central conceit of Hope: A Tragedy would have made a fine episode of South Park: it is ... Read More...
Back by popular demand, here are some more of Brian Joseph Davis' creepy police identikit software sketches of famous literary characters... Top: Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Someone advanced from the sea of faces, someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheekbones and great, hollow eyes gave ... Read More...
Brian Joseph Davis uses police identikit software to create sketches of famous literary characters. It's creepy... Do you recognise the man pictured above? You won't have seen him before, other than in your mind's eye, or possibly your nightmares. According to artist and blogger Brian Joseph Davis, this is what Humbert ... Read More...
It's safe to say that the next Dabbler Book Club selection is a publishing one-off. This month you have the chance to win a copy of Shalom Auslander's unlikely novel Hope: A Tragedy. This is Auslander's self-described "Persuasively Written Book Jacket Copy": Hope: A Tragedy is a hilarious and haunting examination of the burdens ... Read More...
