Read / November 29th, 2018
I picked up Why Will No-One Publish My Novel? A Handbook For The Rejected Writer by Fay Weldon from the library because I love a writing ‘how to’/guidebook (I wrote one!) and this one is an adorable (almost) pocket-size. That was another reason why it stood out among the shelves. (Penguin has a range of Pocket…
Read / November 26th, 2018
I’ve extended this Christmas recommendations series to include cookbooks this year because there are always so many that come out that it can be hard to keep up to date with them all. Like most people, I am partial to a good cookbook but mostly for the inspiration because, honestly, I don’t like cooking very much. A…
Read / November 22nd, 2018
I didn’t need any more convincing to pick up Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami after hearing that this novel is his homage to his life-long love of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Look at this charming video of Bernard Caleo’s performance at the launch of Killing Commendatore at Readings bookstore. I will declare that my success rate…
Read / November 20th, 2018
Boys Will Be Boys by Clementine Ford is the follow up to her immensely successful and terrific Fight Like a Girl. Ford is an intelligent and courageous thinker who is also regularly subjected to a lot of the worst kind of online abuse I’ve seen. You’ll hear her read out some of those comments in the video below. ‘Boys…
Read / November 15th, 2018
It’s young-adult day in my Christmas recommendation series. If you missed them, you can find the picture books and middle-grade posts if you follow those links. I’ll say again that it can sometimes be hard to draw the line between what could/should make a particular list – especially as children hit the preteen or teenage…
Read / November 13th, 2018
Welcome to this middle-grade edition of my Christmas recommendations list. If you missed my picture book post, you can find it here. The middle-grade market is particularly exciting at the moment, with a lot of author success stories – as you’ll see below – and there are a lot of others who could’ve made this…
Read / November 7th, 2018
It’s time for my annual Christmas book ideas/gift guide. Welcome! I put a lot of time and effort into these series of posts to come up with titles that enjoy and recommend. As ever, especially for children, there will be a crossover of relevance depending on interest and capability, so keep your eye out for…
Keira has taken to watching old videos on my YouTube channel. “You haven’t uploaded anything new in months,” she complains. It’s curious how trends and moods change. We went through a period in which anything I said or did on this blog (and to a lesser extent photos/video on social media) was vetted with such…
Read / October 24th, 2018
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson is a short novel that has stuck with me since I finished it. Here is the delightful opening paragraph. “My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all…
