Monthly Archives: December 2020

My last post of 2020 and I’m going to end this celebration of Beethoven with something a little different. Here’s wishing you all joy in the year to come and those beyond, and if not there is still the music … Continue reading →

A review that originally appeared in The Third Alternative #34:- UNDER COVER OF NIGHT Mary Sangiovanni Flesh & Blood Press pb, 167pp, US$16 There’s something wonderfully nostalgic about this first collection from New Jersey writer Sangiovanni, a hint of shared … Continue reading →

My favourite Beethoven symphony, and this bit is ‘the storm’.

A review that originally appeared in The Third Alternative #27:- GRIMM’S LAST FAIRYTALE Haydn Middleton Abacus pb, 249pp, £6.99 Haydn Middleton’s latest novel is set in September 1863, when an ailing Jacob Grimm travels through rural west Germany, revisiting the places that … Continue reading →

Happy Christmas to anyone reading this blog, and if all goes to plan (but it probably won’t opines the tireless pessimist who resides in my soul) in the year ahead you’ll have a lot more to read. Here’s a blast … Continue reading →

A review that originally appeared in The Third Alternative #26:- SUPER-CANNES J G Ballard Flamingo, £16.99 For nearly three decades, in books such as High-Rise and Running Wild, Ballard has been presenting readers with outwardly idyllic social units and then … Continue reading →

For a number of years it was a tradition in the Tennant household that on Christmas morning I would play either this or the Kreutzer Sonata. Make of that what you will.

A review that originally appeared in The Third Alternative #24:- SENSING OTHERS Frank Tallis Hamish Hamilton pb, 295pp, £9.99 Nick, a rock musician on his uppers, supplements his income by acting as a guinea pig in trials of a new drug called … Continue reading →

A review that originally appeared in The Fix #3:- ANALOG VOL CXXII #2 As someone who has difficulty telling his quarks from his quasars and could never see what all the fuss was about re Schrodinger’s cat, I’ve always felt … Continue reading →

A review that originally appeared in The Third Alternative #27:- ALVIN JOURNEYMAN Orson Scott Card Orbit pb, 400pp, £6.99 Renewed interest in Card on this side of the Atlantic has seen publishers turning to his back catalogue, and so we … Continue reading →