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The Life of the Mind
The Coen Brothers: Barton Fink (1991)All Balled Up at Head Office Certainly the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, do not present a particularly attractive picture of the writing life in their satirical...
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The Many Faces of Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) When my mother left her hometown of Sydney, Australia in 1953 to take up her very first job as a house surgeon in a little country hospital in Waimate, New Zealand, among...
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SF Luminaries: Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) As various fans have already pointed out, Stephen King's latest novel Fairy Tale (2022) - despite being overtly dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and H. P....
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The Road Not Taken
Richard von Sturmer: doppelgänger (9/12/2020)The Interrupted Journey Yesterday I packed up my office at the University of Waikato and am now back in Auckland. When I was passing the photo wall in the...
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James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time
Allen Warren: James Baldwin (1969)God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time! - "Mary Don't You Weep" (traditional) There's an interesting passage in Charlton Heston's...
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Gore Vidal: Narratives of Empire
David Shankbone: Gore Vidal (2009) Ralph came over to Stu and knelt down. 'Can we get you anything, Stu?'Stu smiled. 'Yeah. Everything Gore Vidal ever wrote - those books about Lincoln and Aaron Burr...
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Red Mole & the Romance of Alan Brunton
Martin Edmond: Bus Stops on the Moon (2020) This morning (16/7/23), the Stuff news site posted an article listing three "unmissable Kiwi docos" at this year's New Zealand International Film Festival....
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Takapuna Library Poetry Reading - Tuesday 22/8/23
Poetry Day Prelude: Shore WordsPoetry Day Prelude:Shore Words Get ready for the Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day in the best possible way. Join MC Stu Bagby, plus long-time poet Piers Davies...
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PhD Days
John Ashbery: Houseboat Days (1977) Despite all he did and wrote subsequently, I'm still probably most fond of John Ashbery's rather dreamy poetry collection Houseboat Days, published shortly after his...
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Mike Johnson Triple Booklaunch (5/10/23)
Mike Johnson: Selected Poems, ed. Jack Ross (2023)Mike Johnson & Leila Lees: Sketches (2023)Mike Johnson: Afterworld (2023)Mike Johnson:Afterworld / Sketches / Selected Poems Celebrated New Zealand...
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Memories of Don Smith
D. I. B. Smith (1934-2023)[photograph courtesy of Caitlin Smith]i. m. Emeritus Professor Donal Ian Brice Smith (4/2/1934 - 27/9/2023) I don't think I ever had a conversation with Don Smith which didn't...
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Slightly Foxed (b.o.f.)
John Fenton. Slightly Foxed b.o.f. [= but otherwise fine]. Auckland: John Denny, 1997. I once belonged to a secret society. It wasn’t especially secret – just a group of book enthusiasts who met once...
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28 Days Haunted & Other Spooky TV Shows
28 Days Haunted (2022) Don't get me wrong. I hugely enjoyed The Conjuring (2013) - and its 2016 sequel, based on the famous Enfield poltergeist case in London in the late 1970s. The sympathetic...
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100 Years of Darkness
Bill Direen: 100 Years of Darkness (2023) Bill Direen's latest poetry collection includes poems about 100-odd films which have enthused him - or at any rate attracted his attention - over the years....
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Napoleon - For and Against
Ridley Scott, dir. Napoleon (2023) Even bad Ridley Scott movies are generally worth seeing. As he himself has remarked, "I have an eye." There are definitely ravishing moments in Napoleon, as well as...
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The World of Hercule Poirot
The World of Hercule Poirot[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd (2023)] We didn't really intend to make a tradition out of it, but at the beginning of 2022 I posted a piece about finishing a 1,000-piece jigsaw...
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Who the heck is Solar Pons?
August Derleth: The Solar Pons Omnibus (1982)August Derleth. The Solar Pons Omnibus. 2 vols. Ed. Basil Copper. Drawings by Frank Utpatel. Foreword by Robert Bloch. A Mycroft & Moran Book. Sauk...
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Troy Town
Leo Deuel, ed.: Memoirs of Heinrich Schliemann (1978)Troy Town is the traditional name for many of the mazes and earthworks of England. This may refer to the tricky way in which the walls of Troy were...
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Classic Ghost Story Writers: Algernon Blackwood
Algernon Blackwood: The Wendigo and Other Stories (2023)'The Wendigo' (1910) remains my favourite story by Algernon Blackwood, and - indeed - one of my favourite horror stories of all time. I know that...
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Classic Ghost Story Writers: L. P. Hartley
Joseph Losey, dir.: The Go-Between (1971)[writ. Harold Pinter / adapted from the 1953 novel by L. P. Hartley]"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” This, the first line of...
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