Bookshelf
Perhaps 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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Bookcase, by Terry Freedman
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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Reference books, by Terry Freedman
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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Click to see this on the publisher’s website
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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Click to see this book on the publisher’s website
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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Click to see this book on the publisher’s website
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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