Many years ago, I tried to write a blog that offered comment on fiction, film, art and music. I very quickly realised within a matter of weeks that it was a hard thing to do well and that I was better suited to something completely different such as photoshopping myself into pictures of The 13thFloor Elevators or re-creating Wire album covers using bits of plasticine.
Mostly I felt that I was in danger of producing something that approximated William Empson’s view of art catalogue text: “a steady, iron-hard jet of absolute nonsense”.
I’ve tried to avoid that here, when writing about twelve stories I love.