neiljung78's reviews
293 reviews

Inevitably a poignant and sad depiction of changing world. This is possibly a men’s thing to say, given the circumstances it was written but it made me like Zweig a little less. There’s a sort of fussy self-serving quality (especially around his conduct in the First World War) and you’re not sure how honest he is about himself or his flaws. (Maybe not what the book is about but the impression was still there for me).

I liked the journal aspect, thinking about what he was thinking about in the autumn of 1938.

For a while I couldn’t quite get these in focus but (after some time away) the latter half seemed to have more weight and presence 

The only slight ding is I remember the fights in the first one being better but this does a good job of taking a premise seriously and having semi-serious fun with it. Lots of riffs on other sci fi, I especially enjoyed the Independence Day reference.

I really loved many of these poems and this collection came into my life at the right time.

So many short, arresting poems. Funny to think of him as kind of modernist but I suppose it makes sense.

Another one of those books about a murder that makes you very glad you never did a murder. The fate of the protagonists in this is grim and hellish. Maybe a wee bit snobby. Sting in the last line.

Good to read a long book with a lot of characters every now and then. This was less stark and more Dickensian than I expected.

Writing a wee bit clink at times but it did manage to be creepy and captured something about how the shabby decline of Britain after the war is evoked in our horror films. Also introduced me to some great films.

Taken together you see how concerned he was early on with histories of person and place and the vividness of spaces where those intertwine.