Month: August 2020

Bike Tour: The Hills Are Alive

Post author By jon
Post date August 26, 2020

1,053 km (654 miles) over 18 days between Aug. 26, 2020 and Sep. 12, 2020. Read the full account on CycleBlaze here.

Spectacular alpine scenery and the spectacle of me attempting to lug my fully-loaded bike up some truly unreasonable gradients.

In the midst of the chaos of 2020, I found a window when the coronavirus regulations would allow European travel and I could fit in a cycle tour. Starting in Munich, I made my way into Austria and travelled the length of the country through some of the valleys and high passes. After a brief sojourn in the wine growing country around lake Neusiedlersee and across the border to Bratislava, I finished up in Vienna and home.

Books Fiction Nabokov Reviews

Review: Forgetting Elena

Post author By jon
Post date August 7, 2020

By Edmund White (1973)

I’ve just finished White’s first book, Forgetting Elena – this is the book that Nabokov called “remarkable”.

It is something else. An apparent amnesiac, who doesn’t even know his own name, plays out several days on an idyllic island, attempting to piece together his identity in a sort of utopian society ruled by infinite shades of etiquette.

Combines dreamy psychedelia with really precise poetic language

Books Fiction Reviews

Review: A Saint from Texas

Post author By jon
Post date August 7, 2020

By Edmund White (2020)

I’ve been meaning to read some Edmund White for a while – given that White got a very rare enthusiastic recommendation from my favourite writer. Amusingly, for a long time I confused him with E.B. White, creator of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little – they are emphatically not the same guy!

I definitely enjoyed this, the immersion into unfamiliar worlds is very well done – I partly like all the technicalities on practically how saints are made.

Books Nonfiction Politics Reviews

Reviews: Anne Applebaum on Eastern Europe

Post author By jon
Post date August 7, 2020

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe (2012) and Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe (1994) by Anne Applebaum

Anne Applebaum’s recent book is so good, I’ve been working my way through her back catalogue.

Two books about the “borderlands” of Europe – Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, Belarus and Moldova – their crushing and Sovietization following 1944, and subsequent re-emergence in the 90s are excellent if you have an interest the region, its history, and the recent destablilisation.

Pure joy, and the best non-fiction book I’ve read this year

Books Politics Reviews

Review: Twilight of Democracy

Post author By jon
Post date August 7, 2020

The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends by Anne Applebaum (2020)

So I’ve been on a massive Anne Applebaum kick for the last couple of weeks. A very long time ago I’d read her history of the Gulag, an extremely jolly read, and subsequently forgot about her.

The best political, and one of the best nonfiction books, of the year. This is a million miles away from the often tiresome hot takes of the internet punditry.

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