From the category archives:

Book Suggestions

Stiff – The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

May 9, 2009
stiff by mary roach

If you’ve ever wondered what happens to you after you die (and to be honest, if you haven’t then you’re a bit odd) then Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach is the book with the answers you need. Well, some of them. Stiff examines quite specifically at what happens to your [...]

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The Accidental Guerrilla by David Kilcullen

May 5, 2009

Former Australia army officer, anthropologist and all-round sharp mind David Kilcullen is an interesting fellow. Bestride the worlds of government, military and academia and equally at home in each, he is one of the world’s foremost experts on counter-insurgency, was a rare dissenting voice within the 2nd Bush administration, one of the architects of The [...]

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley on IOT

April 20, 2009

For those of you still hankering for a bit of classic sci-fi, long-term UK arts scene fixture, author, and general all-round smart guy Melvyn Bragg currently presents a show on BBC radio 4 called “In Our Time” which examines what basically amounts to the history of ideas. Each week, Melvyn will grill 2 or 3 [...]

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Book For June

April 17, 2009

At the last meeting there was some general enthusiasm for “a classic” book, one of the great big meaty greats of literature. But when we knuckled down to it, no one really fancied anything massively dense. The choices boiled down to two plus NC’s enthusiastic contribution below. So fellow semiliterati, your choices are: George Orwell’s [...]

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez – A Life by Gerald Martin

March 13, 2009

This is our first encounter with ABC radio national’s The Book Show – a truly prolific arts show that manages an impressive amount of content every day from Monday to Friday. Of course it is also available as a podcast via iTunes Back on the 18th February 2009, the show met the author of Gabriel [...]

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The Well Dressed Ape by Hannah Holmes

March 13, 2009

Another nice little Late Night Live interview, this time with Hannah Homes who discusses her latest book “The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself“. As its starting point the author of the book takes a long hard look at herself – quite literally, naked in the mirror over the cause of an entire year [...]

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The Digested Read

March 13, 2009

For folks unsure about their next literary dalliance,  John Crace of the UK’s Guardian newspaper, puts his own unique, if cynical, spin on the canons of modern text for a series called The Digested Read The idea is simple: condense an entire book into 5 mins of audio, and if possible, into a single short [...]

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