These are the books I’ve encountered in 2020. I’ve read most of them, and reviewed many of them.
Read MoreBooks of 2020
Bookshelf
Since I drew this cartoon, the names of the authors have changed, but the issue remains the same!
Books I'm determined to finish this year (gulp)
These are some of the books I’ve started this year, and which I’m determined to finish this year. Well, maybe I’ll settle for reading a bit more of them at least.
Read MoreA shorter review of the Penguin Book of The Prose Poem
Arranged in reverse chronological order, this book will help you find great examples of innovative approaches to writing poems, dating back to the 1840s. But what exactly is a prose poem?
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On This Day, by Terry Freedman
On this day #7: Review of Help! for Writers
in Bookshelf, On this day, Hardware, Reviews
On 22 December 2015 I published a review of Help! For Writers, by Roy Peter Clark. I liked the book back then. Do I still like it now?
Read MoreReview: Leaving the Atocha Station
This is a very clever book. Too clever, in fact, for any one person to fully appreciate I think.
Read MoreReview: Ethan Frome
(Amended) The pages in my copy are marked (in pencil of course) all the way through, to highlight wonderfully-crafted sentences.
Read MoreReview: Chronicle of a death foretold
It was with some foreboding that I opened this book.
Read MoreReview: Book of Clouds
I’ve never been to Berlin, but I feel like I’ve come to know it through this book.
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quotation marks, by Terry Freedman
How are literature and orgasm related?
If this were true, I’ve wasted a lot of money on literature courses, and there are a lot of Eng Lit teachers and authors making money under false pretences.
Read MoreReview: A Little History of Poetry
The poets featured each enjoy a potted biography that places them and their work in the context of the time. Extracts rather than whole poems are presented, and this is both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Read MoreReview: Who will run the frog hospital
If you like stories about teenaged angst, and especially female teenaged angst, you will like this book. Well I don’t and I didn’t.
Read MoreReview: The Comfort of Strangers
Rather than write the traditional sort of review, I thought I would do it in the form of one of those quizzes one sees in popular magazines. Answer each question honestly, and keep a note of your answers on a sheet of paper so you can add up the score at the end.
Read MoreReview of Things Seen, by Annie Ernaux
There is something to be said for short pieces that stand alone as impressions but yet together form a tapestry of a whole picture. Once certainly gets a sense of the aspects of Paris which, as in any tourist-attracting city, are not to be discovered in the guidebooks.
Read MoreReview: Giovanni's Room
Giovanni’s Room, which is the only work of James Baldwin’s that I’ve read so far apart from a few articles, also starts at the end. The result is a story that is intriguing and gripping within the first few minutes.
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Click the cover to see this book on Amazon UK (affiliate link)
Review: Closely Observed Trains
There is some very beautiful writing in this book, and plenty of humour.
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Click the cover to see the book on Amazon (affiliate link)
Journalistic integrity and the need to compromise
in Bookshelf, Journalism, Reviews
Dovlatov was a journalist in the then Soviet Union, and this book comprises a series of compromises he was obliged to make, in order to keep his job. What’s interesting to me is that the censorship he describes goes on a very subtle level.
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Click the cover to see the book on Amazon UK (affiliate link)
Review: The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms
I’ve been enjoying delving into the meaning of some of the expressions we come across all the time — and a few we don’t.
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Click the cover to see the book on Amazon UK (affiliate link)
Review: Bonjour Tristesse
Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t pick up the (fictitious) memoir of a 17 year-old girl….
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Click to see the book on Amazon UK (affiliate link)
Review of Teach Like a Writer
This book aims to change that by providing insights into the writing process from several very different genres.
Read MoreReview of Why They Can't Write
Does the enormous amount of help that teachers give to students to help them learn how to write, help them to learn how to write?
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