Category: Book reviews
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My Christmas Homework, 2016 (or, why we still look back in anger )
NB This was written in 2020. I am re-posting now to help this petition reach the million mark (We made it! Now, how about 1.5 million, to match the numbers on that famous march in London – or perhaps more, for all those on the other ‘don’t attack Iraq’ marches around the world.) Homework, set…
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Books in times of lockdown
Well, here we are in lockdown again and among the trials and tribulations, our beloved bookshops are closed once more. If you’re in Hastings, please remember Bookbuster and Printed Matter still have ordering systems in place, and other shops around the town – and everywhere! – are offering their titles through online stores. Here’s a…
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Have *you* ever heard of the Froggicorn?
Giants, unicorns, mermaids, dragons… They’re very famous, everyone knows what they are, even though (shh!) they may not quite… exactly… er… exist. But no-one has heard of the Froggicorn. Why is that, when the Ancient Teller of Stories thought the Froggicorn was The Loveliest Mythical Beast of them All? I read this every day for…
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Beauty is still dying
When I read Sheri S Tepper’s ‘Beauty’ back in the early ‘90s, I thought she had done me an injury. I enjoyed it, but the Ending (not the ending of the book, The Ending) was just too dark. Not fair. I just read it again, here in 2020 and, when I got to the bit…
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In the Absence of Hard Evidence
In the absence of hard evidence of a divine engineer in the sky, I’d say the patterns in your mind are who you are. This is my thought for the day because it became necessary to clean and decorate the back room, and to do that, it was necessary to move two wallfuls of books,…
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Can we spaff some more money up the wall, please?
I’d forgotten, after the blandly destructive Cameron days and the robotically dysfunctional May days, just how it feels to be viscerally repulsed by one’s Prime Minister
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Of Migrants and Distressed Gentlefolk
Holiday Reads that aren’t always big fat novels. These are the books that grabbed me in Buxton bookshops, on my holidays this year…
Kay Green 