04.06.07

Intermission

Posted in Uncategorized at 1:17 pm by John Self

There will now be a short delay in blog posting.

Normal service will be resumed in a week or so.

9 Comments »

  1. Nick said,

    Saturday, 7 April 2007 at 5:57 pm

    A great shame that Michael Dibdin is gone (and only a day older than me!) His books were hardly literary masterpieces but the Aurelio Zen series was strikingly original. His brainwave was to use the crime fiction of Zen and his tangled personal life as a vehicle for a regular onslaught on the rampant corruption and sleaze at the heart of Italian society (Incidentally, he was brought up in Lisburn). I shall miss his books. See also: The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones.

  2. Lizzy Siddal said,

    Wednesday, 11 April 2007 at 6:19 pm

    Love the blog, John. Hope you enjoyed your break. Has Palimpsest gone on hols with you?

  3. kath said,

    Wednesday, 11 April 2007 at 6:31 pm

    Yes, what’s happened to Palimpsest? I’m somewhat distraught to find it’s suddenly disappeared… please please tell me it’s coming back!

  4. Becca Kerry said,

    Thursday, 12 April 2007 at 11:19 am

    Ditto. I tried to find palimpsest yesterday, to set up a link to it from my blog, only to find that it had gone :o(

  5. Nick said,

    Thursday, 12 April 2007 at 4:16 pm

    Never mind Palimpsest, now we’ve lost another literary genius in the form of Kurt Vonnegut. Not only were his experiments with literary form extraordinary but he was not afraid to raise controversial political issues like the Dresden bombing in Slaughterhouse Five. Now it’s commonplace for people like John Le Carre to lay into political scandals.

  6. paddyjoe said,

    Thursday, 12 April 2007 at 4:53 pm

    Please come back Palimpsest. I feel frightened and all alone. How else can I spend all those busy hours at the office?
    Hope you enjoyed the noneymoon, JS.

  7. Nick said,

    Thursday, 12 April 2007 at 7:08 pm

    There’s a lovely personal piece about Kurt Vonnegut on citywendy.com

  8. Nick said,

    Friday, 13 April 2007 at 11:36 am

    Since John is still away (while the cat’s away the mice will play), here’s a great quote from Kurt Vonnegut: “I try to keep deep love out of my stories because, once that particular subject comes up, it is almost impossible to talk about anything else. Readers don’t want to hear about anything else. They go gaga about love. If a lover in a story wins his (sic) true love, that’s the end of the tale, even if World War Three is about to begin, and the sky is black with flying saucers.” (Independent Extra today)

  9. John Self said,

    Saturday, 14 April 2007 at 10:10 pm

    Yes Nick, Dibdin and Vonnegut are both losses to booklovers everywhere. I had mixed feelings about Dibdin’s books (liked Dirty Tricks, wasn’t so fond of the Zen series), but he could certainly write. Vonnegut’s like will not be seen again and his passing leaves a huge hole, even though arguably he hadn’t hit his peaks in 30 or even 40 years.

    As people hopefully now know, Palimpsest is back online and was gone due to problems renewing the domain subscription.

    I am back too and will soon(ish) be posting up reviews of the books I read when I was away.

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