China Mieville is an interesting author – at times he infuriates me, but some of the ideas he has are really thought-provoking and he has a skill of exploring them through fiction in a compelling way. The City & The City is him playing with the genre of detective fiction, but the core idea isContinueContinue reading “Twin Cities”
Author Archives: Ian Rapley
Diary 2.0
On The Road The boy and I took a road trip, a couple of weeks ago, up to Glasgow. After school we shot off to the airport. We went to see the filming of next years Robot Wars. I hadn’t realised that the show had been rebooted, but we started watching this year and quicklyContinueContinue reading “Diary 2.0”
Diary v1.0
Fireflies two or three Something I have attempted to develop over the last few years, with limited success, is a habit of writing – getting used to writing regularly and as a matter of routine, with the goal of making more serious writing projects less imposing. It’s one of the purposes of blogging, if notContinueContinue reading “Diary v1.0”
The second post I had been intending to write started off as a paean to the hawthorn trees blossoming in the fields last spring. Then, as time passed and I failed to get around to it, I had to rethink it to include the rowan blossom, the heather, and then more. The Japanese pay closeContinueContinue reading
I’ve had two posts in my head now for so long that the passage of time has changed their meaning quite significantly. The first one was a post about podcasts. It was inspired by Serial, the series that launched a thousand podcasts and that showed that serious investigative journalism and public concentration spans are perhapsContinueContinue reading
Three Introductions
Originally posted on Zeelite:
I’ve started reading The Canterbury Tales, and I was struck by the start: When in April the sweet showers fall, that pierce March’s drought to the root and all, and bathed every vein in liquor that has power, to generate therein and sire the flower, when Zephyr also has with his…
Entangled history
There was a great example of entangled history on the latest episode of the History Of Japan podcast. It’s now well into its fifth hour on the Bakumatsu/Meiji Ishin, and things are beginning to hot up. According to the podcast, the end of the Civil War left the U.S. with a large amount of weaponry -ContinueContinue reading “Entangled history “
On the road again
I got off the Shinkansen in Shin-Aomori, and down onto the local train to make the ride into the city proper. The new train was packed, and trundled, barely breaking a walking pace into Aomori station proper, through what seemed to be disused car parks and people’s backyards. Off the train, there was an immediateContinueContinue reading “On the road again”
A Road Trip, of sorts
Donald Richie’s The Inland Sea is widely regarded as one of the classics of post-war writing on Japan. It’s the account of a trip Richie took, alone, across the various islands of the Seto Naikai, the inland sea of the title. It’s a bold book, idiosyncratic and opinionated (and unashamedly adult), unafraid to cast modern Japan andContinueContinue reading “A Road Trip, of sorts”
Did I mention the heat?
The Japanese summer is the sound of 1000 cicadas in unison, so loud it cannot possibly be just some insects; it’s vast numbers of dragon flies, sortying across the sky in twos and threes and fours. It’s the sweet, sick smell of the drains; it’s scurrying across from one patch of shade to another; theContinueContinue reading “Did I mention the heat?”
Fireflies 