Category Archives: Literature

Book Review: Stephen Leather Cold Kill

Posted on July 25, 2017 by odeboyz

Cold Kill is the third Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd novel where he imperceptibly shades from being an undercover police officer into an assassin. His journey begins when he goes undercover to penetrate a people smuggling group who turn out to be … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Philip Kerr March Violets

Posted on July 11, 2017 by odeboyz

March Violets is the first in the Bernie Gunther series of novels, which are a tour de force. Bernie Gunther is a Berlin policeman caught up in the madness of Nazi Germany. The evocation of 1930s Berlin is exceptional as … Continue reading →

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Nice people don’t become Nazis: Dorothy Thompson 1941

Posted on June 6, 2017 by odeboyz

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out … Continue reading →

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Applauding Stalin: Living in a Totalitarian State

Posted on February 24, 2017 by odeboyz

This extended quotation from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book Gulag Archipelago illustrates the sheer unrelenting terror that citizens in the Soviet Union lived in during the 1930s. …………………………………….. At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. … Continue reading →

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The women of Paris during the battle of Verdun 1916*

Posted on January 24, 2017 by odeboyz

As if by the germination of a tiny quantity of yeast, apparently of spontaneous generation, young women now went about all day with tall cylindrical turbans on their heads, as a contemporary of Mme Tallien’s might have done, and from … Continue reading →

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Some things never change: Ancient Rome

Posted on January 17, 2017 by odeboyz

Promises will cost you nothing. Everyone’s a millionaire where promises are concerned. Hope, if only she is duly fostered, holds out a long time. She’s a deceitful goddess, but a very useful one…. The really great problem, the problem that … Continue reading →

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Gradgrind and the problem of legless horses

Posted on November 4, 2016 by odeboyz

Gradgrind came to epitomise Victorian school teachers. Victorian school teachers were sharply focused on facts. Facts appeared to offer certainty and, even better, they could be tested. A pupil repeating the facts that they’d learned was a good pupil. There’s … Continue reading →

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Oscar Wilde: poet

Posted on September 20, 2016 by odeboyz

“As usual I think of Oscar Wilde. It’s the same old story: ‘I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.’” Laurent … Continue reading →

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Two Yeshiva Jews celebrate a goal

Posted on September 9, 2016 by odeboyz

“it was only when he heard one mutter to the other, ‘I don’t like it Myer- they’ve scored too soon’ and the other reply, ‘I know, I know’; that he understood the significance of their sitting hunched and quiet amid … Continue reading →

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Why Old People Are Irritating

Posted on September 5, 2016 by odeboyz

“So what irritates you?” Monica drained her glass. The wine had gone straight to her head. “All right then. Elderly couples holding hands.” “Totally agree.” “Striding along with their Ordnance Survey maps, fit as fiddles.” He nodded. “Striding along Offa’s … Continue reading →

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