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A wise friend of mine rejects the idea of there being such a thing, because it suggests that novels are like horses and the race makes assessment into a simple matter of comparison in a single field of endeavour.
Continue readingArchive for War and Peace
Is Wuthering Heights the Best Novel Ever Written?
Posted in Observation, Reading with tags book-review, books, Emily Bronte, gothic, gothic novel, In Search of Lost Time, literature, Pyramids, Robert McKee, Taj Mahal, War and Peace, Wuthering Heights on March 22, 2026 by Jarrod Boyle
The Magic Mountain
Posted in Reading with tags book-review, books, Dickens, Dosteyevsky, Fiction, Judi Dench, literature, Nobel Proze, Pavel Tsatsouline, reading, Shakespeare, Sonnet 26, The Graham Norton Show, The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann, Tolstoy, War and Peace on March 26, 2025 by Jarrod Boyle
The internet is like having a giant bilge pipe mounted above the armchair in your lounge room with all kinds of garbage gushing out of it. There is hardly a moment to take stock and discriminate amongst the torrent of what’s raining down upon you.
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Americans, Scorpions and Ants
Posted in Fiction, Film with tags A Farewell to Arms, A Mouthful of Stones, Americans, ants, Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Frederic Henry, Hadji Murat, Leo Tolstoy, scorpions, War and Peace on June 20, 2024 by Jarrod Boyle
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“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
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In Search of Lost Time
Posted in Reading, Real Men with tags Alain De Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life, In Search of Lost Time, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Rodney Hall, War and Peace on November 14, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
In Search of Lost Time
Posted in Reading, Real Men with tags Alain De Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life, In Search of Lost Time, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Rodney Hall, War and Peace on November 9, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
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I finished reading In Search of Lost Time a few weeks ago, and now it’s over, there is a peculiar Proust-shaped hole in my life.
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Hitler, By Joachim Fest
Posted in Biography, Observation with tags Adolf Hitler, Anna Karenina, Anthony Roberts, Ian Kershaw, Joachim C. Fest, National Socialist Party, Nazi, Scott Morrison, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill: A Walk With Destiny on February 18, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
‘Are You A Satanist?’
Posted in Observation, Reading, Real Men, Statement of intention with tags Alfred Kazin, Catcher in the Rye, church, Desperate Romantic, Ernest Hemingway, genius, Gustave Dore, hell, Hell's Angels, Hunter S Thompson, John Milton, Leo Tolstoy, Letters to a Satanist, Lucien Greaves, mystic, Newton, Paradise Lost, priest, Richard Flanagan, Satanic Verses, sigil of Baphomet, Spanish Civil War, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, The Viking Portable Blake, War and Peace, William Blake on December 14, 2014 by Jarrod Boyle
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The last twelve to eighteen months have taught me that if you put something on the internet, everybody will see it. People rarely comment on-line, but I seem to get all kinds of bizarre responses when I see them in public, ranging from facial expressions that look like they’ve swallowed a bullfrog (and are struggling to keep it down) to, ‘What’s with all the leather gear?’ Or even, ‘Are you a Satanist?’ Continue reading
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Fighting Words
Posted in Kickboxing, Observation, Real Men, Statement of intention with tags A Clocowork Orange, angel, Anthony Burgess, Genesis, Henry Handel-Richardson, Jacob, James Joyce, Kick boxing, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Kerr, Thai boxing, The Smashing Machine, Ulysses, War and Peace, Wilbur Smith on June 8, 2014 by Jarrod Boyle
First published in Island Magazine, Issue 136.
There are two things I am driven to do: write and fight. Continue reading
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James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ – the Warm-Up with Coach Rodney Hall.
Posted in Fiction, Reading, Real Men with tags Anna Karenina, Cubism, David Foster Wallace, James Joyce, Kant, Picasso, Schopenhauer, The Bloomsday Book, Ulysses, Venus in Furs, War and Peace on November 23, 2013 by Jarrod Boyle
Gotta love a man with an eye-patch.
J: I guess that’s what War and Peace is about. It’s about what happens when people are forced to cope with the force of history as it’s bearing down on them, which I guess is the way Tolstoy would have looked at it.
R: I’m so glad you liked War and Peace. I knew you would. When you were reading Anna Karenina, you were telling me ‘There couldn’t possibly be a better novel’. And then, there was. Continue reading
Theme Park at its Darkest 