book reviews and features
Will Page: Tarzan Economics - a 'rockonomist' writes
Wednesday, 31 March 2021
The idea behind Tarzan Economics is, in its essence, that “if the vine we are holding onto is withering, we can have confidence to reach out for a new one.” This thesis expounded in Will... Read more... |
Extract: TV by Susan Bordo
Tuesday, 30 March 2021
"Television and I grew up together." As a baby boomer born in 1947, Susan Bordo is roughly the same age as our beloved gogglebox, which began life as a broad box with a ten-inch screen, chunky and... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Author Sam Mills on the phenomenon of the 'chauvo-feminist'
Monday, 29 March 2021
Sam Mills’s writing includes the wondrously weird novel The Quiddity of Will Self, the semi-memoir Fragments of My Father, and Chauvo-Feminism (The Indigo Press), which... Read more... |
Charles Saumarez Smith: The Art Museum In Modern Times review – the story of modern architecture
Thursday, 25 March 2021
“This book is a journey of historical discovery, set out sequentially in order to convey a sense of what has changed over time.” Add to this sentence, the title of the work from which it is taken... Read more... |
Craig Taylor: New Yorkers - A City and Its People in Our Time review
Monday, 22 March 2021
For the last couple of years, until we were so rudely interrupted, I’d been spending chunks of the year in New York, a city I’ve come to know... Read more... |
Prix Pictet: Confinement review - a year in photographs
Thursday, 18 March 2021
Sustainability and the environment are watchwords for the Prix Pictet, the international... Read more... |
Alan Warner: Kitchenly 434 review – dreams and delusions in the backwaters of fame
Wednesday, 17 March 2021
“They think it’s all drugs and sex up here, Mrs H.” “Bless me.” The reality, at Kitchenly Mill Race, runs more to a nice pot of Tetley’s and a plate of Gypsy Creams. But “people are funny around... Read more... |
Edward St Aubyn: Double Blind review - constructing 'cognition literature'
Tuesday, 16 March 2021
If it weren’t for the warning on the blurb, the first chapter of Double Blind would have you wondering whether you’d ordered something from the... Read more... |
Agustín Fernández Mallo: The Things We've Seen review - degrees of separation
Tuesday, 16 March 2021
Trilogies (it is noted, in the term’s Wikipedia entry) “are common in speculative fiction”. They are found in... Read more... |
Extract from Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe, introduced and edited by Duncan Minshull
Monday, 15 March 2021
Wandering, ambling, sauntering. The last, least heard of the three, captures a sense of leisurely aimlessness: a jolly meander unbound by destination, admitting none of the qualms of... Read more... |
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If you don't like sweary comics – Jonathan Pie uses the c-word liberally – then this may not be the show for you. In fact if you're a Tory, ditto...
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Richard Gadd won an Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2016 with...
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Virtuosity and a wildly beating heart are compatible in Richard Jones’s finely calibrated production of Renaissance woman Sophie Treadwell’s ...
Simon Boccanegra, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester...
If ever more evidence were needed of Sir Mark Elder’s untiring zest for exploration and love of the thrill of live opera performance, it was this...
All You Need Is Death review - a future folk horror classic
Music, when the singer’s voice dies away, vibrates in the memory. In the hypnotic new Irish horror film All You Need Is Death, those who...
Album: Jonny Drop • Andrew Ashong - The Puzzle Dust
As I sat down to write this review, the sun came out. It was a salutory reminder of the importance of context: where I’d previously thought “mmm,...
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2024
Record Store Day is tomorrow! At theartsdesk on Vinyl...