Book and Film Reviews
This page contains my book and film reviews, many of which were first published elsewhere in periodicals and journals.
In addition to these full reviews, you may also be interested in my blog posts on literature.
Susan Greenfield's complaints about the impact of technology on society lead this leading neuroscientist to make a series of absurd hypotheses and unsubstantiated arguments. It amounts to a middle-aged grumble about the pace of social change, rather than a rigorous study of the neurological effects of technology.
Jason Lee's Seeing Galileo is a provocative and complex book that combines essays, poetry, photography and drama. Although not a poetry of simple, affective feeling, it intellectually examines the relationship between traditional (religious or literary) and modern (scientific or photographic) ways of looking at the human world.
In this review of Christopher Nolan's film
Inception (2010), I focus on the way in which it closely references other Hollywood movies in its representation of dreams. By this, it uncannily blurs the boundaries between dreams and reality, fiction and truth, for the cinema audience.
An accessible introduction to systems theory, and the way it explains economics in terms of irrational human behaviour.
A.S. Byatt's
The Children's Book is a dense, intellectual novel which ultimately succeeds in its grand project to reconstruct the changing domestic and moral values of the Edwardian period, though in the process it neglects readerly pleasures.
The Case of the Imaginary Detective (published in the United States under the title
Wit's End) is a metafictional novel that is perhaps most interesting for the fact that it is simultaneously postmodern, and populist.
Seasick is a valuable book which draws attention to one of the most important but least understood factors in climate change: the ocean.
An accessible history of climate change science, but one which succumbs to the flaws of popularisation.
Work with books for some time, and you are soon going to lose track of what you have read and what you own. Finding myself in this position, I have been scouting around for some form of database to allow me to keep track of my reading, and here I review four possible solutions.
This is a little gem of a book, which does exactly what it says on the cover.
With its juxtaposition of cultural media,
Jerry Springer: The Opera has the potential to shock by exposing the always-voyeuristic predilictions of an intellectually elite audience. However, it feeds for its satire parasitically on the bizarre sexualities of those who perform on the screen.
In this review of
Life of Pi, I argue that this is a magical tale which rediscovers the power of the child's fairy-story. In the process it makes even the atheist, literary critical reader want to believe in God, and want to enjoy the story in its own way, rather than seeking to (over)interpret it.
An important work which presents new, potentially non-ideological, ways of reading history.
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