Reviews
If your interest in the Oulipo goes beyond simply trying out their techniques, and you wish to learn about the context in which it was conceived and the developments in went through, you will find this book very useful.
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A very timely publication. The first section is replete with anecdotes about trigger warnings and similar. Some of these are, in my opinion, ill-informed (such as the charges levelled against Jane Austen) while others are ridiculous (like the rewriting of parts of the Noddy books).
Read MoreThe shelves in libraries or bookshops labelled Science Fiction and Fantasy interest me only for the former, not the latter. Games like Dungeons and Dragons have never appealed to me, and much as I like maps and strange lands, the works of Tolkien leave me cold.
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Who would have thought that a material as commonplace as paper could have such a rich history and profound effect on our lives?
Read MoreAs someone who had little in the way of mathematical prowess at school, I initially opened Prime with some trepidation.
Read MoreJust about every sentence contains a gem of advice. For example, Stein writes…
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The path to St Peter’s Church — photo by Terry Freedman
Two bookshops reviewed! “Although the place gives the impression of haphazardness, what with armchairs and stools all over the place, it is anything but.”
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 MoreI recently received this book, and I’m enjoying it very much. It looks at the (usually hidden) existence of maths in literary works.
Read MoreThis is packed with useful information. I’m especially looking forward to reading the the sections called How to Show Instead of Tell, and Using the Techniques of Fiction to Enhance Nonfiction.
Read MoreThis comes out on 2nd November. It has a very readable style, and interestingly the footnotes are in a different font from, and bigger than, the main text.
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.
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.
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