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Saturday 27 August 2016

LIVE!! TONIGHT!!

LIVE!! TONIGHT!!

This blog and the blogosphere in general has suffered some neglect recently as all my focus has been on tonight's gig in The Grand Social in Dublin. Somewhat more activity may start taking place next week...

It will the first Dublin gig in twenty years for The Knocking Shop and at the moment my nerves are making it feel a bit like Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum but I'm sure it'll be a great night.

There's an event page on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/events/1045545818885717/

and you can like the band page here - https://www.facebook.com/knockingshop/

Here's one of the songs we'll be playing, taken from our comeback gig in January in London. Hope some readers will make it along..

Tuesday 9 August 2016

The Knocking Shop to hit the Dublin Stage.


The Grand Social
The Knocking Shop to hit the Dublin Stage!

The revival of The Knocking Shop hits a high point with our return to the Dublin stage at The Grand Social  on August 27th

Friday 5 August 2016

The Literary Conference & An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter


The Literary Conference (translated by Katherine Silver) & An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (translated by Chris Andrews) - by César Aira
"In my case nothing returns, everything races forward, savagely being pushed from behind by what keeps coming through that accursed valve. This image, brought to its peak of maturation in my vertiginous reflections, revealed to me the path of the solution, which I forcefully put into practice whenever I have time and feel like it. The solution is none other than the greatly overused (by me) "escape forward.""

Having started a long translated novel and lost interest as it seemed opaque to me (perhaps the original, perhaps the translation, perhaps just me) I decided that I would reread the César Aira novellas I had read and enjoyed last year but never made it to a blog post apart from a listing in my Books of the Year. This would allow me to contribute something further to SpanishLitMonth..

I started with The Literary Conference as it was the one that had left the greater trace. I had really enjoyed both books but neither had left as much of an impression as their companion in the three novella set I had purchased Ghosts. This may have a lot to do with the fact that I had posted on Ghosts. It is as if blogging has become an essential part of fully digesting a book I've read and committing it to memory.