Last words

If you value words, this is worth your attention.

Vowel sounds and sibilant consonants slide out of my mouth, shapeless and inchoate even to my close collaborator. The vocal muscle, for sixty years my reliable alter ego, is failing. Communication, performance, assertion: these are now my weakest assets. Translating being into thought, thought into words, and words into communication will soon be beyond me and I shall be confined to the rhetorical landscape of my interior reflections.

Even while dying, Tony Judt's passion for words and scrupulousness remained undimmed. What a beautiful writer.

Obituary here.

Random book titles for cold weather

Tramp in Flames
Windmills in Flames
Great Fires
The Burning Perch
Dad, the Donkey's on Fire
A Furnace
Hot Like Fire
Pale Fire
Fire to Fire

Blurb

The poems have no purpose, though their author is happy should others find them interesting to read. This book collects some early works missing from the Collected Poems (2003). The rest were written since then. They will help the reader lose weight, have an attractive smile, be at ease with members of the opposite (or their own) sex, have relief from constipation, speak in tongues, fillet herrings and ultimately boost the Nation's economy.

I might have to buy this book.