I might have posted this week on how pleasant (albeit chilly) it is to eat breakfast at newly-reopened cafés along Beeston High St, but this blog has spent a year trying to keep off the subject of coronavirus, so I won’t. Instead, here is a...
It's Good Friday, and perhaps I should give you something spiritual - but you have many other sources for that. So - I love literary quizzes. They come in many topics, but I haven’t seen this one done before. We all know that Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy...
I’ve finished rereading “The Lord of the Rings,” an activity I separated into four distinct chunks. It was as always a very pleasant experience. I was pleased to note that the blowing of the horns of Rohan outside Minas Tirith retains its power to thrill...
Recently, our church was encouraged to read a book called “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry”, subtitled “How to stay emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world.” So much of it I found intensely annoying, and yet it is a useful book....
You know when you’ve read a book, and you really want to tell people about it? This blog does claim to be “booky,” and so as the year staggers to its end, I thought I’d ponder and discuss what I’ve been reading in 2020 (not necessarily...
It annoys me when authors invent an olde-worlde society in which all the characters seem basically to be modern people with a greater tolerance for violence and a capacity for magic. But then I am reminded, when writing pseudo-medieval stories or reading those written by others,...
Please read the PS, but in the meantime: Some of you may remember that my favourite Diana Wynne Jones quote is: "All power corrupts, but we need electricity." It's very true. Some months ago, I wrote the following, intending to use it in a blog: Recently our central...
My friend Judith Leader has been a guest on this blog before. Here she widens the debate on children’s literature. I have read with interest the posts by people about the books they read as children. I have been impressed by their knowledgeable writing, the books...
Since writing Part One, I’ve realised how ignorant I am on this topic – not completely ignorant, and also not neutral, but in need of a great deal of further inquiry. (Please don’t use the word “re-education.") I’ve got some work to do, and it...
In last Saturday’s Guardian Review, John Mullan reviewed AN Wilson’s “The Mystery of Charles Dickens,” and quoted him on a famous section of “Dombey and Son” - (spoiler) “The death of Paul Dombey is so schmaltzy that we simply refuse to be moved, but then, dammit, we...