Bookshelf
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One of my ambitions, once this pandemic is over, is to visit New York if I can. In the meantime, this look at the various cultures and dialects in New York is a reasonable substitute for actually being there.
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Listening, by Terry Freedman
Yesterday I published a blog post entitled Books of 2020, a list of the books I’ve (mostly) read in 2020. Well, it’s a bit of a long read at around 4,000 words, so I’ve created an audio version of it as well.
Read MoreThese are the books I’ve encountered in 2020. I’ve read most of them, and reviewed many of them.
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Since I drew this cartoon, the names of the authors have changed, but the issue remains the same!
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 MoreArranged 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 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 MoreThis is a very clever book. Too clever, in fact, for any one person to fully appreciate I think.
Read More(Amended) The pages in my copy are marked (in pencil of course) all the way through, to highlight wonderfully-crafted sentences.
Read MoreIt was with some foreboding that I opened this book.
Read MoreI’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
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 MoreThe 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 MoreIf 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 MoreRather 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 MoreThere 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 MoreGiovanni’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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There is some very beautiful writing in this book, and plenty of humour.
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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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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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Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t pick up the (fictitious) memoir of a 17 year-old girl….
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