The news a few months ago that Annie Ernaux was going to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature prompted me to think that a round-up of reviews of books by non-English authors, or set in foreign countries, would make quite an interesting article. Some of these have been reviewed here before, but I thought you might enjoy having them all in one place according to a theme. Enjoy!
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Specific books, and general categories. Some of these books have been reviewed here before, but I thought it might be useful for people to have all of them in one place.
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Why shouldn’t nonfiction writing be as well-crafted, interesting, even exciting as fiction?
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The life of a freelance writer is one of unreliable remuneration, shifting loyalties and sudden endings, as this book makes abundantly clear.
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I submitted my review of this book to Teach Secondary magazine, an educational magazine in the UK. The first review below is what the magazine published.
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I submitted my review of this book to Teach Secondary magazine, an educational magazine in the UK. The first review below is what the magazine published.
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I submitted my review of this book to Teach Secondary magazine, an educational magazine in the UK. The first review below is what the magazine published. The second one is what I actually wrote!
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Written mainly in the form of a diary, this is an account of how Colwell’s headship changed the culture of a community’s school.
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I submitted my review of this book to Teach Secondary magazine, an educational magazine in the UK. The first review below is what the magazine published. The second one is what I actually wrote!
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I submitted my review of this book to Teach Secondary magazine, an educational magazine in the UK. The first review below is what the magazine published. The second one is what I actually wrote!
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One of the things we should all do as writers is study other people's works to try to discern how they achieved particular effects, or how they use language. It's known as 'close reading'.
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On 17 June 2021 I wrote a round-up of my reviews of books about the Oulipo. Here’s a link to that article.
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One of the first things I look for when reviewing a non-fiction book is whether or not it contains an index. If it does, the next thing I check is whether the index is actually useful.
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The book covers language, voice, audience and other aspects of writing.
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It's always been my contention that practitioners should know as much about what they do as possible.
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This is a very interesting, and useful, book. It covers a range of types of writing.
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If watching a film in a cinema makes you wish you’d brought a friend along to walk home with, or reading a story makes you leave all the lights on when you go to bed, then there’s a good chance the film or the story was gothic.
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This review was first published in Teach Secondary magazine. I’ve included it here because it meets some of the requirements of the English Programme of Study.
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If you have forgotten what bad writing looks like, read on…
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