I guess you must have heard of James Joyce's famously impossible novel, Ulysses, or you wouldn't be reading this. You may have had a go at the book but soon given up; probably in the third 'episode', which is quite challenging. You may have bought a guide to Ulysses and found that was quite hard to understand too! I have been reading and studying Ulysses on and off since I first discovered it in my parents' bookcase at the age of 12. Later on, I looked at some of the guides to the book and...

Alvin Green has ‘accidentally’ committed a violent crime and is on the run. The police are after him and so is his victim, bent on revenge. He decides to flee on a train travelling to Scotland. But the 9.35 to from King’s Cross to Edinburgh is no ordinary train; as Alvin soon discovers, it is populated by glamorous young women from films by Alfred Hitchcock who want to draw him into their own plots. In case he needs legal advice there is also a barrister in attendance.Can this be a...

You (Desmond) are woken in your hotel room by the bedside phone ringing at 2 a.m. A damsel in distress is calling you from the room immediately above. She begs you to come and rescue her at once as two men are about to attack her.The damsel, who is young, blonde and beautiful, explains that she is an MI5 agent and her assailants (who are identical twins) are employees of a foreign power in search of a mysterious brief case, known as 'The McGonagall.'You suddenly find yourself in dangerous ...

‘When I want to know the real rock-bottom truth about what happens all the time in this doctoring life, what happens to us, and to the folks who bring us their hearts and worries to be heard, that’s when I turn, every time, to the novelists, the playwrights, the poets, the essayists, who have given us the sights and sounds, the feel, of all that goes on, minute by minute. What Tolstoy and Chekhov knew, we need to know for ourselves, for our own sakes, as we live out our medical lives.’ Wil...

Guidelines are powerful instruments of assistance to clinicians capable of extending the clinical roles of nurses and pharmacists. Purchasers and managers perceive them as technological tools guaranteeing treatment quality. Guidelines also offer mechanisms by which doctors and other health care professionals can be made more accountable to their patients. But how can clinicians tell whether a guideline has authority and whether or not it should be followed? Does the law protect doctors who...

‘Medicine and Literature’ is the doctor's guide to the classics. How can a doctor best understand the emotions and behaviour of his or her patients? An effective and deeply satisfying route is through an appreciation of literature, and the profound understanding its authors have of the human predicament. In this extraordinary and enlightening volume, general practitioner John Salinsky guides the reader through some of the world's finest works. In each chapter he describes a classic novel, ...

This collection that was first published in 2009, and is recommended reading for doctors and others includes: The Green Bookshop opens its doors; Books that won prizes; Great books that should have won prizes; Two books by one writer; A handful of classic novels; Short stories and essays; Books and the cinema; Biography and memoirs; Classic books about general practice; Best new books about general practice; Consultation and communication; Education for primary care; Psychiatry, psychology...

Finalist for the NBCC Award for Criticism'Nothing about Jenny Diski is conventional. Diski does not do linear, or normal, or boring ... highly intelligent, furiously funny' Sunday Times'Funny, heartbreaking, insightful and wise' Emilia Clarke'She expanded notions about what nonfiction, as an art form, could do and could be' New YorkerJenny Diski was a fearless writer, for w...

'Generous, enjoyable and well informed.' Observer**'500 expertly potted plots and personal comments on a wide range of pop and proper prose fiction.' The Times___________________________________________________________Ranging all the way from Aaron's Rod to Zuleika Dobson, via The Devil Rides Out and Middlemarch, literary connoisseur and sleuth John Sutherland offers his very pers...

The Diamond Brothers – the world's worst private detectives – are on the case!Lenny Smile has been run over by a steamroller. He used to run a children’s charity called Dream Time, financed by millionaire Joe Carter. Now Carter wants to know what happened to Smile … and to his money. Unfortunately, he’s hired the Diamond Brothers to solve the mystery!

The bookshop is, and will always be, the soul of the trade. What happens there does not happen elsewhere. The multifariousness of human nature is more on show there than anywhere else, and I think it’s because of books, what they are, what they release in ourselves, and what they become when we make them magnets to our desires.A memoir of a life in the antiquarian book trade, A Factotum in the Book Trade is a journey between the shelves—and then b...

Ever since I have inhabited old age, I have looked and listened, mostly in vain, for news of what it is like for others who inhabit it too. Naturally, I'm interested in its well-known depredations, the physical and mental ones that people in their forties and fifties so publicly dread. And who would not delight in the theatrical props of old age - the pills and sticks, the shrieking hearing aids and the tricks for countering the loss of names and threads and glasses. But that's not all. I ...