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Shockingly, White House speechwriter fails to grasp existentialist nuance

This post was written by Friday guest blogger Emma Garman. Ronald Aronson points out that: A careful reading of The Fall reveals that President Bush’s quote from Albert Camus in Brussels was an astonishing mistake. Many of our European friends may now be laughing up their sleeves at the United States’ head of state. To those who know Camus, a . . .

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Significantly, little reaction as yet in Vera Wang-obsessed America

This post was written by Friday guest blogger Emma Garman. Novelist Kate Saunders (The Marrying Game) approves of Anne Kingston’s The Meaning of Wife which is, she says, a pitiless meditation on a myth that won’t leave us alone. If you know an otherwise sensible woman who has started drivelling on about white frocks and wedding place-settings, please give her . . .

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Virginia Woolf shares spotlight with Irvine Welsh and J.K. Rowling on Scottish list

This post was written by Friday guest blogger Emma Garman. As reported at the Literary Saloon, the just-released ‘100 Best Scottish Books of All Time’ is the subject of some controversy over exactly what, in this context, constitutes Scottish; in particular Woolf scholars are squabbling over the nationality of To the Lighthouse. The list’s criteria certainly seem fairly loose: apparently . . .

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Books as furniture

This post was written by Friday guest blogger Emma Garman. Jim Rosenau, a Californian carpenter and artist, uses second-hand books to make bookshelves and bookcases that are artistic, functional and environmentally sound: Rosenau’s grandfather and his father were both book publishers. But his main inspiration, he says was one essay, “Books as Furniture,” by Nicholson Baker, which describes how people . . .

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