Author Archives: John Sloan

Noble, Denis. Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity. Cambridge, Cambridge 2016. NF; 1/21. A fan of ideas about science and about evolution in particular, I was impressed with this polemic. It attacks the orthodox “Neo-Darwinist” view on inherited … Continue reading →

Lawrence, D. H. The Bad Side of Books. New York Review Books (Geoff Dyer ed), New York, 2019. NF?12/20. I’ve been a DH Lawrence fan since the 1960s when I was an English lit major. His novels (The Rainbow and … Continue reading →

December 2020 What a lovely experience. I don’t know why, but when we made the reservation here for lunch on our early-December anniversary mid-week in the city, I expected one of the subgenres of Chinese food, high-class variety. It was … Continue reading →

McCarthy, Cormac. The Orchard Keeper. Vintage, New York, 1965. F; 11/20. A friend listing the books on his “to be read” shelf mentioned this. Classic fiction is sometimes surprisingly rewarding (Middlemarch, Mrs. Dalloway). I’ve read McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses … Continue reading →

Berlin, Lucia. A Manual for Cleaning Women. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2015 (stories all published previously here selected posthumously) F;11/20. This is a big collection (43 stories) of mostly linked and mostly autobiographical tales written by a sort … Continue reading →

Walton, Jo. Or What You Will. Tom Doherty, New York, 2020. F;10/20. Almost 30 years ago I somehow convinced my wife and three young kids to spend a year with me in the south of France. It changed all of … Continue reading →

Jones, James. From Here to Eternity. Scribner’s New York 1951. Unabridged edition Open Road New York, 2011. 8/20 This novel, first published in the decade after World War II ended, sold well and then was in 1953 made into a … Continue reading →

McBride, James. Deacon King Kong. Riverhead (Penguin Random House) New York, 2020. F;7/20. This is a serious and at times strongly affecting story and a hard look at crime and poverty in 1969 black-neighbourhood Brooklyn. Mr McBride is an accomplished … Continue reading →

Shriver, Lionel. The Mandibles. HarperCollins London 2016. F;6/20. Most fiction, at least what I read these days, is written from a left-of-centre point of view. In keeping with my mostly imaginary political stripe – centrist, or pragmatist – I have … Continue reading →

June 2020 Visiting this lovely little restaurant broke our three-month Covid-isolation–associated eating-out fast. Here on the Sunshine Coast we’ve been lucky to have very little of the virus around, and restaurants including this one are now opening with suitable contagion safety … Continue reading →