Getting used to it

On Saturday I read an excellent review of Robert McCrum’s new book Every Third Thought by Robert Lewis – one of my favourite book critics – in the Review section of The Times newspaper.

Rather like the Literary Review, which I also buy every month, I regard the newspaper weekend arts pages as an always-valuable mine of combined enjoyment and rewarding insight because – in the right hands – they can not only give you a filleted – and sometimes far less boring than the original – gist of what a book, play, opera or album is all about, but (just as importantly) at a stroke remove any requirement to have to read, listen to or watch the damned thing at all.

My original intention was – for the benefit of Rust readers – to provide you here with a link to Roger Lewis’s above-mentioned review but this I was unable to do.

Firstly, because the Murdoch newspapers operate a strict form of subscription requirement before you can do this online and I decline on principle to pay any subscription to either The Times or its sometime rival The Daily Telegraph because I buy both newspapers every day anyway and don’t see why I should have to pay twice to read the same guff in different media; and secondly, because, try as I might, I just could not find some secret or devious means of ‘finding’ a link that didn’t go through the Times online website.

Thus today I first wish to recommend strongly to Rust readers that if you can locate a copy of last Saturday’s The Times newspaper Saturday Review section, you will find an excellent review of Every Third Thought by Robert McCrum.

Secondly – because I’ve just come across it – please find here a link to an excellent piece written by Robert McCrum on the subject of his book – which I’d summarise as ‘the art of getting old and approaching death in the 21st Century’, something of a theme on this website via other means – which appears today upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN