Dr. Kenneth W. Douglas

Play it again, Tom..., 31 Dec 2012

Firstly, a word of warning. I loved this novel, and thought it the best new writing I'd encountered in quite some time. You may well hate it, for exactly the same reasons.
The unnamed central character has spent months in a coma after being hit on the head by "falling technology" - he can't (or doesn't want to?) remember what, and is additionally subject to a "gagging order" imposed by the lawyers of the unnamed organisation responsible for his accident. Having painstakingly re-learnt all of the activities of daily living (there's a good section involving a carrot), he is left with an out-of-court settlement for £8,500,000 and a deep sense of inauthenticity and spectatorship in his own… Read more

Essential for any serious hill-baggers, 8 Aug 2012

It's great to have a book available on the Grahams now. For those not in the know, a Graham is "a hill in Scotland between 2000 and 2500 feet, with a relative height of at least 500 feet / 150 metres"; basically a slightly smaller version of a Corbett. Andrew Dempster's introduction explains very eloquently why Grahams are worth bothering about: these smaller hills may not be as sexy as the Munros, but they have a number of obvious advantages: they're often more challenging because they are a lot less trodden than the Munros & Corbetts; they're more likely to be below the cloudline on a claggy day; they frequently give panoramic summit views of their loftier neighbours; they're liberally… Read more

Unusual, but very more-ish, 24 Dec 2010

Like most reviewers, I stumbled across this lot by chance - saw the album well reviewed elsewhere and then came across it secondhand and thought I'd give it a whirl. It's certainly eclectic (it would be safe to say that Crystal Fighters are definitely London's premier Basque electro-folk ensemble, but not really a crowded field...), but virtually every song's a winner. "Plage" is my personal favourite - I'd challenge you to name a catchier song recorded in the last year. By all rights, it deserves to be a massive viral hit.