As indicated by the title, the first thing to know about this anthology is that it comprises both poetry and prose, rather than one or the other. Many of the pieces are quite unusual...
Read MoreCompare and contrast: Picture Perfect
Bookshelf
Compare and contrast: Nuts and bolts
It's rather disconcerting when one considers that buildings like The Shard are essentially held together by nuts, bolts and washers.
Read MoreCompare and contrast: Love Triangle
Like, I suspect, many people, I have never knowingly come across an isosceles triangle in my life, and wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did. However...
Read MoreReview: Waterhouse on newspaper style
This book may be thirty years old, but its advice is still pertinent. If you want to have a blitz or crackdown against, or shake-up of, bad writing (all examples of 'tabloidese'), then this is the book for you.
Read MoreCan writers learn from computer programmers?
in Bookshelf, Reflections
Introducing and applying Conway's Law, Gresham's Law and the sunken cost fallacy to the practice of writing.
Read MoreThe Notebooks of Sonny Rollins
A fascinating glimpse into the mind and development of a true virtuoso.
Read MoreGeoffrey Chaucer's Complete Works: which edition do YOU prefer?
in Bookshelf, Reflections
We visited the William Morris Gallery at the weekend, and Chaucer’s Complete Works was one of the books Wm Morris published.
Read MoreThe art of writing originated from a very prosaic need, not a creative impulse
The art of making paper was kept secret for hundreds of years.
Read MoreBooks I'm reading or about to read
in Quick looks, Reviews, Bookshelf
I’ve been sent the following books by publishers, and will review them in due course. Here is some information about them.
Read MoreIf you learnt how to write well at school, maybe you're lucky
The typical school writing assignment involves working in a way that no real writer does.
Read MoreLet's hear it for the introverts!
This review was originally published in Teach Secondary magazine, and so is aimed at teachers rather than writers, but as writers are often called upon to speak in public I thought this might be useful for them too!
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Review: 99 Variations on a Proof
It was, surely, only a matter of time before someone would take Raymond Queneau’s idea of exercises in style and apply it to mathematics.
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Review: Adventures in Maps
This beautifully illustrated volume has relevance to several different curriculum areas, containing as it does accounts of intrepid historical journeys that range from 16th century seafaring voyages to Arctic crossings and even the surveys undertaken to facilitate the moon landings.
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Review: Write, Cut, Rewrite
Perhaps the second hardest thing for a writer to do (after commencing work in the first place) is to delete parts of what they’ve written.
Read MoreCould a book on time travel be useful for English teachers?
A book on temporal adventures may seem like an odd inclusion here, but it can actually be used in many ways.
Read MoreReview: A Date with Language: Fascinating Facts, Events and Stories for Every Day of the Year
David Crystal has triumphed again. This is a fascinating book containing hundreds of concise entries on quirky occasions, literary facts and significant events.
Read MoreReview of Triggered Literature -- useful for English teachers
At a time when even Noddy books have been declared ‘problematic’ due to their use of archaic terms such as ‘swot’ (since changed to ‘bookworm’), some of us might may feel the temptation to unleash our inner ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ in response.
Read MoreReview of Handwritten: Remarkable people on the page - Great for readers and writers
In Handwritten we get to see handwritten manuscripts by monarchs, poets, novelists, scientists and many others.
Read MoreSpotting the BS
“You’ve been speaking to that blasted Freedman, haven’t you?!”
Read MoreA book I'm reading
I’m familiar with a few of the stories in this volume, which features some well-known names such as Raymond Carver, George Saunders, Grace Paley, Ursula Le Guin and Susan Sontag.
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