Mark Charan Newton

A fine night last night at a funky cinema in Nottingham, to dine finely and then watch Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir. This is a stunning animated film concerning the 1982 Lebanon War, based on the director’s first-hand encounters and experiences, and it also functions as a meditation on memory and trauma.
The fact that it [...]

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This is what the Killers tried to do on their second album but failed. If you’re going to be an indie band heavily influenced by Springsteen, at least have the right spirit.
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I received a very curious spam email from a chap called Bill Clandy, informing me (as a group email) of some communists likely to cause a spot of bother at a BNP rally. Might be intrigued to know if Bill Clandy is his real name by looking it up on that very handy list which [...]

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Turns out to be not so free, or free of government intervention, after all.
The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.7 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are [...]

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Proof that MySpace has links to illiteracy.
Internet users in states with high illiteracy rates are more likely to search for MySpace, according to a site called StateStats.
LOL iz so cool omg. L8r. Etcetera.
Linked from Bookninja.
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Busy with Christmas markets and carousels and dodgy hats. Decent posting to resume… soon. For now, more music:
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My favourite fictional detective is Henning Mankell’s Inspector Kurt Wallander. I’m not a huge crime reader, but there is something about this series that keep me enthralled. Wallander is miserable. Everything in his life falls down around him, from his wife having left him, to further failed attempts at love; to his stressful relationship with [...]

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Some geekery: a font is made from Kafka’s handwriting.
The manuscripts of author Franz Kafka had such a profound impact on Finnish graphic and type designer Julia Sysmäläinen that she decided to convert his handwriting with its unusually strong calligraphic characteristics into a digital script. The philologist took on the challenge to transform in Kafka’s rather [...]

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If anyone particularly cares!
I took a break from the genre this last month. I’ll often dip into the mainstream lit fic territory to see what’s going on. So, on a recommendation, I read Ian McEwan’s novella On Chesil Beach on the plane in a neat, concise sitting, with some wine—a recommended combination. I put off [...]

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