felix.gripe

I fancied some non-fiction after all the fiction I’ve been reading of late, and this book piqued my interest. Written in 1946 by a british intelligence officer tasked with finding out from captured germans that were present in the fuehrerbunker at the very end of WWII exactly how it unfolded. Think of it as the paper version of the excellent film Downfall. Roper could hardly be more scathing of the top ranking nazis, pushing that they were scheming, incompetent fools, from hitler to goering to…

A challenging 1970s English comedy noir. Our πολύτροπος protagonist, Ο κύριος Ιδιότροπος (we never learn his first name), tends serenely to his home and garden until a dangerous and unwelcome relation arrives unannounced, sewing discord and havoc upon his heretofore tranquil and orderly existence. Short at only 18 pages (plus beautiful illustrations), I found it a difficult yet rewarding read. A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION It has taken me longer to translate this work than it took me to read the…

The ugly Writing this amid gloomy news — a huge wildfire is burning Ψαθα (Psatha), the seaside area an hour west of here where I went swimming a couple of weeks ago, and where I spent my last birthday weekend. The area is (was) notable for its beautiful green pine forests cascading into the sea, devastating. Ψαθα, three weeks ago. The green forest on the mountains is huge More devastating,Two killed after firefighting helicopters collide, as British pilot survives this afternoon while battling…

I’ve had this book on my kindle for years and for some reason never opened it. When I’m between books I want to read I like to pluck a free classic from standard ebooks, and recently from the Guardian’s 2026 100 best novels of all time list, many of which are available in the standard ebooks collection of that list. Anyway I devoured this book (#11) in one sitting, it being surprisingly short. The protagonist is a mid-western 20-something who sets up in long island amongst the new york elites.…

Bonkers sci-fi. This book appeared in the ongoing odyssey discourse, and a sci-fi book based on the iliad/odyssey sounded interesting, and having enjoyed his Hyperion and Carrion Comfort (⭐️⭐️) I thought I’d give it a shot. Absolutely bananas story split into three plotlines, each madder than the other. In brief the protagonists are a naive human race dependent on inherited technology and a 1400 yo jewess and for some reason odysseus the actual iliad but with sci-fi tech powered gods and heroes…

Tremendous fun! A big hollywood blockbuster adaptation of homer’s epic, where we follow Sad Damon around the aegean from woe to woe. Probably not for the purist but I found it absolute eye-glue. Amazing scenery, actors, costumes, and the monsters were fantastic. The way Polyphemus the cyclops was designed was brilliant, as was the terrifying Scylla. The animatronics with Circe and the pigs was a truly genius bit of film-making. In preparation for this film I Read the odyssey Listened to a dozen…

Writing this on the balcony in in balmy 28ºC evening – this week started with really hot high 30’s and cooled down each day with a finally of a massive storm on friday. A 22ºC tonic! I even put a sweater on to sit outside on thursday eve for the first time in months. Check out this video of tourists up the parthenon caught mid-storm lol: I’ve been stuck inside working and sheltering from the intense heat/wild storm – no eating out or beers all week. The end of the world cup ruined the excuse…

Athens, to the surprise of nobody, continues to bask in hot sunshine under blue skies. 32ºC the norm. I ran only once, a 10km early on tuesday morning. The days ahead look to be 35ºC+ so no further outdoor exertions until the cooler end of week. Heat or no heat, park is life Greek lessons τέλος I had my final greek lesson on monday, as my lovely co-student finished her internship and headed back to the states. Bittersweet. I often find myself in a foul mood after them, frustrated at my feeble…

Sex, drugs, booze and ultra-violence. Slavery, torture and murder. Monsters and gods delay the hero on his way home for 10 years. They would have got home a lot sooner if they didn’t stop to bathe/weep/sacrifice/feast every five minutes. Still, an amazing yarn, much easier to read than I anticipated, exciting, gripping even esp. when he finally gets home to kick some suitor ass. I’m hardly unschooled in beatings or in having things thrown at me. – Odysseus I enjoyed when that guy got drunk and…

Writing this week’s greeknotes on my balcony at 10pm, it’s a shade below 30ºC. Hot and sunny all week, pretty much just 30ºC, 24/7, cooler than the UK this week! With the exception of an unexpected but brief storm on thursday – the day I went to the beach. Ψαθα beach Having a free afternoon I travelled an hour north east of athens to Ψαθα beach (a lovely greek word to pronounce, psatha) where I spent my birthday last year. Luckily the only evidence of the storm was a cloudburst on the motorway…

