Posts by Rob Stowell
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it’s as if none of them have made an impression.
Few?
None is a little harsh :) (And some have made a… negative impression)Are we just getting old
There is this, too. We do become harder to astonish, delight, transport. And, after a few decades of reading our way through, if we choose, a few hundred years of the world's greatest writing, this month's pick from NZ can come to appear increasingly slight.
But we also rely on it being there- and need to remember that new generations of readers are picking their way along their own paths. They need the native plantings :) -
I think the social value of people going to university and studying literature, philosophy etc is currently a negative value, since the net result is generally a person who is unable to communicate their ideas about art/philosophy/whatever to a non-academic audience.
If this is a critique of much post-modern lit-crit as nonsense that doesn't rhyme, I'm largely with you.
Otherwise, not so much.
Of course anyone can study these things on their own. Engineering, medicine, and accountancy, too. But I bet you don't go to a 'self-taught' doctor :) -
Diana Wynne Jones can hardly put a word wrong round here. We all enjoy her- from the 75-year-old grandmother to the 11-year-old twins. However, we have lost the second tape of Witch Week, and the first got stuck in the car's tape-deck. I can't bear hearing the first half, ahem, more than once- without the resolution. :)
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Sue McCauley
+2. Loved her (last? it was ages ago!) book of short stories, the name of which escapes me. Terrific.
Don't think she's writing these days. -
Not to mention the way they undermine the 'liberal arts education'.
Ok I have one of these, and so I'm biased. But I want to live in a society where a scattering of folk have made an intellectual investment in history, art, literature philosophy et al, knowing it's not leading to any specific career or ability to improve their earnings, but just because they want to know more about cultural stuff. I'd like to think we all benefit. -
I am already making notes for Zombie Alone.
LOL. But (threadmerge) isn't it a little early for a biography of Phil Goff?
Love this thread. I think there's a huge amount in this:stories about recognisable, complicated people on the cusp of brave action.
Without wanting to get engaged in a massive discourse about the role of hero and anti-hero in literature and life... if we're addicted to narrative in part because it helps us to explain our lives, understand the world, and glimpse into other people's hearts- there's something dispiriting about those hearts being passive and/or passionless- and however true to experience it may be, what help in making sense of the world do we get from a novel that depicts the world as weird, random and meaningless?
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one can only hope a cavity search was involved somewhere
Why would they search his brain?
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Poor old Mike got thrown to the wolves after a lost election
Nah, Mike got to lose two. As Ms Bracknell might say, to lose one may be a misfortune, but to lose two...
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3410- I don't get your point :)
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I guess it's a bit much to expect McCully to come out and say it was an expensive folly we were bullied into ‘upgrading’ so we could get a few WC matches?
I dunno how many thousands it’s now sposed to fit. But before they added all those seats, it already seemed very empty most super X games (where X = how many teams SANZAR can make dance on the head of a well-poured Speights- I’ve forgotten:)) Attendance was in decline. I can’t remember when it was last full- and that’s before they added the whopping new eastern stadium.
So yeah, thanks guys. Can we have our money back? :)
(I'm not worried about the games leaving, although I did have work on them. That seems sensible. I do hate the blackmail that's pushed public dollars into Lancaster Park/Jade/AMI stadium. Yeah, those big fancy corporate areas are very nice, but they don't epitomise the rugby spirit, and what's really galling: they sit completely empty about 330 days of the year.)