Surprise Gifts
On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me a partridge in a pear tree. Honestly, it was a total surprise. I’d not put that on my Christmas list and I definitely hadn’t been dropping any hints or anything. I won’t say it was thoughtful exactly – I’ve never had any interest in…
What Charlotte Lucas’s Little Brother Would Do If He Was Rich
I’m currently reading an absolutely brilliant non-fiction book called Nabokov’s Favourite Word Is Mauve: The literary quirks and oddities of our most-loved authors by Ben Blatt. Here’s a bit from the blurb: What are our favourite authors’ words? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? How can we judge a book by its cover? Data meets literature…
M. R. James and the Talking Owl
You know M. R. James, right? Cambridge academic by day, wrote ghost stories (appropriately enough) at night. He’s had a huge influence in horror, especially folk horror, and redefined ghost stories – he can so imply and suggest his way through a story that it will leave you unable to trust your own cupboards (true…
Sci Fi Novel or Poetry Over a Century Old? Part 2
If you missed it, here’s last week’s post that started this nonsense. And here are the answers:1. The Unremembered Empire – Horus Heresy, and definitely worth a read if you’re interested in Roboute Guilliman and the Ultramarines. And Dan Abnett is a great author.2. Legion of the Lost Ones – both this and the line…
Sci Fi Novel or Poetry Over a Century Old? Part 1
Okay, its summer, it’s probably the end of term or something (er, right?), so let’s bring in games! I realise I’m being a little facetious but really, let’s play a game. I’m a big fan of those ridiculous quizzes, the Is it One Thing or a Completely Different Thing that Sounds a Bit Similar? type…
Edwardian Dad Jokes
H. G. Wells is one of those writers who affectionately gets referred to as the grandfather of sci-fi and is also a jolly good read. Yes, he was writing in the late Nineteenth/early Twentieth Century and you can tell by the writing style – pacing can feel a bit slow, the dialogue can be a…
Sharks and Scoundrels
Right, I know I’ve talked about sharks before (here and here, in fact), in the context of Ernest Hemingway and The Old Man And The Sea. And I know I’ve talked about Herman Melville before (which is here, if you’re interested), in the context of Moby Dick. So I thought today I’d combine both sharks…
Monks and Mushrooms
You’ve heard of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, right? Russian writer from the mid to late 1800s and generally thought of as being a bit of a hard read. In fairness, he had a tough life – chronic financial hardship bordering on destitution, years in a Siberian labour camp, gambling addition, ill health – almost to the point…
The Letter Z As An Insult
We’ve all done it, right? In the heat of an argument we’ve all said things that, when reconsidered in the cold light of day, really don’t make any sense. I bet Kent (a nobleman loyal to King Lear in Shakespeare’s play) felt an idiot when he remembered he’d come out with this. Shakespeare wrote some…
The Unconvincing Elf King
Let’s look at another poem today, again by a well-respected poet – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Der Erlkönig is his most famous ballads and translates as The Elf King, but don’t be fooled into thinking it’s for children. It was written in 1782 as part of a piece called Die Fischerin (The Fisherwoman), which was…
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