Only Marcus knows: Sex in fiction
July 26, 2019 at 3:58 am | Posted in Bad Sex in Fiction | 2 CommentsTags: A.s Byatt, Clive james, Judith Krantz, Morrissey, rowan Somerville
‘The sex in your novel I can understand,’ said a friend as we stood in adjoining lanes in the shallow end of Civic Pool. ‘The sex in A.S. Byatt’s novel you’d need a PhD in English Literature to understand.’
‘I’ve got one of those,’ I said, pulling my goggles into place. ‘Can I borrow it?’
‘I’ll bring it tomorrow,’ he said, before swimming away.
And that is how I came to have A.S. Byatt’s Babel Tower, all 618 pages of it, about to topple off the tower of books on my bedside table. But I too gave up on it, not because I couldn’t understand the (admittedly erudite) sex scenes but because I came to this sentence, quite early on:
Slowing down – A beautiful book on sustainable living: Mark Boyle’s The Way Home
July 10, 2019 at 4:26 am | Posted in Blasket islands, capitalism, digital technology, E.F. Schumacher, Mark Boyle, rural Ireland, Simplifying, Small Is Beautiful, sustainable living | Leave a commentTags: Irish memoirs, mental health, The Way Home
The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology. Mark Boyle. (Oneworld Publications, 2019)
It’s a surprise to learn that Mark Boyle has a degree in Economics and Marketing. He lives in rural County Galway in a dwelling he built himself. He chooses to live without electricity or running water. He has no car and of course no phone – landline or mobile – but the thing that really brought home to me his hard-line stance is this: he won’t use matches either.
Once you’d spent the hours and labour (not to mention generating blisters) on making a fire with your bare hands I can’t imagine ever letting it go out.
Mark Boyle writes that he also has neither clock nor watch. Would a sundial count as technology? Probably not, but its use might be a bit limited in western Ireland, which receives roughly twice as much rainfall as the rest of the country.
And lighting? ‘Making a candle is easy. The real craft lies in the first part of the process: the keeping of the bees,’ he writes. ‘Actually, the most difficult part of candle-making is deciding to reject electrical lighting.’ Continue Reading Slowing down – A beautiful book on sustainable living: Mark Boyle’s The Way Home…
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