When I was at college, both as an undergraduate and later while I was a postgraduate, I wrote for The Irish Examiner from time to time. A lot of what I wrote was book reviews, though I also did a few feature pieces. Unfortunately most of what I wrote has vanished into the ether. Any copies I have in digital format would be on floppy disks I either don’t have anymore or if I do I can’t access their contents. They might even be on zip drives I no longer have. Either way they’re not accessible.
I do, however, have hard copies of some of them.
So here’s one I wrote back in October 2000 – 21 years ago. It’s a review of a book called “Book of Pages” which was by an English author called David Whiteland. It looks like Mr Whiteland didn’t write anything else, which is a pity, as I really liked that first book.
I’ve always found it odd to look at things I wrote in the past. Many times I don’t recognise my own prose. This time is no different. 20 something year old me was buried in academia at the time I wrote that review and you can really tell from my choice of words in the text. Admittedly 40 something old me probably makes quite odd word choices when I write these days as well, though I’m not sure if I’d use the same turns of phrase.
Originally published in the weekend supplement to the Irish Examiner on October 28th 2000.
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