A Literary Life

So I was wandering the aisles of my local bookstore the other day.   I wasn’t particularly looking to buy anything, but killing time while it rained outside, and with nothing else to do.   It was one of those days.   You know the type.   That was when I picked Greg Baxter’s novel off the shelf, where it was sandwiched in between two other novels.   One of the rules is never judge a book by its cover – but I did just that.   Penguin have designed a lovely cover for The Apartment.   With cover quotes from Hisham Matar and Roddy Doyle (two very different writers, tonally, causing yet further intrigue).   The first few lines of the blurb on the back have sold me, and a reading of the opening page is enough to seal the deal. The Apartment, then, is that kind of novel.   One to discover surreptitiously, to come to with little preconception.   Its power lies in its simplicity – that is, a simplicity that carries such overpowering dep...

By my reckoning, it’s a week until Sight and Sound, the British Film Institute’s magazine, releases the results of its ten yearly poll.   For those not in the know – every ten years, beginning in 1952, Sight and Sound has surveyed the world’s directors and critics and asked them what they think the 10 best films of all time are.   Every decade but the first has seen Citizen Kane come in at number 1.    I suspect this year will see Kane lose that top spot for the first time since ’52 – Tokyo Story might rise above it, as might Sunrise (a film more viewed and accessible now and in a quality blu-ray print).   As is usual, I suspect no film more recent than 1979 will make the list.   In 1961, Penelope Houston, then editor of the magazine, asked people to play this “impossible but intriguing game again” and nominate 10 films.   Nick James, the current editor, has been doing the same again over the last twelve months.   Because I’m not a famous di...