Bookshelf
On the surface, this would seem to be nothing more or less than an example of performance art presented as literature. However, there is much more to it than that because Johnson has introduced elements of randomisation…
Read MoreJust about every sentence contains a gem of advice. For example, Stein writes…
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Here are a couple of suggestions for your reading pleasure. They are not Christmas books, but big hefty tomes that need a bit of time to wade into.
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Back in April 2023 I reviewed The Writer’s Journey, and this is a companion volume by the same author.
Read MoreThis title charts what we might call the journey of a book, from the earliest shape of a story, through to cover design and blurb writing
Read MoreA broad sweep like this will inevitably overlook some aspects, and the lightness of tone might not appeal to academics – but…
Read MoreI love the subtitle: A history of thinking on paper (my emphasis). I do think there’s much to be said for writing on paper, and there is no paucity of research showing the benefits of analogue over the digital approach.
Read MorePerhaps I’m judging by my own standards here, but I think a big mistake you could make with this book is to try to ‘get into it’. You can’t, because it hasn’t really been designed to be readable as such. It’s more of a source of reference material and ideas.
Read MoreThis book arrived recently, and I’m very much enjoying reading it. It’s a kind of guided tour or survey of the types of fiction that have appeared in the last fifty years (mainly).
Read MoreMost books on creative writing tend to be less technical, at least in appearance, than ‘Sentence models’.
Read MoreSome of the essay topics may be a little dated – the failure of the Italian novel being one – but such is the clarity and variety of his work that the actual subject matter starts to feel immaterial.
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Three reviews in one article, plus a couple of news announcements.
Read MoreWhy I can’t read Lolita, but am reading Nabokov’s short stories.
Read MoreWhere do authors’ ideas come from? Even Stephen King finds that a difficult question to answer. One possible answer might be ‘Everything they see on their travels’, because as Roland Barthes once suggested, writers are never truly on holiday…
Read MoreIt is bordering on the preposterous to think that a writer best known for his fiction, and who died nearly thirty years ago, has anything relevant to say to us today.
Read MoreThere are loads of prizes for writers, but maybe there should be one or two for readers as well.
Read MoreI thought I would test ChatGPT’s mettle in a rather self-interested way. I write a lot of book reviews — a lot. I have three books I need to review for an education magazine by 21st January, plus two books I need to review for other websites soonish, and I have to write a review of an exhibition for a different education magazine by next week <gulp>.
Therefore I have two (competing) concerns.
Read MoreYou might wonder why I’ve included a review of it at all on this website, given that the target readership of the website is writers, and people thinking about writing.
Read MoreI was commissioned by Teach Secondary magazine to review this book. I’ve included here both the review I submitted, and the lightly edited version published in the magazine.
Read MoreBerkman has written an interesting and very academic examination of the links between maths and literature.
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