The Browser | FiveBooks

Craig Brown on Diaries and Autobiography

FiveBooks — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 09:15:01 +0000

The Private Eye satirist and author recommends five entertaining published diaries, from Andy Warhol to Harpo Marx – and tells us why parody is a pickpocket

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David Biro on Pain

FiveBooks — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 13:00:52 +0000

"Pain radically separates the sufferer from the observer of pain. For the sufferer, pain is the prototype of certainty – there’s no way to doubt that you have pain. But it is the exact opposite for those who observe a person in pain. How can we be really sure another person is in pain?"

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Orson Scott Card on Science Fiction

FiveBooks — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 11:55:22 +0000

"The point of a futuristic novel isn’t to predict the future. The point is to show how humans adapt and change to deal with whatever the future brings. The skills that sci-fi readers practice are adaptability, resourcefulness, calmness in the face of change and stress."

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Andy McNab on The Politics of War

FiveBooks — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 15:36:37 +0000

"Now we are a liberal society and people find it very uncomfortable that there is a part of the population that wants to go to war, that wants to fight. I give talks to the military and I was speaking to some boys just back from Afghanistan – they take pride in fighting, they like what they do"

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Jay McInerney on Essential New York Novels

FiveBooks — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 11:51:58 +0000

"We come to the city to mingle and rub shoulders, not to stay in our apartments. We’re paying a premium for proximity to places where we can find like-minded others, where we can find romantic partners, where we can preen, show off, and watch other people do the same"

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Adam Gopnik on Essays

FiveBooks — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 10:01:45 +0000

"With Virginia Woolf your first response to one of her paragraphs, in the best way, is to read it again. Your first response to a Clive James piece is to keep on reading. I learned a great deal about how to make a piece propulsive from reading him."

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Amy Chua on Being A Mother

FiveBooks — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 11:27:46 +0000

"Basic tenets of Confucianism are embedded in my culture and were embedded in my upbringing. Deeply engrained in me are the importance of education, the importance of hard work and the importance of respecting authority. My parents tried to instill modesty and humility in me too, maybe with less success."

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Peter Beinart on Post-9/11 America

FiveBooks — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:03:52 +0000

"The defining struggle of our age is not with the losers in the international system, people like the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. The defining struggle of our age is with the emerging winners of the international system – places like China and India that are challenging our way of life"

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Colin Thubron on Travel Writing

FiveBooks — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:46:34 +0000

photo by likerender/flickr

"I’ve always needed challenge in my books. I’ve always needed to define that what I’m doing is difficult, and therefore that what I’m bringing back has the value of something that’s extracted from difficulties of culture, even geographical difficulties"

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John Quiggin on Utopia

FiveBooks — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 11:59:00 +0000

Wikimedia Commons. The Golden Age by Lucas Cranach the Elder

"The reason I chose this topic is because of the current political situation, particularly on the left. We need to recapture the kind of vision and language of utopia that used to be part and parcel of left politics"

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