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wickles posted:Radio 4 is one of the best things in the world This is entirely true. Here's hoping the cuts the BBC are having to make won't harm it too badly. I particularly like the 5 o' clock news show with Eddie Mair and the ineffable glory that is The Shipping Forecast. On an entirely unrelated topic, I would like to know why recommended texts for university/college are so expensive. I just bought two midwifery textbooks and paid £70 quid in total. I felt a bit sick handing over all that money, especially when I know that in 4 years time they'll bring out new editions & I might have to get them too. Why can't they make them available in e-book format & charge us poor students less?
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Mar 2, 2010 18:18
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Shonagon posted:The London Deanery (NHS UK) has been giving out e-readers already loaded with medical textbooks to junior doctors and apparently it's been really successful. I'd expect that kind of thing to become the norm in the West soon. But again, where does that leave places that can't invest in that kind of technology? Thank you for the explanation, Shonagn, you're always so informative! It does make sense for the NHS to be giving out the e-readers, given that little details about methods of treatment, etc. are constantly being updated & revised. Wish they'd give them to us poor, underfunded nurses & midwives in training too. (Mind you, that would mean that I wouldn't get to colour in diagrams of the lymphatic system anymore, and I quite like doing that; it's not every field of study that classifies "colouring with crayons" as a legitimate method of revision)
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Mar 4, 2010 21:21
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Rabbit Hill posted:Has anyone here read Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White? I have a question about the character of Henry Rackham at the end of the book, but it's not worth starting a thread over. I think Henry very much symbolises the fact that is hammered home over and over in the novel: that idealism, rigid adherence to a belief system and lofty morals cannot survive in the grubby reality of ever-changing London. Henry (and poor Agnes) couldn't adapt in the way Sugar or Mrs Fox do, and consequently find it impossible to survive. He is a good man, that isn't in doubt, and I think that Faber wants us to remember that; hence the repeated references to him in other characters thoughts. But he is unable to adapt or break free of the (self-imposed) rules that hedge him about, and that heralds his doom. Plus, having the ghost of characters dead and gone waft through the pages in an indulgent farewell in the final chapter is very much in keeping with the feel of the entire thing. It is a Victoran pastiche, after all, and Dickens, the Brontes and Wilkie Collins were all very prone to doing that sort of thing at the end of books. (It is a truly wonderful book, isn't it? The BBC did a remarkable 4-episode dramatisation of it earlier this year, you should try to track it down if you can. Mark Gatiss was a marvellous Henry)
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Nov 7, 2011 22:59
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H.P. Shivcraft posted:There have been some good recs so far. I will particularly back Chesterton's stories -- Father Brown, but also his short novel The Man Who Was Thursday, which is sort of like what would happen if Kafka wrote Christian literature. Also, I suppose Evelyn Waugh's mid-to-later stuff has religious points (he's like Graham Greene, only incredibly more farcical/spiteful). Waughs' Brideshead Revisited is jolly good, I'd recommend it quite highly. It's an examination of the Roman Catholic faith though, not a more general "Christian" sort of book. I'm also very fond of Graham Greene. Try The End of the Affair, as a previous poster said, and if you like that, give The Power and the Glory a shot. It's about a vice-ridden priest in 1930s Mexico, where the government is attempting to outlaw Catholicism. It's a beautifully-written, very moving book.
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Mar 13, 2012 00:05
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supermikhail posted:So, I've been meaning to ask but didn't know how to frame the question so it doesn't sound condescending. Maybe disclaiming any condescension will suffice? It had a brief flare-up of popularity at my very Catholic school, purely because a teacher saw a girl reading it and completely lost it, declaring to all her classes that the book was filth and on no account should be read. Which, of course, made absolutely sure that every single girl -even those who normally hated reading- was desperate to get her hands on it and discover what was so drat filthy and interesting about it. Never underestimate the lure of the forbidden. I devoured it back in the day, and re-read it when I was 30, just to see why I had loved it so. And though it is sort of awful, I can see why it appealed to teenage girls. The whole thing is about how children are manipulated, forced into stasis and cocooned from the world by crazy adults for reasons they can't understand - its' a surefire way to appeal to teenagers starting to rebel and push for more freedom from their own parents. Then there's a twisted fairytale quality to the story (Evil grandmother! Blonde beauty locked in a tower room! Poisoned food!), and thats something that still appeals to the young adult market today. Those things and the frankly insane, overwrought style of its' flowery prose (everything's all silk gowns and heaving ivory bosoms), are pretty much like catnip to 12-16 year old girls.
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May 21, 2015 22:45
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