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I) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbjmTqR_GQ Yiruma It`s Your Day
II) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p_ebSseEq8 Yiruma River Flows In You
‘Funny, outrageous, touching, intimate, gorgeous’ ...
John Banville The Once and Future Liberal; There Your Heart Lies;
Angel Hill
Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity
Politics (Harper) has annoyed a great many people in the US, though its
message is nothing but common sense: in the age of Trumpery, nothing can be
done for vulnerable minorities unless liberals get themselves elected to
positions of influence. An urgent and important book by one of the clearest and
most inspired political thinkers of the day. There Your Heart Lies by Mary Gordon (Pantheon) takes us back to an
earlier time of crisis, the 1930s and the Spanish civil war, and an American
woman’s experiences in it. A thoughtful, provocative and beautifully written
novel. Michael Longley’s Angel Hill (Cape)
is at once elegiac and celebratory, and achingly beautiful. Longley has honed
his poetry to the bone, but how the bone does shine.
Nicola Barker Becoming Myself; All Things Remembered; Wonder
Beyond Belief
Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir (Piatkus) by Irvin D Yalom. When Yalom publishes something – anything – I
buy it, and he never disappoints. He’s an amazing storyteller, a gorgeous
writer, a great, generous, compassionate thinker, and – quite rightly – one of
the world’s most influential mental healthcare practitioners. All Things Remembered (Faber) by
Goldie. A fabulous, whirling kaleidoscope of music, memory and trauma. Top
highlights: when Goldie’s boa constrictor decides to try to eat him after he
staggers home from the pub smelling like a kebab; and when his favourite piece
of custom-made jewellery is stolen – right from under his nose – by dodgy
Russian airport officials. Magical and cautionary. Navid Kermani’s Wonder Beyond Belief: On Christianity
(Polity). Iranian-born, German-bred, Muslim novelist/intellectual Kermani
travels the globe looking at significant (and not so significant) Christian
artworks. This truly is one of the best books I’ve read in years: funny,
outrageous, touching, intimate, glorious.
William Boyd Insomniac Diaries; David Bowie: A Life;
Fasting and Feasting
As a Vladimir Nabokov completist,
I could not resist Insomniac Diaries:
Experiments with Time (ed. Gennady Barabtarlo, Princeton). Over a period
of a few weeks in 1964 Nabokov wrote down his dreams, nightly. Here they are –
not random narcoleptic scribblings but direct pellucid access to the great
man’s unconscious. Utterly fascinating. Dylan Jones made absolutely the right
decision to frame his superb life of David
Bowie as a multi-voiced oral biography. David Bowie: A Life (Preface) suits the shape-shifting, beguiling,
enigmatic complexities of its subject perfectly. It’s hard to imagine anything
that will do Bowie better justice. Patience Gray (1917-2005) is the great
original British cook and food writer. Her rackety, reclusive life is
brilliantly realised in Fasting and
Feasting by Adam Federman
(Chelsea Green). This book will
establish Gray as a wonderfully eccentric and visionary one-off. She is the
British MFK Fisher – there can be no higher praise in literary/culinary circles.
Bernardine Evaristo When We Speak of Nothing; Kingdom of Gravity; Why
I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race
When We Speak of Nothing by Olumide Popoola (Cassava Republic) is a linguistically inventive and
deliciously original debut novel about a young, transgender protagonist who
travels to Nigeria to find his father. Kingdom
of Gravity by Nick Makoha (Peepal Tree) is an electrifying debut poetry
collection that skilfully resurrects the terror of Idi Amin’s dictatorship from
this British writer who fled Uganda as a child. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni
Eddo-Lodge (Bloomsbury Circus). This political, accessible and uncompromising
book has got people talking about race and racism in Britain.
Charlotte Riddell’s ‘A Struggle For Fame’
Like many other female Victorian writers, she used a pseudonym to help
protect her own name, and to allow readers to believe that she was male. Her
protagonist, Glen Westley,
does the same, and succeeds like Riddell in becoming a sought-after, prolific,
best-selling author. Riddell was also the first to receive a pension from the
Society of Authors.
However, Riddell’s three-volume novels fell out of fashion when the
industry retired the practice of serialising long works, and after her death in
1906 her notoriety faded. Her caustic, funny semi-autobiographical masterpiece,
A Struggle for Fame, went out of print.
It is worth asking ourselves why some books are canon and others vanish.
Sometimes it’s simply because no one puts forward the money for a reprint while
copyright is held; by the time the work is in the public domain, often many
decades later, the work may be all but forgotten. This is understandable, but
it has in this case led to the neglect of an important Irish writer.
Riddell’s absence from our cultural and literary history has meant there
has been less work with valuable contemporary insight about class, gender and
the complexity of Irish identity in Victorian times. Riddell is certainly not
the only writer that has been put aside and forgotten. New contexts can revive
old plays; why can’t we do the same with books?
Domenico Starnone Ties
Ties is the story of a marriage. Like many marriages, this one has been subject to strain, to attrition, to the burden of routine. Yet it has survived intact. Or so things appear. The rupture in Vanda and Aldo's marriage lies years in the past, but if one looks closely enough, the fissures and fault lines are evident. Their marriage is a cracked vase that may shatter at the slightest touch. Or perhaps it has already shattered, and nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact.Domenico Starnone's thirteenth work of fiction is a powerful short novel about relationships, family, love, and the ineluctable consequences of one's actions. Known as a consummate stylist and beloved as a talented storyteller, Domenico Starnone is the winner of Italy's most prestigious literary award The Strega.
... På återseende
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVeD9b8cgow Yiruma When The Love Falls
Med aldrig sinande vänlighet
Ðeno
