Tag Archives: books

may the odds be ever in your favour

Posted on September 27, 2012 by rustichello

Recently my brain has been on strike, it won’t do what it was doing a few weeks ago, it’s not doing what I ask it to do. I tried very hard the other night to read Black Mass, the John … Continue reading →

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Will Self’s Dorian

Posted on September 6, 2012 by rustichello

There’s a moment in Andrew McGahan’s Last Drinks where the most chronic of the alcoholics confesses to his shame regarding his wish to be cured of his disease. Initially there’s some confusion about this, it appears momentarily that he’s ashamed … Continue reading →

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i wanna be a dissident: reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Posted on October 1, 2011 by rustichello

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been in my dreams a lot of late. I have read much and throughout this most mild of winters past I have fallen asleep with the gulag, the prison, Siberia and the steppe. There has been, I … Continue reading →

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a pair of tits called authenticity

Posted on September 20, 2011 by rustichello

I’m not good at funny. I have a repertoire of jokes that scrape the sides of barrel abandoned during the gold rush. My jokes can be funny, but mostly I an engaged in a performance of being funny, or at least … Continue reading →

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Positive

Posted on August 11, 2010 by rustichello

David Menadue is gay rights activist from the eighties and early nineties who holds the record for the longest surviving Australian with full blown AIDS. He is without doubt a courageous man, who has lived a life no-one would envy … Continue reading →

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feeding the drat

Posted on August 4, 2010 by rustichello

It must be said that I am a huge sucker for mountaineering books. The childhood adventure story is simply reconfigured into a paradigm involving tourism; physical risk; and the possibility of looking quite dashing. Not being terribly dashing, but wanting to … Continue reading →

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sucking it up

Posted on August 3, 2010 by rustichello

David Denby writes like an angel, his words creep out like gas and infiltrate their way through consciousness. There is nothing didactic or bossy about his way with language. Everything is proportioned like sculpture, no words misplaced or misshapen phrases. … Continue reading →

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