Archive for the ‘Latest news’ Category
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Dystopian fiction – winter pick-me-up?
But I’d been wanting to read Philip K. Dick’s classic for years and not got around to it. And I was surprised – it’s grimly funny, very prescient...
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The Book of Alchemy
I was first alerted to The Book of Alchemy, A Creative Practice for an Inspired life, when my substack feed featured a post by Suleika Jaouad. She is a memoirist (Between Two Kingdoms) and a columnist for the New York Times and the creator of the weekly newsletter and global community, ‘The Isolation Journals’ on Substack....
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Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
A great big roller-coaster of a read – Midnight’s Children is an exuberant, heartbreaking love letter to India. Rusdhie writes unflinchingly of this turbulent nation of extremes. It’s a postmodern, postcolonial magic realist novel influenced by Tristram Shandy (which I’ve never managed to read). It’s a sprawling account of the life of Saleem Sinai, born ...
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Winter is coming
I should love winter – I’m a knitter, after all – and winter is all about hand-knits. I prep for it, making socks, fingerless mittens, shawls and my husband’s annual jumper. In early autumn, I revive my sourdough and start investigating my baking books. The house begins to smell cosily of soup, roasts and bread. ...
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The Quiet American by Graham Greene
What to read when the world’s spinning out of control and seems doomed and even your sourdough starter has turned up its toes, leaving only a clear, pink liquid floating above what was once a thriving organism? I’d been meaning to dive into Graham Greene for ages. I’d only read a couple of his novels ...
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Writing to save your life
I first read Jane Gardam’s short stories, way back when in my early twenties – such a long time ago now! I was so impressed with the edginess behind the quietly deft writing. She was funny. She was surreal. She knew people and loved their optimism, their sadness and their many flaws. She was endlessly ...
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Women and children first…
I’ve been on a Kate Atkinson binge. This is the result of investing in a rowing machine. I can only row for the necessary 25-30 minutes while listening to crime novels. Enter Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series. I’m now on the fifth book, Big Sky – fortunately there is a sixth, so my exercise regime ...
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Dystopian fiction in 5 bites
At the beginning of the year, I was a little obsessed with dystopian fiction. I’d read Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel’s post-pandemic book, published in 2014 in either 2022 or 2023, but hadn’t read either Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (although I thought I had!) or Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. – ...
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Books in 5 Bites – Fairy tales
I first encountered Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber when I was about nineteen or twenty years old. I was interrogating my own relationship with romance, sex and sexuality. Already half in love with the powerful but wounded man (thanks/no thanks Jane Eyre which I read when much younger), Carter’s take on this with the Beauty ...
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The Night Circus in 5 Bites
1. World building – both for what to do and what not to do. Morgenstern’s istorical fantasy world is rich with carefully conceived elements. As a young adult reader, I know I would have fallen for the circus completely, imagined myself one of the performers and created my own story, using Morgenstern’s circus as my ...