In an attempt to create my own rickety bridge between the “Two Cultures” described by CP Snow, I occasionally try to bring my liberal arts-trained mind to grapple with science. (I think this erratic urge was initially prompted by that thought experiment that tries to envision how you would get on if you were sent […]

The ManBooker shortlist is unusual this year, at least for me, in that there�s more than one title listed that I could be bothered to buy.Actually, I�ve already consumed one of those that made the cut, Alan Hollinghurst�s The Line of Beauty, which was praised to the sky when it was released earlier this year. […]

The other day a friend of mine described a book as Rabelaisian. Taking the opportunity to be a smart-arse, I asked whether he had actually read Rabelais. He quickly assured me he had read Gargantua and Pantagruel, but was suggestively non-specific about how it ended.It’s something we rarely challenge: bandying eponymic references about, usually in […]

From yesterday’s Washington Post: “Florida neurologist Marc Swerdloff was taken aback when one of his patients with advanced dementia voted in the 2000 presidential election. The man thought it was 1942 and Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The patient’s wife revealed that she had escorted her husband into the booth. “I said ‘Did he pick?’ […]

Ireland’s perennial entry in the Mr. Gravitas competition, John Banville, will be giving a reading at the Irish Writers’ Centre tomorrow (16 September).Although I’ve read, I think, four of his novels I’m somewhat on the fence about Banville (obviously I have to have read 10 novels by an author before I can come to a […]

The other night I succumbed to one of those blank trawls of the channels that take approximately 25 minutes now that I’ve shelled out for NTL’s digital service. In between blurred clips of Hitler barking on the History Channel* and wildlife mating/killing each other on National Geographic, I came across the usual nostalgiafest on VH1, […]

This first post to the Threemonkeysonline blog, which aims to give writers based in Ireland, Italy, and Spain a platform for their opinions, miscellaneous musings, and favourite links, is concerned with events unfolding in New York as it becomes increasingly apparent that President Bush has a good chance of staying in the White House after […]