Bookshelf
The poets featured each enjoy a potted biography that places them and their work in the context of the time. Extracts rather than whole poems are presented, and this is both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Read MoreIf you like stories about teenaged angst, and especially female teenaged angst, you will like this book. Well I don’t and I didn’t.
Read MoreRather than write the traditional sort of review, I thought I would do it in the form of one of those quizzes one sees in popular magazines. Answer each question honestly, and keep a note of your answers on a sheet of paper so you can add up the score at the end.
Read MoreThere is something to be said for short pieces that stand alone as impressions but yet together form a tapestry of a whole picture. Once certainly gets a sense of the aspects of Paris which, as in any tourist-attracting city, are not to be discovered in the guidebooks.
Read MoreGiovanni’s Room, which is the only work of James Baldwin’s that I’ve read so far apart from a few articles, also starts at the end. The result is a story that is intriguing and gripping within the first few minutes.
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There is some very beautiful writing in this book, and plenty of humour.
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Dovlatov was a journalist in the then Soviet Union, and this book comprises a series of compromises he was obliged to make, in order to keep his job. What’s interesting to me is that the censorship he describes goes on a very subtle level.
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I’ve been enjoying delving into the meaning of some of the expressions we come across all the time — and a few we don’t.
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Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t pick up the (fictitious) memoir of a 17 year-old girl….
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This book aims to change that by providing insights into the writing process from several very different genres.
Read MoreDoes the enormous amount of help that teachers give to students to help them learn how to write, help them to learn how to write?
Read MoreI loved the writing. Some of it is very funny, all of it is well-observed.
Read MoreThe real question is: was she or wasn’t she?
Read MoreThis is the story of a boy of 15 falling in love for the first time, as related by his middle-aged self. What can I say?
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Writer's Block, by Terry Freedman
How did the English comedian Spike Milligan break through writer’s block?
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Prose Poem
As I’ve written two reviews of this book, I thought I’d publish the links to them in one place — which is here!
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The Ministry of Truth, by Terry Freedman
Journalistic integrity and reader manipulation.
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It's not often one comes across a book which purports to contain instructions on both writing and life. Does the concept work?
Read MoreThis book provides compelling reasons for including audio as an integral part of the writer’s portfolio and tools of the trade, not merely an add-on or afterthought.
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As the title suggests, this book comprises 50 “techniques” of storytelling.
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