Sunday, February 25, 2007

12 Good things about 2007, # 11

AA Gill's food column in the Sunday Times Style magazine. Today he is writing about bores. Here's an excerpt , you can read the whole thing here:

"There was a time when numberless bores strode the earth. They were famous, fascinating and feared. Hostesses would use them to punish rivals. They were pitted against one another in great buttoned-leather, port-fuelled, fireside bore-offs, competitive raconteuring. A bore’s lonely calling was respected — the slow winnowing of facts until just the grittiest chaff could be thrown in the faces of the stultified. But today, a fractured society, disjointed by haste and hustle, fleet with texting, e-mail, iPods and Sky+, has worn away the bore’s domain. Where are the 12-course dinner parties of yore, the bridge evenings, the wet-country-weekend lock-ins? Nowadays, it’s lean pickings for the bore. The only protected environment left to him is a newspaper column, where he can expostulate ad infinitum into the darkness and the kitty litter."

Did he overlook Blogging as part of that protected environment?

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Alice Munro


Just finished listening to “The View from Castle Rock” by Alice Munro. A very satisfying book, its Southern Ontario Gothic perfect for a foggy Februaury Dublin Sunday!. Something beautiful and “woven” about the writing and the feelings it evokes of place ,time and memory.