Orwellian. Haha just my little joke there. Grim and funny – as one expects from Orwell – set in London, 1936. A dismal anticapitalist poet rails against the evils of money and advertising, packs in his job as a copywriter and wallows in poverty and despair. The nadir of the story – the mess he makes after he sells a poem and makes $50 – is so knucle-bitingly awful I could only read a page or two per sitting from all the cringing. After that episode, it levels back out into an enjoyable read.…

My dog friend Kanellos (Cinnamon) that I dogsat in february has just had foot surgery due to one of those seed things getting in her paw so I headed to Syros to stay with him and his owner at their lovely house just outside the main port town. Cone-ellos more like, poor thing had to wear a cone but it didn’t seem to slow him down much. Sailed from Lavrio on the southern tip of attica rather than piraeus as it was half the price. The ferry stopped in at the islands of Kea and Kythnos which were…

Harrowing. The autobiographical story of a 19yo private who signs up on the first day of WWI and follows his journey as a german stormtrooper through pretty much every famous battle on the western front. The Somme, Ypres, Paschendale, Verdun, Spring Offensive etc etc. The horror, death, gore, terror, is relentless. Hard to believe how much war one man can face. His descriptions of the constant shelling really are eye opening and horrifying. What a powerful, well-written read, I could hardly put…

Probably his most famous work, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the critics do. It sounds insane to criticise hemingway’s writing but I found his stacatto sentences offputting e.g: I wanted to go to Austria without war. I wanted to go to the Black Forest. I wanted to go to the Hartz Mountains. Where were the Hartz Mountains anyway? They were fighting in the Carpathians. I did not want to go there anyway. It might be good though. I could go to Spain if there was no war. The sun was going down…

Engrossing sort of sci fi in which a black 25yo woman in LA gets mysteriously called back in time to a plantation in the antebellum south whenever the slave owner’s life is threatened. Really powerful and horrible exposition of the cruelty of slavery. Not a normal beach read but glad I picked it up.

A palate cleanser after the poor book I just finished. I thought to myself who is the best writer, and in my opinion it has to be graham greene, so I picked one of his I’d not read before. It was of course superbly written. One of what he called his ‘entertainments’ like Travels with My Aunt, review: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ rather than one of his grim books (like The Quiet American, review: ⭐️⭐️⭐️). The story follows a slightly farcical vacuum cleaner salesman in havana who gets recruited by the british secret…

The week began with the news that, as The Onion declared Keir Starmer Resigns Amid ‘Not Being Very Good Prime Minister’ Scandal. I made a popular post on mastodon and bluesky re. the resignation lecterns of recent prime ministers. Cinema failure monday It has not been as hot as the uk and france here, around 30ºC, and on monday after last week’s success with the superb summer cinema in nea filadelfia, I visited the even more local municipal summer cinema in iraklio. It was not a success, I got…

I sent the photo above to my friend who recommended me this book with the message “This book is so poorly written that it made my vase sad and my flowers die” which pretty much sums up my review. However, not all bad and I did finish it, the story got much darker and more interesting toward the end. Rather, stories – the book is about three people across three timelines: the most interesting follows a genius victorian london urchin from sewer to the british museum and to istanbul and…

A tremendous week here in sunny athens! Perfect temperatures (~30ºC), blue skies, a breeze and sunshine every day is good for the soul. Also good for the soul but less good for the body has been a reversion to going out a lot. Outdoor cinema Monday evening, after my greek class, was a trip to Nea Filadelfeia for a taverna meal at Αυλή and my first outdoor cinema of the year, to see the new Spielberg alien film – Disclosure Day (review + pics, ⭐️⭐️). Film was fine but forgettable. Cine Alsos was…

Browsing the Guardian’s top 100 novels list after reading their no.1 choice, Middlemarch (review, ⭐️⭐️) I saw Salman Rushdie in at 23 and I realised I’ve never read his stuff. His name was forever in the news when I was a child, hiding from very cross muslims but his novels had passed me by. So I picked this up – long again, clocking in at 650 pages after Middlemarch’s 900 – and enjoyed it too. A fantastical story against the backdrop of the real history of the partition of india/pakistan,…

