Posts from the ‘Books’ Category

Khanya Blog

• Khanya blog has moved 20 March 2020
    This blog has moved In future I will be blogging at: Notes from underground This is because since February 2020 WordPress has become extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible to use. For details see here: Notes from underground: Reviving an old blog because WordPress is broken. I originally started blogging at WordPress because the Blogger […]
• Back in the USSR 2 February 2020
  I’ve just finished reading two books on Russia, well, actually the old USSR, set 30 years apart — one in the 1960s, and the other in the 1990s when the USSR was falling apart. One was Journey into Russia by Laurens van der Post, and the other was The Golden Horde by Sheila Paine.I read […]
• Christopher Tolkien, Curator of Middle-earth, Has Died, and a Letter from His Father 20 January 2020
  Originally posted on A Pilgrim in Narnia: As last evening tilted towards nighttime in my part of the world, my social media feeds began filling with the news that Christopher Tolkien had died. The last living Inkling, Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (21 Nov 1924 to 15 Jan 2020), may well have been merely an interesting…
• Another man’s war 1 January 2020
  Another Man’s War: The Story of a Burma Boy in Britain’s Forgotten Army by Barnaby Phillips My rating: 5 of 5 stars It doesn’t look like much from the description. It’s the story of an old soldier from the Second World War. So many books have been written about the Second World War — do […]
• From Beats to hippies: the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test 30 December 2019
  The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe My rating: 4 of 5 stars I probably should have read this book 50 years ago. I’ve known the title for a long time, but I never saw the book before this month. I had read a couple of Tom Wolfe‘s novels, and from the blurbs in […]