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You appear to have created a WolfLarson-Haiku sub-genre. This is an admirable idea. I note you have choosen to ignore the traditional 5-7-5 structure, with similar results to those achieved by Steve McClaren when he switched England from 4-4-2 to 3-5-2 and removed Paul Robinson's brain. I...

The Noise of Time by Osip Mandelstam The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

There are any number of writers whose entire cannon is overlooked save for a single ‘classic’ work. Burgess with ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and Heller with “Catch-22” being notable examples. Even more unfortunate, are those writers whose most famous novel eclipses their other output, yet fails to...

P.G. Wodehouse - Jeeves in the Offing Witold Gombrowicz - Trans-Atlantyk Marina Tsvetayeva - Selected Poems Anna Akhmatova - Poems Foyles again...

‘The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat’ is the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski’s account of the last days of the court of Haile Selassie, told through the eyes of the courtiers who survived his reign. Whilst I’m sure Kapuscinski would have preferred to have had direct access to Selassie...

Dan Fante's books do seem to be difficult to get hold of at the moment. I must have got them at the right time I suppose, although I'd still like to get my hands on the collection of poems and some of the plays he's also written. He's obviously taken inspiration and talent from his father...

It could be argued that good fiction contains an element of emotional tourism; an opportunity to empathise with the feelings and experiences of others, without having to actually spend your life living through their consequences. If so, the setting of Dan Fante’s collection of short stories...

Many people’s view of Soviet dissident fiction might be that it makes for an earnest but perhaps, rather depressing read. For them, the books of Vladimir Voinovich would come as a pleasant surprise, as he has always chosen to tackle Russia’s troubled journey through the twentieth century with...

In case I haven't mentioned it before, it turns out that Vladimir Vionovich was born in Tajikstan. The Fur Hat is the easiest read of his books. Blurb: There was some other obscure, not to them obviously, country I'd found a writer for, but it's gone now. I'll remember later. K-S

Does it have to be a novel? As this book may suit... Letter from America, 1946-2004 by Alistair Cooke K-S

The Devil took me to Foyles of London, and I was a bad boy. But before that, I bought the following... Corksucker (Cab Driver Stories From The L.A. Streets) by Dan Fante Love and Garbage by Ivan Klima Doruntine by Ismail Kadare Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata The Absolute at Large by...

I love it when bibliophiles intellectually wrestle. First there's the trash talk.... Then the call out.... Followed by the knock out blow by clothesline... Unlike the traditional wrestling fan, I'm not holding up a colourfully miss-spelt sign with "The Wolf Man's going down" written on...

Did Wilfred Owen die for this? Well, no, obviously he didn't. Still, at least the Germans picking him off during the crossing of the Sambre-Oise Canal meant he didn't read that poem by accident. Lucky bastard, lucky, lucky bastard.

One of the joys of translated literature is its ability to give you insight into other cultures and, on occasion, to approach well known events from another viewpoint. To observe from the other side of the fence through the eyes of someone who truly understands and experienced the events, rather...

In the words of Charlie Brown "Good grief"...

Don't visit much anymore as my PC is down and I'm enjoying life without it for a while, but for what it's worth... Get the Mature Discussion section up and running; Agree Get the moderation sorted out; Agree, although I'd like to see "sorted out" defined. Remove the Testing forum -...

Kenny thinks that derailing threads on this board is almost too easy.

Can we ban people from talking about themselves in the third person? It gives Kenny the colly-wobbles.

Apart from the newspapers, not a bloody thing!

Perhaps Muggle has seen it in action? I know I've used messageboard software with the "karma" feature set on, and it seemed, to me at least, to be rather pointless. In general I don't understand the desire to have some indictation of a members perceived worth to the board, be it a reputation...