Fear Itself

I haven’t done this before. Last week I quoted from Roosevelt and as part of checking the accuracy of my quotation reviewed his inaugural address, delivered on the fourth of March 1933. That’s coming up on 77 years ago. I was struck by the relevance of his comments, of the stark religous flavour of an address given by a man so often buoyant and amiable; with broad strokes Roosevelt illustrated how he intended to work as president and identified clearly and with great perception the nature of the challenges faced then, and, of course with the benefit of present sight, now.

Catching Up

It is not without come considerable feelings of guilt and mispleasure that I must admit the lapse in my effort to update the Big Hungry Giant every day. If you noticed then thank you.

Let’s see what we can do to get back on track. If you have suggestions about the sort of things you would like to see more of here then let me know. Big HUngry Giant remains a little too amorphous at the moment.

The Bostonians

What an epic sense of relief? Not relief to have finished; relief to have begun. Henry James has, to my view, climbed to sit in the lonely company of the other authors who are, I consider, capable of ending a book appropriately. The Bostonian’s gentle paragraphs, characters, scenes, ideas and plot fell, with delightful tenderness, through my eyes like rain on the desert. I cannot say enough to recommend this book, nor to express my personal sense of gratitude that I have been led to return to the literature of this period. You don’t find too many identified as an interlocutress in the popular fiction of today!

Wondrous Wordpress

Some friends of ours have recently joined the Wordress crew. I’m not sure that they’ll thank me for it but you can see what they like over here.

Installing Wordpress for them, yes they’re noobs, helped me realise just how powerful and user friendly the software is. With minimal effort you can produce a clean and professional looking website to showcase your thoughts. Ultimately content is king, but well presented and easy to read content is always better than content which isn’t. With this in mind I thought I could post my first ever list as an essential part of a blog entry. 

Swallows and Amazons

As you may have guessed my first good book of the year is Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. I read it a long time ago now and realising how close I was to falling behind with my reading I snatched it from the shelf and re-read it. It’s changed. The tale of the young Walkers has become very much shorter than I recalled. It seemed such a big book when I last thumbed its pages.

How Long Would It Be?

Warning folks, this post is a little morbid. My wife, an occasional reader of the Evening Standard, noticed an unattributed article about the late Casey Johnson. I’ve never heard of her before. Apparently that says a lot about me. If you think it does say a lot about me then you read gossip magazines and/or blogs and or sites and hold socialites in high and, perhaps, envious regard. I pass no judgement.

Happy New Year

Wow, 010110.

Sounds like something in binary huh?

I have had an interesting couple of days and was about to wander off on a reasonably lengthy rant about it all when I realised that I should probably just wish everyone a happy new year and have done with it.

Ok, resolutions.

1 – blog every day
2 – write 52,000 words of a book
3 – fit back into my old jeans
4 – read 52 works of literature
5 – learn a new word each day

There, I think those are all achievable and realistic. Anyone else have resolutions they want to share?

The first! Word of the Day: Bellicose
–adjective
inclined or eager to fight; aggressively hostile; belligerent; pugnacious.