Category: Literature

The more alert reader may have spotted that my last couple of book reviews have now become adorned with tasteful Amazon ads. I should explain. Obviously this site isn’t quite one to put The London Review of Books to shame just yet, but I do like to read books (and to be honest, I like…

While I’m on the subject of comics, I was in Music Zone the other day, and they had The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones in hardback available for a bargain £4.97! I immediately snapped up a copy, despite owning the first published collections and the original comics. (They also had Slaine the King for £2.97…

Today’s the first of November and the start of NaNoWriMo – or National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that you’ve got to write a novel of at least 50,000 words by the end of the month – as featured on this Evening’s Front Row. I’ve not written so much as a short story since…

This has come as a bit of a bolt from the blue. He was only 51, and a very talented performer and writer. Disdainful though I sometimes am of that category of books, I do like reading them.

Memo to self: Really must read some James Joyce at some point.

Waterstones has a new promotion in store at the moment, in which their staff have chosen their 150 favourite books which are displayed prominently in store, and press adverts highlight individual books accompanied by specific recommendations by staff members from around the country. (A brief aside here – I’m really not convinced that this is…

Not exactly staggering news. But it seems that some authors have been writing favourable reviews of their own books on Amazon. Well there’s a thing! Who’d have thought it. And other writers are giving positive reviews to books written by friends. Well that happens all the time in the press anyway, so I wouldn’t get…

The Guardian yesterday had an astonishing account from Mende Nazer about her life as a member of the Nuba tribe in Sudan, and being captured into slavery. Finally she managed to escape when she was working in Britain. The full account doesn’t seem to be up on the main Guardian site, but it’s an extract…

I read a piece somewhere recently (I don’t recall where exactly) which said that now is not a good time to buy books in the sales as you get good deals all year around. I tend to agree with this, as the so called bargains look suspiciously like publisher initiatives to me rather than retailers…

An awesome piece by John Le Carré in The Observer this weekend, about his father Ronnie.

Well the BBC for ages have been collating the nations favourite Big Reads, and some while ago published to top 100. This has now been further whittled down to the top 21. In the meantime, The Observer has published its list of the 100 Greatest Novels of All Time. This was followed up by readers…

Thank goodness. Someone’s put together a Kurt Wallander website in English detailing the publishing order of the Wallander series of novels by Henning Mankell. Before I got to this site, I was totally confused by the publishing order, and frankly it’s not surprising. Later this month the latest English language Wallander novel is being published…

Very sad to hear that Edward Said has died. Another obituary is to be found here.