ASSASSINATION VACATION / OH COMELY
Knowledge in everyday life so often arrives wearing the garments of the pub bore, the explainer who behaves as if they somehow own the facts they know, who doesn’t share READ MORE
What We’re Reading
THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE / OH COMELY
One of the hardest parts of growing up takes place years after the actual growing up. It comes when you revisit a person or place that was instrumental in your READ MORE
FREEDOM / OH COMELY
Some negative qualities are sexier than others. Literature groans under the weight of moody, narcissistic and casually cruel characters that readers can’t help but forgive as they’re so damned charming. READ MORE
A CHRISTMAS CAROL / OH COMELY
It’s surely not a coincidence that our most ebullient rituals occur during the bleakest days of the year. As winter batters its fists upon the windows, tradition is a friendly READ MORE
THE PLAYER OF GAMES / OH COMELY
A throwaway joke in the 2009 film Star Trek may be one of the most sublime questions ever posed in science fiction. Exiled to a remote Starfleet outpost, Scotty meets READ MORE
LETTERS TO ANYONE AND EVERYONE / OH COMELY
Noah Ward owns a suspicious number of books for someone who can’t read. In his defence, he is seven months old and only recently got around to learning how to READ MORE
THE LIVING MOUNTAIN / OH COMELY
I knew she was dead. It’s the first line of the book. The ninth, tenth and eleventh words. I’ve seen the stone slab in Edinburgh, run my fingers over its READ MORE
REVOLUTION IN THE HEAD / OH COMELY
It’s 10.30 pm on 11th February 1963 and John Lennon is stripped naked to the waist. After ten frenzied hours recording their debut album, The Beatles are completely out of READ MORE
THE FIRST BAD MAN / OH COMELY
A poster follows me from room to room. Silent and confederate in an unornamented frame, for ten years it’s trudged across postcodes from new home to new home, from failed READ MORE
RSPB POCKET GUIDE TO BRITISH BIRDS / OH COMELY
“There‘s a puffin in the back garden!” I announced to my housemates, my Pocket Guide to British Birds held triumphantly aloft. The puffin turned out to be a blue tit, READ MORE