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14 favourite pieces of classical music
OK, time to start up an occasional series of lists, because I like making lists – indeed, professionally, it’s probably the only thing I’m any good at. They will be personal lists: some favourite...
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13 unread classics
Image via http://www.readingtree.org/ Next up, a confessional list. Here are 13 great novels that I have failed to finish. They sit there on the shelves, bookmarks positioned halfway through, taunting...
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The 13 worst films I’ve ever sat through
The Prodigal Son (UK 1921) And now for a list of the worst films I’ve ever sat through. Not films that I particularly dislike but which others whose opinions I should respect admire (e.g. Singin’ in...
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15 favourite paintings
Samuel Palmer, ‘The Gleaning Field’, c.1833, Tate On we go with the lists, and now we have fifteen favourite paintings of mine. They’re not all great works, but each has struck me in a particular way...
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19 annoying things about second-hand books
I have spent an inordinate amount of my time on this planet in second-hand bookshops. I discovered them as a home-from-home when a teenager, and travel about this land with a map in my head of where...
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19 delightful things about second-hand books
Pristine books are rare in second-hand bookshops. Instead the books you find there each bears the marks of their past lives. Online second-hand stores grade their wares with descriptions such as...
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A year in television
Fargo, season 2 It’s that time of the year when you feel compelled to sum up that year. Well, some feel so compelled, and the newspapers and web are full of people’s reviews of 2015 in art, literature,...
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A year in books
Next up in this series of reviews of 2015 and those of its cultural treasures that fell my way is reading. I’m always astonished by those sections in ‘quality’ newspapers in which the great, the good,...
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A year in film
Lucifer After television and books, here’s my review of the year in film. As someone who only saw two new films in a cinema this year, it still feels a bit of a cheat to be talking about enjoying film...
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A year online
Bob Dylan Studio A Revisited Next up in these reviews of the year is my year online. Rather than review particular sites or name one as the best, here is a list of some of the sites I discovered and/or...
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My spine is the bassline
Larry Graham A while back I had fun putting together a list of favourite guitar solos that was determinedly different to the usual sort of list of these things. Now here’s another such list, this time...
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Forgotten films of the 1980s
Housekeeping The other night I watched Housekeeping, for the first time in some twenty-five years. It’s the first film that the Scottish director Bill Forsyth made in America, and though it was warmly...
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19 favourite Bob Dylan songs
Well, it’s summertime, the Olympic Games are in full flood, and my mind is on holiday. So I can only set aside the usual sort of cod-philosophical post for the time being, and instead revert to lists....
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Better than the Beatles
Via beatlebootleg.blogspot.comIt is with not a little relief that I have set aside a half-written, half-baked philosophical post on who can say what and decided to write some lists instead. It’s...
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Blues fallin’ down like hail
From the cover of King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. III first came across the blues through this image. It was on the front cover of King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. II, a collection of...
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Easy pieces
Karen Black and Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces (1970), via BFIThe 1970 film Five Easy Pieces is generally held to be among the best of the classic 70s period of Hollywood cinema. It tells of an oil...
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2018 – the year online
Radio GardenYes, 2018 is winding its way, unapologetically, to the bitter and, and it is time for some reviews of the year. As in past years, I’m producing a series of posts over December listing some...
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2018 – the year in books
Next in these reviews of the year is the year in books. I read a lot in 2018, and it was a vintage year: for books published in 2018, for those I finally caught up on, and (best of all) all those...
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2018 – the year in music
Hayden Petigo, via The FaderThird in this series of reviews of the year, from my humble perspective, is music. While live music was only occasional, and then too often disappointing (I shall mention no...
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2018 – the year on screen
The Tree of Wooden ClogsNext in these reviews of the year is things seen on screen. Now that the boundaries between film, television and Netflix have blurred so utterly, it seems foolish to think of...
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