Articles
Monday, September 13th, 2010
Today, if you didn’t already know, is Roald Dahl day. Born on 13th September 1916, this wonderful children’s writer would now be 94 years old. 94! If his last full-length work is anything to go by (Matilda, published in 1988), the old man still had plenty of story-telling juice left in him by the time he passed away in 1990.
I have a huge personal investment in Dahl, as it was his books (and his wonderful, funny poetry) I was weaned on from a young age. Not unusually for a child growing up in the north of England in the 1980s, Dahl was the first author I fell in love with. I have strong memories of leafing through those slim paperbacks, finding myself wowed by Dahl’s vivid imagination and delighted by Quentin Blake‘s enchanting drawings (Dahl and Blake are utterly inseparable in my mind). I finished James and the Giant Peach and The BFG in two days each, The Witches in one. (more…)
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Tags: cg, roald dahl
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Saturday, September 4th, 2010
Take the story of Ion Barladeanu, a Romanian artist who has tasted some sort of fame after years of living homeless in a dump. He’s suddenly touring art galleries, meeting Angelina Jolie, doing the newspaper rounds. The world’s listening. Loved on Facebook and by HBO, Ion Barladeanu finally has an audience. It is quite the fairytale. Or maybe it’s not that simple. (more…)
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Tags: bt, collage, Evenimentul Zilei, Facebook, Ion Barladeanu, pop art
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Wednesday, August 18th, 2010
So, the death of the bookshop is apparently upon us. Wave goodbye to lavish little shops, books and posters of books and book presentations and, of course, the bookseller who’s just looking to spark up an intimate conversation on the merits of transcendental meditation. Good. I was never much of a bookshop person. I’ve bought most of my books from charity shops because I could never afford brand new books. I also read a lot of books by borrowing from libraries and, with the world now overrun by the internet, I purchase reduced books online or read them when someone’s posted it on their site. Of course I will buy a book at full price if I absolutely believe in it. But when I was growing up I had to find the most affordable way of gaining knowledge. (more…)
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Tags: bookshops, bookstores, bt, death of bookshops, death of bookstores, online bookstores
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Monday, August 9th, 2010
The practice of censoring literature has always interested me. It happens throughout the world, like, for example, in China.
I have been reading about New Century Press, a Hong Kong publisher who is publishing China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao, a book that had been banned in China. These people have made an admirable decision. They’re putting their reputation and maybe even their lives on the line. What their motivation is I do not know but I cannot but respect their decisions. It takes real guts to make a stand on something you believe in. (more…)
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Tags: book censoring, bt, censored books, censoring books, China's Best Actor: Wen Jiabao, New Century Press
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Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
Harvey Pekar was a talented comic book writer and music critic.
I remember when I first watched the American Splendor film. I wasn’t expecting it to be as funny, dry and realistic as it turned out to be. I wasn’t expecting anything and it blew me away. So I went and immediately bought the American Splendor graphic novel which turned out to be superior to the film. Here were stories of Harvey Pekar’s day to day life, of his work colleagues, obsessions, neurotic thoughts and behaviour, Harvey relentlessly grappling with working life. Here was somebody who put everything into publishing his own comic book, who became an underground hero and who continued to work the same dull job for the rest of his life. This was no celebrity, no fifteen minute wannabe, you got no laugh a minute catchphrase. (more…)
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Tags: American Splendor, Bogdan Tiganov, bt, comic books, Harvey Pekar, Robert Crumb, underground comics
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Friday, July 9th, 2010
Writing can be a joyous thing. It can become the purpose of your life. You can settle down into a routine in which words bounce from your fingertips, joyous paragraphs and whole stories emerge. So beautiful and fulfilling these can be and feel that it’s almost a shame anybody else needs to see them. But you yearn to share what you’ve done with your very fingers, like a child. Look mum! Look reader, look what I can do with words! (more…)
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Tags: Bogdan Tiganov, bt, the process of writing
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Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
I am stood in the white, angular confines of Manchester’s Apple store, an iPad in my hands for the very first time. I’ve spent twenty minutes with Apple’s latest creation and have found it, in many ways, to be electrifying. Already I have used it to surf the web, watch a video, and now I am playing a game in which I steer a rally car through forests by simply tilting the device. I am absorbed, child-like in my wonder.
Alas, my first experience with the iPad as an e-reader would later leave me unexcited and cold. Reflections bounce from the rich, glossy screen, and the page-turning animation becomes old quickly. My arms soon begin to ache from holding it. I’m thinking too much about leaving fingerprints on that pristine surface. (more…)
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Tags: Apple, cg, Chris Greenhough, e-books, E-reader, iPad
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Thursday, June 17th, 2010
As I sit in front of my television for the next month, transfixed by the joy of World Cup competition, I wonder what World Cup history is all about, what stories lie beneath the facades and motivation.
A book that I am interested in reading is Death of Glory! – The Dark History of the World Cup by Jon Spurling. I enjoy reading journalistic pieces exposing interesting stories and I’m sure political manipulation is rife when such a world wide event takes place. Another book would be The Soccer War, by Ryszard Kapuscinski, one of my favourite journalists. The Soccer War covers the war between El Salvador and Honduras leading up to the 1970 World Cup. If it’s anything like Kapuscinski’s other books, it will be a beautiful written account of his travels, with stunning insights. (more…)
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Tags: Bogdan Tiganov, bt, football books, Hagi, Jon Spurling, Maradona, Ryszard Kapuscinski, World Cup
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Monday, May 24th, 2010
Honest Publishing is pleased to announce its latest publication by emerging talent, Romanian poet and author, Bogdan Tiganov.
‘The Wooden Tongue Speaks’ is the revised edition of a collection of short stories and poetry set in post-Ceauşescu and post-Cold War Romania.
The book takes readers on a journey through the author’s home town of Braila in the east of the country, where social, religious and political issues are explored through an array of colourful characters and narratives focusing on the newly, supposedly liberated world. (more…)
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Tags: Eastern Europe, Eastern European literature, Romanian, Romanian literature
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