Internet Review of Books

OfficialWire: Sales Of James Patterson e-books Top 3 Million

2011-06-01T19:48:00.000+01:00

OfficialWire: Sales Of James Patterson e-books Top 3 Million: "James Patterson is an e-book mega-seller.The Hachette Book Group announced Wednesday that e-sales for the prolific author of such blockbuster series as 'Maximum Ride' have topped 3 million, with 2 million coming just in the last 11 months. Patterson releases several books a year, many of them top sellers.The e-book market has surged

Taking time off

2010-03-23T09:26:00.001Z

Following two bad bouts of flu I'm taking a couple of weeks off. If urgent, please call my cellphone.

Henry Giroux: Youth in a Suspect Society

2009-09-14T09:33:00.002+01:00

Thursday 10 September 2009 A review by: Tolu Olorunda | The Black Commentator(Photo: Palgrave Macmillan) "In a radical free-market culture, when hope is precarious and bound to commodities and a corrupt financial system, young people are no longer at risk: they are the risk." - Giroux, Henry. "Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability?" New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009,

MobiVerse (R) service for poets

2009-08-25T08:42:00.001+01:00

MobiVerse (R) is a new publishing service for poets, using the Mobipocket software, which allows ePublications to be read on any mobile phone or PC. At this stage, the project is in a formative staqge and I am looking for short poems (100 lines or less; no limit on later submissions, so Homeric epics possible, also novels, plays etc) to include in the sample MobiVerse (R) anthology. There will be

The Sixties, by Jenny Diski (Profile Books, £10.99)

2009-07-20T08:20:00.002+01:00

The Sixties were when they packaged up counter-revolution and sold it to us as revolution.The Sixties were when the establishment observed the aspirations of the millions of working class kids coming out of the grammar schools and art colleges and held up a hand that said: Thus far and no further.The Sixties were when we were asked if we really wanted our wives and servants to read about Lady

Test message

2008-05-20T21:43:00.001+01:00

This is a test of emailing a posting.

Black Mass: apocalyptic religion and the death of Utopia

2007-09-21T11:06:00.000+01:00

Black Mass: apocalyptic religion and the death of Utopia, by John Gray (Penguin, £18.99)Despite a sensationalist title that makes it seem like a Dennis Wheatley horror, this is a stimulating enquiry into the religious roots of present-day conflict. It is rare to come upon a philosophical work which underpins its theses with examples from the real world, like the errors of the neocon agenda for

Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell

2007-09-21T10:24:00.001+01:00

Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell, byMichael Gray (Bloomsbury, £25)Blind Willie McTell was a blue singer different from the familiarcliches of white bluesology.As Michael Gray says in this exhaustively researched and (to behonest) sometimes exhausting to read story, "McTell explodes everyarchetype about the blues musician. He is no roaring primitive, noRobert

The old IRB website

2006-06-27T11:17:00.000+01:00

I have reorganised the Internet Review of Books website so it is possible to read some of the old pages, dating back to 1999. Not all of the links work, and many of the books will be out of print by now, but among the pages available are:The Tom Clancy industryMadonnaThe truth about the Amistad mutinyBruce Springsteen songsBill Clinton's "lies"Bill Gates: huckster at the speed of brainBloody Hell

Yevtushenko: A Russian Poet Steeped in America (New York Times)

2003-12-11T12:09:00.000Z

"With a bright patchwork jacket from Guatemala covering his broad shoulders, the graying lion of Russian letters, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, paced and shouted as he read some of his poems that once shook the world. Between verses he tossed off advice and opinion about life, love and literature. His audience did not fill a theater in Moscow, London or New York, but a classroom of English students at

2003-12-04T14:05:00.000Z

I have now added “comments” links to all my blogs. This means that when you read something, you can add a comment, without having to subscribe. ------------------------------ Karl Dallas

New York Times on C.S.Lewis: A Mind That Grasped Both Heaven and Hell

2003-11-22T14:48:00.000Z

New York Times: A Mind That Grasped Both Heaven and Hell "If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next," he wrote in "Mere Christianity," one of his best-known works. "It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this." In an era when God

A Portrait of the Artist's Troubled Daughter

2003-11-22T14:40:00.000Z

A Portrait of the Artist?s Troubled Daughter She was the light giver, the "wonder wild," James Joyce wrote of his daughter, Lucia. She was what Joyce scholars call the "Rainbow girl" in his masterpiece, "Finnegans Wake," Issy the temptress, who magically breaks up into the colors of the rainbow. Lucia had a mind "as clear and as unsparing as the lightning," Joyce once wrote in a letter. "She is

Philip K. Dick, paranoid genius

2003-11-12T11:46:00.000Z

The World Jones Made, by Philip K. Dick (Gollancz, £6.99, ISBN 0-575-07457-4) Philip K. Dick was crazy. He was an alcoholic and drug addict, who believed the FBI was spying on him. He also wrote paranoid letters to J. Edgar Hoover claiming the Commies were out to get him. He believed he had been transported back to Roman times. His books have been made into blockbuster Hollywood movies (

2003-11-11T10:26:00.000Z

Bush in Babylon: the recolonisation oF Iraq by Tariq Ali (Verve, £13) Whatever you might think of Tariq Ali’s history as a campaigner on the ultra-left, there is no getting away from the fact that he is a great polemicist. And this is certainly a great polemic, un-put-downable, not a page of which doesn’t have something enlightening, thought-provoking, and sometimes just plain incredible, to