Old age, eh? That’s kinda the theme for this collection of short stories by Sarth Ifrikan writer JM Coetzee.The Pole is the longest story here, taking up nearly two-thirds of the book. An elderly Polish pianist falls for a slightly younger Spanish woman and woos her, old folks-style. It’s a realistic romance story where Coetzee doesn’t go for overblown melodrama, but the story is still quite predictable. And boring.
Cartoonist Alec Robbins is married to classic cartoon pinup Betty Boop and they’re madly in love with one another. They also can’t stop having orgies with the likes of Bugs Bunny and Peter Griffin. Then Sonic the Hedgehog gets jealous and tries to assassinate Alec. You know - that hoary old canard!
In his 2010 book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr argues that the internet is changing the way we think and act - for the worse. Shocker! I don’t think anyone would argue differently, given the prevalence these days of garbage timesink sites like TikTok and news stories about how literature students these days can’t read books, let alone the average person!
Lorelei Lee is 18 years old, hot, blonde and dumb. So of course men are falling over themselves to marry her. So LL stumbles from one wealthy guy throwing money at her to another, all while traipsing around Europe, with her faithful sarcastic buddy Dorothy along for the ride. Then the book ends.
This Penguin Little Black Classics edition collects two stories: the novella-length White Nights and the short story Bobek, both by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a writer whose name I’ve seen spelt differently depending on who’s publishing him, and many publishers publish him. Why is that?! It’s his name! The vagaries of the Russian language eh?
Quin is a hotshot New York editor working at a major publishing house - who is then accused of inappropriate behaviour by a growing number of women. An older, wealthy man in a position of power preying on young women? Surely not! How far did Quin go and what will be his fate? He and his friend Margot look back on his past dalliances and wonder as they head towards the answer…
Joe Sacco published between a page and four pages at intervals from January to July 2024 on The Comics Journal website about his thoughts on the current Israel-Palestine conflict that kicked off on 7 October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel. The pages amount to roughly the length of a single issue comic which is published by Fantagraphics this week (or you can read the instalments for free on the TCJ website).
The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios is a collection of four stories by Yann Martel. I loved the title story, thought another one was ok, and the other two were quite weak.
