Books, Life and Other Obsessions

Contemplations about books, films, music and life in general.

A review of the album “Mosaic of Disarray”

Nick de Grunwald, the driving force behind “Mosaic of Disarray”, deserves to be a big name in music. Its thirteen songs are a well-balanced mix of...

A review of the EP "Car Park at the Rear"

“Car Park at the Rear” is an EP of four songs by new group Wrong Girl. It sounds and feels very up-to-the-minute, all the songs having a strong,...

A review of the novel “Sleep Before Evening”

“Sleep Before Evening” tells the tale of 17-year-old Marianne’s slide into drug addiction following the death of her beloved grandfather, Eric. It is...

A review of the novel “This is the Place”

“This is the Place” is a complex, multi-layered novel that reveals a little more with each reading. Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s fiction style is...

A sense of guilt is an essential human trait

“Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.” That quote – which, it turns out, I remembered incorrectly – is...

Are mobile phones turning us into dysfunctional zombies?

Everywhere I go I see people using mobile phones: as they walk along the streets; sitting on trains, chatting (“I’m on the train”); and, in one case...

How close to collapse is modern society?

June 15th this year was a day like any other until just before 8pm. Then the power went. Being summer, it was still light, but the fridge and the...

How do we get teens to fall in love with books?

Nowadays we’re often told teenagers don’t read much; as an author that naturally concerns me. So how do we persuade reluctant young people to try...

How to kill your soul with "the news"

Martyn Lewis, the former television newsreader, once said that the news programmes focussed too much on the negative. They didn’t, according to him,...

Into the bright lights of the city – and danger

Why do some children and teenagers run away from home? That question has been circling round my mind as I read Oliver Twist . What drives young...

Intolerance, mavericks & the politicisation of science

Has science become politicised? Let’s look at the evidence. First up, one of my hobby horses: global warming. In my opinion, and a number of...

Is it sexist to say there are differences between the male & female brain?

Some educationalists say that boys are more interested in computer programming and computer engineering than girls because of conditioning by parents...

On the difference between terrorists & freedom fighters

How does Aldous Huxley’s statement, “The end cannot justify the means”, and a passage about collaborators from Stephen King’s novel, Cell , fit...

Panic and alienation on the streets of London

Nineteen years ago I was travelling home from college on the train one day, thinking about an upcoming assessment and the work I needed to do for it...

Pollution can affect our state of mind

Ghosts and the paranormal have been on my mind a lot this last week. Why, I hear my readers ask (well, alright, I don’t, but it seemed a good thing...

Stephen King's "Cell": cyber-terrorism & the new apocalypse

In Stephen King’s apocalyptic novel Cell every mobile phone network in the world transmits a virus and everyone using their phone at the time either...

The appeal of the apocalypse

The end of the world is all the rage nowadays, as popular with authors and directors as with readers and viewers. Take a random selection of...

What the dickens! “Oliver Twist” a horror novel?

I’ve just started reading Charles Dickens’ classic Oliver Twist (yet again!) and an unworthy – nay, evil – thought soon entered my mind. We have...

What “Lord of the Flies” tells us about terrorists

Last October (2014) I started reading William Golding’s Lord of the Flies for perhaps the second time since studying it when I was at school. One...

Who’s afraid of the big, bad homeless man?

Near where I live is a small urban park bisected by a fast road. On one side is a strip of wasteland where in the spring and summer there are often...

Why science couldn’t exist without instinct

Some people think that the rational part of the human brain is more important than the instinctive, that the conscious (ie, reasoning) mind matters...

Should cycling be banned in parks & the countryside?

It was reported last year in my local newspaper that a cyclist had been prosecuted for cycling at 41 miles an hour in Richmond Park (the speed limit...

The strange truth about anxiety

Can anxiety be good for us? That is this article in a nutshell (not a nut case – that’s me). Since you’re probably thinking I’ve finally lost the...

How like Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” has our society become?

In George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four , the rulers of Oceania, the all-powerful Party, have three fundamental slogans: “War is peace...

The importance of teaching computer programming to young children

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph last year, British schoolchildren would, under a new curriculum, learn how to write simple computer...

All about the terrible freedom of adulthood

As they say, “If I may be personal for a moment ...” It is now thirty years since I left school and, when I went to visit some twenty-five years ago...

How the film “Stand by Me” shows children are stronger than we think

Do some children cope better with being overlooked by their parents than others? I found myself wondering that after watching Rob Reiner’s film Stand...