a blog about a lot of things

I've been irregularly listening to Desert Island Discs since about 2008 (weirdly enough it's my grandfather that put me on to it. Guess he used to talk to the Brits about BBC Radio back in the day). I always thought it was a cool concept (format outlined below) and I was supposed to (try to) determine my picks. So here goes: Format: Guests are invited to imagine themselves  cast away  on a  desert island , and to choose eight pieces of music, originally gramophone records, to take with them; discussion of their choices permits a review of their life. Excerpts from their choices are played or, in the case of short pieces, the whole work. At the end of the programme they choose the one piece they regard most highly. They are then asked which book they would take with them; they are automatically given the  Complete Works of Shakespeare  and either the Bible or another appropriate religious or philosophical work. Guests also choose one  luxury , w...

, Nobel's choice of emphasis on "idealistic" or "ideal" (in English translation) in his criteria for the Nobel Prize in Literature has led to recurrent controversy. .In the early twentieth century, the Nobel Committee interpreted the intent of the will strictly and did not award certain world-renowned authors of the time such as Henry James, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Emile Zola, Anton Chekov and Henrik Ibsen .More recently, the wording has been interpreted more liberally. Since there was a reason , albeit a exceedingly poor one, for exclusion of these authors this list only refers to more recent authors who were snubbed (i.e writers who died after 1920). (This list will be biased towards writers who wrote in English or French. Or whose works have been translated into those languages. There are many writers in other languages who are likely to have deserved a Nobel, but a lack of comprehension of those languages makes the judging of their works impossible. Obviou...