Bookshelf
This book may be thirty years old, but its advice is still pertinent. If you want to have a blitz or crackdown against, or shake-up of, bad writing (all examples of 'tabloidese'), then this is the book for you.
Read MoreIntroducing and applying Conway's Law, Gresham's Law and the sunken cost fallacy to the practice of writing.
Read MoreA fascinating glimpse into the mind and development of a true virtuoso.
Read MoreWe visited the William Morris Gallery at the weekend, and Chaucer’s Complete Works was one of the books Wm Morris published.
Read MoreThe art of making paper was kept secret for hundreds of years.
Read MoreI’ve been sent the following books by publishers, and will review them in due course. Here is some information about them.
Read MoreThe typical school writing assignment involves working in a way that no real writer does.
Read MoreThis review was originally published in Teach Secondary magazine, and so is aimed at teachers rather than writers, but as writers are often called upon to speak in public I thought this might be useful for them too!
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It was, surely, only a matter of time before someone would take Raymond Queneau’s idea of exercises in style and apply it to mathematics.
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This beautifully illustrated volume has relevance to several different curriculum areas, containing as it does accounts of intrepid historical journeys that range from 16th century seafaring voyages to Arctic crossings and even the surveys undertaken to facilitate the moon landings.
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Perhaps the second hardest thing for a writer to do (after commencing work in the first place) is to delete parts of what they’ve written.
Read MoreA book on temporal adventures may seem like an odd inclusion here, but it can actually be used in many ways.
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David Crystal has triumphed again. This is a fascinating book containing hundreds of concise entries on quirky occasions, literary facts and significant events.
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At a time when even Noddy books have been declared ‘problematic’ due to their use of archaic terms such as ‘swot’ (since changed to ‘bookworm’), some of us might may feel the temptation to unleash our inner ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ in response.
Read MoreIn Handwritten we get to see handwritten manuscripts by monarchs, poets, novelists, scientists and many others.
Read More“You’ve been speaking to that blasted Freedman, haven’t you?!”
Read MoreI’m familiar with a few of the stories in this volume, which features some well-known names such as Raymond Carver, George Saunders, Grace Paley, Ursula Le Guin and Susan Sontag.
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From Unsplash
I 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.
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My Jane Austen collection
Since I read Northanger Abbey when I was in my twenties, I have to say that in the interim it has much improved. Clearly, Jane must have taken a creative writing course or two because it is now much funnier, more cutting and more modern, what with her stepping outside the story to comment on her characters and the novel form itself.
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