Books, Life and Other Obsessions
By markihlogie
Contemplations about books, films, music and life in general.
- 597 reads
A review of the album “Mosaic of Disarray”
Nick de Grunwald, the driving force behind “Mosaic of Disarray”, deserves to be a big name in music. Its thirteen songs are a well-balanced mix of...
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- 862 reads
A review of the EP "Car Park at the Rear"
“Car Park at the Rear” is an EP of four songs by new group Wrong Girl. It sounds and feels very up-to-the-minute, all the songs having a strong,...
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- 1112 reads
A review of the novel “Sleep Before Evening”
“Sleep Before Evening” tells the tale of 17-year-old Marianne’s slide into drug addiction following the death of her beloved grandfather, Eric. It is...
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- 619 reads
A review of the novel “This is the Place”
“This is the Place” is a complex, multi-layered novel that reveals a little more with each reading. Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s fiction style is...
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- 701 reads
A sense of guilt is an essential human trait
“Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.” That quote – which, it turns out, I remembered incorrectly – is...
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- 472 reads
Are mobile phones turning us into dysfunctional zombies?
Everywhere I go I see people using mobile phones: as they walk along the streets; sitting on trains, chatting (“I’m on the train”); and, in one case...
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- 520 reads
How close to collapse is modern society?
June 15th this year was a day like any other until just before 8pm. Then the power went. Being summer, it was still light, but the fridge and the...
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- 470 reads
How do we get teens to fall in love with books?
Nowadays we’re often told teenagers don’t read much; as an author that naturally concerns me. So how do we persuade reluctant young people to try...
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- 563 reads
How to kill your soul with "the news"
Martyn Lewis, the former television newsreader, once said that the news programmes focussed too much on the negative. They didn’t, according to him,...
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- 543 reads
Into the bright lights of the city – and danger
Why do some children and teenagers run away from home? That question has been circling round my mind as I read Oliver Twist . What drives young...
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- 353 reads
Intolerance, mavericks & the politicisation of science
Has science become politicised? Let’s look at the evidence. First up, one of my hobby horses: global warming. In my opinion, and a number of...
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- 405 reads
Is it sexist to say there are differences between the male & female brain?
Some educationalists say that boys are more interested in computer programming and computer engineering than girls because of conditioning by parents...
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- 501 reads
On the difference between terrorists & freedom fighters
How does Aldous Huxley’s statement, “The end cannot justify the means”, and a passage about collaborators from Stephen King’s novel, Cell , fit...
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- 492 reads
Panic and alienation on the streets of London
Nineteen years ago I was travelling home from college on the train one day, thinking about an upcoming assessment and the work I needed to do for it...
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- 378 reads
Pollution can affect our state of mind
Ghosts and the paranormal have been on my mind a lot this last week. Why, I hear my readers ask (well, alright, I don’t, but it seemed a good thing...
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- 386 reads
Stephen King's "Cell": cyber-terrorism & the new apocalypse
In Stephen King’s apocalyptic novel Cell every mobile phone network in the world transmits a virus and everyone using their phone at the time either...
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- 424 reads
The appeal of the apocalypse
The end of the world is all the rage nowadays, as popular with authors and directors as with readers and viewers. Take a random selection of...
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- 420 reads
What the dickens! “Oliver Twist” a horror novel?
I’ve just started reading Charles Dickens’ classic Oliver Twist (yet again!) and an unworthy – nay, evil – thought soon entered my mind. We have...
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- 1098 reads
What “Lord of the Flies” tells us about terrorists
Last October (2014) I started reading William Golding’s Lord of the Flies for perhaps the second time since studying it when I was at school. One...
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- 410 reads
Who’s afraid of the big, bad homeless man?
Near where I live is a small urban park bisected by a fast road. On one side is a strip of wasteland where in the spring and summer there are often...
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- 1343 reads
Why science couldn’t exist without instinct
Some people think that the rational part of the human brain is more important than the instinctive, that the conscious (ie, reasoning) mind matters...
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- 1140 reads
Should cycling be banned in parks & the countryside?
It was reported last year in my local newspaper that a cyclist had been prosecuted for cycling at 41 miles an hour in Richmond Park (the speed limit...
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- 327 reads
The strange truth about anxiety
Can anxiety be good for us? That is this article in a nutshell (not a nut case – that’s me). Since you’re probably thinking I’ve finally lost the...
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- 438 reads
How like Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” has our society become?
In George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four , the rulers of Oceania, the all-powerful Party, have three fundamental slogans: “War is peace...
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- 1289 reads
The importance of teaching computer programming to young children
According to a report in the Daily Telegraph last year, British schoolchildren would, under a new curriculum, learn how to write simple computer...
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- 719 reads
All about the terrible freedom of adulthood
As they say, “If I may be personal for a moment ...” It is now thirty years since I left school and, when I went to visit some twenty-five years ago...
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- 722 reads
How the film “Stand by Me” shows children are stronger than we think
Do some children cope better with being overlooked by their parents than others? I found myself wondering that after watching Rob Reiner’s film Stand...
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- 1521 reads