First film of the year. I only heard about the film last week and ‘sci-fi by spielberg’ was enough of a hook to go and see it at the flicks. I went in without reading anything about it at all. A fine film, not really memorable, kind of like a feature length x-file. Emily Blunt superb as ever. The film is called Ημέρα Αποκάλυψης here, Apocalypse Day meaning Revelation Day in greek. Cine Alsos The cinema though!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️!! My first visit to the amazing outdoor Cinema Alsos in nea filadelfia down…

All week there was a weather alert icon on my phone warning of storms and misery for friday and saturday, so I cancelled plans and battened down the hatches. How was the storm? I heard two cracks of distant thunder, saw 5-6 drops of rain, and the temperature plummeted to a very pleasant 25ºC from 30. The sun shone in blue skies the whole damn time. Rampant capitalism As I mentioned last week, I’ve got back into a bit of a health kick after months of fun with visitors, and the end of going out…

A pleasantly quiet and boring week last week, no further visitors to shepherd around athens. Just as well as the summer temperatures are starting to become standard – up to 31ºC in the day and 20ºC at night. The greek word for summer is καλοκαίρι (καλο: good, καίρι: weather). Running View of west athens from the top of a very large hill I mistakenly ran up Zero trips to any tavernas, and zero late nights or alcohol allowed me to try and pick up running again, a couple of hot and slow 10kms. I…

Just as I’d finished reading my last book, the guardian released their The 100 best novels of all time, and I discover I’ve only read 18 of them. The greatest literature ever published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide. 82 to go! I thought I’d start with the no.1 best novel of all time, Middlemarch (written in 1871, set in 1830’s). Very much enjoyed almost all of the 900 pages! The english is victorian/dickensian, and the book itself is kind of what I imagine…

Late notes this week – a bank holiday yesterday, Holy Spirit Monday (???) – which appears to be yet another highly dubious orthodox jamboree: It commemorates the event during which the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles. Manifesting as fiery tongues, the Spirit touched each disciple, imbuing them with the miraculous ability to speak and understand all languages. I wish I could be touched by a fiery tongue to be imbued with the ability to speak all languages as it would save me a fortune on…

A week of mixed weather here in athens, mostly sunny but with a couple of storm showers. I see that the uk is undergoing a heatwave and is far hotter than here (30ºC vs a paltry athenian 25ºC)! The fun distraction of the week was the contined presence of my art teacher from school, her second and final week in athens. I have been enjoying her company and hearing of her exploits (trips to corinth/myceanea, every museum and gallery in town etc), and strived to spend as many evenings dining out…

Πολύ ωραίο. Very good sci-fi! Set on a planet on the far end of the universe, it’s an exciting story about the interactions between the human ambassadors who are all weird twins engineered to be able to speak the double-language of the curious but benign Hosts (Ariekei) – the extremely strange native aliens. The aliens are barely visually described, but the parts that are make them incredibly hard to picture. An exciting and unique sci-fi story, a bit heavy on the linguistic aspects but it…

A fun week here in sunny athens! 21ºC on the balcony at midnight the other day, you can’t beat t-shirt weather at night. Just as well as I’ve been doing a great deal of sitting outdoors and eating as my art teacher from school is in town for 10 days. I’d not seen her for over 30 years, but she’s as fun and sprightly as she was back then. She’s exploring the town with gusto – relentlessly hitting all the museums, antiquities, galleries, and with my help – bars and tavernas. Notes Greek lessons…

Finally unambiguous balcony weather has arrived – currently writing this on mine at 2230h (weirdly for the EU, greeks use the 12hr clock). Mid 20’s and the flowers are looking/smelling amazing. Especially all the jasmine! Last night the much anticipated metallica gig played the olympic stadium ~1km from my house and one could clearly hear the songs and banter from said balcony. I walked the dog to the stadium but I think she prefers more traditional dog music. They played zorba the greek lol.…

Truly superb gig at the Arch club last night! Schlepped my way across all of athens to catch ditz – one of brighton’s finest bands – and they did not disappoint. My first time seeing them live and they put on a great show – huge sound, really tight playing, front-woman amazing with crowd surfing etc. The two warm up bands Chasing Bone and Psychedelic Trips To Death – both from Thessaloniki – were also very good. PTTD were just two people – a bassist and a lead guitarist, with the bassist also…