Tag Archives: Review

“Victor, you’re the monster!” Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein reviewed

Posted on 09/11/2025 by alasdairflett

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel that always brings me back. For me, it is the very best of what literature can be. I first read it for a university class. In the end, I don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Review | Tagged bride of frankenstein, Creature, Edinburgh, film, Frankenstein, Geneva, Glasgow Cathedral, Guillermo del Toro, horror, immortality, Literature, Mary Shelley, Orkney, oscar-isaac, poetry, Review, Romantic, science, spirit of the forest, St Giles Cathedral, Swiss Confederation, Switzerland, The Modern Prometheus, Victor | Leave a comment

Egoless autofiction or the self-erasing memoir: Nan Shepherd’s ‘The Living Mountain’

Posted on 16/03/2025 by alasdairflett

In The Living Mountain Nan Shepherd inverts her eye, but it’s not her mind we see but Mind itself. It is a theory of the mind from a particular mind mode. Mind minus ident and the idem from the idiosyncratic. … Continue reading →

Posted in Review | Tagged autofiction, being, book-review, books, Cairngorms, eros, gender, hiking, Literature, memoir, Nan Shepherd, nature, perception, philosophy, pilgrimage, politics, Review, Scotland, Second World War, senses, sincerity, The Living Mountain, walking, writing | Leave a comment

Eva an sich or The Living Treatise: Alasdair Gray’s ‘Poor Things’ revisited

Posted on 25/01/2025 by alasdairflett

January led me to Poor Things four years ago. Public health was very much the order of the day back then as Covid restrictions, about which and around which novels are now written (see Caledonia Road by Andrew O’Hagan) still … Continue reading →

Posted in Review | Tagged 18 Park Circus, 19th century, A Loving Economy, Alasdair Gray, Archie McCandless, Bella Baxter, bios and zoe, C. S. Lewis, childhood, children, Duncan Wedderburn, emma-stone, film, Frankenstein, Genesis, Glasgow, Godwin Baxter, Lanark, Literature, magical realism, mark-ruffalo, Milton, novel, Paradise Lost, polyphony, Poor Things, population, Review, Victoria Blessington, West End, Willem Dafoe, Yorgos Lanthimos | 2 Comments

Musical highlights: 2024

Posted on 22/12/2024 by alasdairflett

I can sign court documents in my own name now, have people swear oaths before me and (technically) represent you in a solemn criminal trial in front of a sheriff. What that is to say is that I am now … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Music, Personal experience, Review | Tagged 2024, Alvvays, Beach Fossils, brat, Charli XCX, Charlie XCX, Clairo, Drahla, Geordie Greep, Honeyblood, Khruangbin, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Lemon Twigs, life, Magdelena Bay, MGMT, Mount Kimbie, music, Nilufer Yanya, pop, Review, Say She She, Ty Segall | Leave a comment

The province and the metropole: Guy de Maupassant and ‘The Outrun’ reviewed

Posted on 06/10/2024 by alasdairflett

I was a couple of paragraphs into Guy de Maupassant’s short story Corsica when I had a sudden and vivid sense of déjà vu. Where had I read this before? Was it in an educational context? Perhaps at school? But … Continue reading →

Posted in Entertainment, Review | Tagged alcoholism, Amy Liptrot, contes, film, French, Guy de Maupassant, Le Rosier de Madame Husson, Literature, movies, nora-fingscheidt, Normandy, Orkney, Papa Westray, Papay, Paris, Review, saoirse-ronan, short stories, The Outrun | 1 Comment

Gentlemanly pursuits and David Graeber’s ‘Bullshit Jobs’

Posted on 11/08/2024 by alasdairflett

Woodside Library has a “take a book, recommend a book shelf”. I’ve borrowed from it multiple times. The last time I did so, I picked up David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs and recommended North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. I had … Continue reading →

Posted in Review | Tagged 19th century, bullshit jobs, capitalism, David Graeber, dignity, Edith Wharton, ideology, Literature, Review, society, The Age of Innocence, UBI, universal basic income, work | 2 Comments

From the new petty bourgeoisie to the PMC: a review of Dan Evans’ ‘A Nation of Shopkeepers’

Posted on 21/04/2024 by alasdairflett

According to Dan Evans, I am a member of an emergent social class he calls the new petty bourgeoisie. Evans’s thesis is that the new petty bourgeoisie has been the driving force in left politics and populism over the past … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Personal experience, Politics, Review | Tagged aspiration, Corbynism, Dan Evans, graduates, ideology, life, Marxism, Nation of Shopkeepers, petty bourgeoisie, PMC, proletariat, Review, self-employment, socialisation, socialism, University | 1 Comment

On a Central European vibe

Posted on 10/03/2024 by alasdairflett

I am nearing the end of a beginner’s course in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I decided to try it after watching many Breathe and Flow yoga videos on YouTube where the guy (Florian) frequently mentions how his yoga practice feeds into the … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Review | Tagged All of Us Strangers, Austria-Hungary, bjj, brazilian-jiu-jitsu, cathedral, Central Europe, film, fitness, Glasgow, Good Solider Svek, jiu-jitsu, life, Literature, martial-arts, Review, Sandra Huller, work, yoga, Zone of Interest | 1 Comment

North and South: 19th-century doorstopper still bears the heft it once did

Posted on 03/02/2024 by alasdairflett

As far as Victorian novels go, I think North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell retains a degree of accessibility that many have shed in the intervening 150 years or so. The North/South divide lives on in the popular consciousness where … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Review | Tagged 19th century, bourgeoisie, Britain, capitalism, Collateral, Condition of England, Elizabeth Gaskell, liberty, Literature, Marx, money, North and South, Review, strikes, Thornton, trade, trade unionism, Victorian, wages | Leave a comment

Scrooge the Affective Altruist: ‘A Christmas Carol’ reviewed

Posted on 10/12/2023 by alasdairflett

I have a complicated relationship with Charles Dickens. He is the epitome of the Author. He was hugely prolific, massively popular, and has had a profound cultural impact on how Britain sees itself. How is it possible, then, to dismiss … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Review | Tagged A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, Adam Smith, altruism, Britain, Charles Dickens, Christmas, effective altruism, emotion, feeling, Hard Times, Literature, Man of Feeling, Marx, philosophy, Review, Scrooge, sentimentality, social justice, The Dark Knight Rises, trade unionism, UK, Victorian | Leave a comment