If this were true, I’ve wasted a lot of money on literature courses, and there are a lot of Eng Lit teachers and authors making money under false pretences.
Read Morequotation marks, by Terry Freedman
Bookshelf
Review: A Little History of Poetry
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 MoreReview: Who will run the frog hospital
If 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 MoreReview: The Comfort of Strangers
Rather 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 MoreReview of Things Seen, by Annie Ernaux
There 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 MoreReview: Giovanni's Room
Giovanni’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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Review: Closely Observed Trains
There is some very beautiful writing in this book, and plenty of humour.
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Journalistic integrity and the need to compromise
in Bookshelf, Journalism, Reviews
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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Review: The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms
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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Review: Bonjour Tristesse
Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t pick up the (fictitious) memoir of a 17 year-old girl….
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Review of Teach Like a Writer
This book aims to change that by providing insights into the writing process from several very different genres.
Read MoreReview of Why They Can't Write
Does 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 MoreReview: The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
I loved the writing. Some of it is very funny, all of it is well-observed.
Read MoreReview: The Kreutzer Sonata, by Tolstoy
The real question is: was she or wasn’t she?
Read MoreReview: First Love, by Turgenev
This 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
An interesting way of dealing with writer's block
How did the English comedian Spike Milligan break through writer’s block?
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Prose Poem
Two reviews of The Penguin Book of the 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
Hidden truths in journalism
Journalistic integrity and reader manipulation.
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Book review: Bird By Bird
It's not often one comes across a book which purports to contain instructions on both writing and life. Does the concept work?
Read MoreQuick look: Audio for Authors
in Audio, Bookshelf, Quick looks, Reviews
This 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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