A fast ride down a narrow valley

A prominent literary editor once told me that a good reviewer did not have to like every book that he read, but that he absolutely had to have the capacity to like every book. In this spirit, I make a habit of opening a new book with the greatest optimism and eagerness, convinced that I’ll [...]

Banner image

More fiddling about with themes, and as an unexpected result (since WordPress erases any custom banner images when changing theme), a new banner. This one is a detail from David Burdeny’s “Five Icebergs, Weddell Sea, Antarctica” (2007). The Canadian photographer’s ability to capture the sublime character of sea and ice is redolent of the great [...]

In the keep of the tree

Plants, it is well known, have a remarkable ability — born, perhaps, of their immense patience and gradualism — to physically merge themselves with elements in their environment. Ivy will bind fast to brick, beans will curl around poles, and trees… well, consider the iron-eating sycamore of Brig o’ Turk, a village in central Scotland [...]

A new coat of paint

Regular visitors to Archipelagoes may be surprised to find it with a whole new look. I figured that after a year and a half the place needed a bit of a repainting, and this WordPress theme offers some features that I thought you’d appreciate: the body text is darker and thus easier to read in [...]

Time enough for tweets

One hundred and forty characters is not a lot of text. It’s maybe twenty words if you write like George Orwell, maybe fifteen if like Mervyn Peake, and a good thirty or forty if you know text message shorthand. Even if you do, it’s not exactly War and Peace.
As Jeet amusingly hinted, is Twitter yet [...]