Investigating storytelling podcasts. Will report back on findings. #
Much success with Saga of the Exiles/Jung crossover. Will post to blog. Also planning a #Steampunk booklist. #
JD Salinger succeeds in getting Catcher in the Rye sequel stopped: http://bit.ly/wxYRk #
The library that never closes: ambitious plan to catalogue all books, ever, on the web for posterity: http://bit.ly/irCux [...]
How not to handle poor reviews: use Twitter to launch a firestorm: http://bit.ly/WfFfZ
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Now reading: Introducing Jungian psychology by Robin Robertson. Readable, gives insights into interface between psychology and paranormal #
Trying to apply Jungian archetypes to characters in Julian May's excellent Saga of the Exiles series, on which apparently they wre based. #
Might try to [...]
@louisrosenfeld So much work to do now :D #
Under the Literary Influence
Brian McDonald writes in the NY Times' Proof blog on the relationship between alcohol and Amercian life on his addiction to addicted authors.
(tags: Genre Thematic Firstperson Hardboiled Blogs)
TLS: Shakespeare and deep England
A new biography of Shakespeare attempts to trace the cultural influences that shaped his world and work and discusses "the Elizabethan reshaping of national and regional identities."
(tags: Non-fiction Shakespeare Biography)
The Independent: Knighthood stuns Pratchett
Altogether now: Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah! And it could not have been handed to a more deserving person. Arise, His Grace the Duke of Ankh His Excellency Commander Sir Terence Pratchett… hang on, that's not right…
(tags: Writers Awards)
BBC News: Can a man really write a Mills & Boon?
Bit of a redundant question, really, since the man they interview is a highly successful romance author. An excellent interview with a "gruff former rugby player Yorkshireman writing under the pseudonym Gill…"
(tags: Women Fiction Interviews Publishing)
Salon: Read it and weep
Is the American publishing industry in meltdown? And what does this mean for readers and writers over the next few years?
(tags: Publishing)
The Times: Aunts Aren't Gentlemen by PG Wodehouse
Max Hastings salutes one of the greatest writers in English: "Jeeves provides a sheet anchor of sanity around which the rest of a [...]
What I’m reading online today – if you like what you see, add My Weekly Book to your Delicious network…
In the spirit of looking forwards not backwards, and in ensuring this blog is ready and raring to go for 2009’s weekly book challenge, here are six-word reviews of the entire 2008 reading list.
Here are a couple of excellent articles from the New York Times books section for anyone who fancies a bit of feminist inspiration. The first reviews a book by Lisa Appignanesi about the historical collision between women and the mental health establishment. Plus, Germaine Greer on Shakespeare’s wife and The Telegraph on cult books.
We’ve started this series (once again being read out loud) in an attempt to fill the hole in our reading lives opened up by the completion in March of the entire sweep of Modesty Blaise novels. Feeling daunted by the sheer scale of Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin saga, and yet wanting something with a bit of staying power, this eight (or sometimes nine) volume science fiction epic seemed like an excellent choice – and so it has proved.
This is the most recent volume in the Titan reprint series to fall into my hot little hands and, in common with its predecessors, it contains three full stories – The Puppet-Master of the title, With Love from Rufus and The Bluebeard Affair. It’s fair to say that this is one of the lighter-hearted collections.
I’d been looking forward to this as something of a treat. Having finally filled in the holes in my Austen reading by completing Sense and Sensibility, Emma and the fragments Sanditon and The Watsons over the course of the last few months I had been promising myself a crack at this very well-received biography, published in 1997, next.
More kudos for whoever stocks the graphic novel shelf in my local library – I hereby send you another “ook” of cyber-approval. Knowing about the Alan Moore connection, and having read The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, I just had to give this one a try and ended up thoroughly satisfied that I had.
Here’s an opinion piece from The Telegraph on the JK Rowling vs Steve Vander Ark copyright case that I found reasonably sane and intelligent. It neatly sums up how easily the most worrying thing for me and a lot of other people are the implications that a judgement in Rowling’s favour would have for the wider world of publishing and the intellectual arena.
A bittersweet moment, this. After an intense spell of working through the entire series of Modesty Blaise novels that started at the end of last year, with the help of a devoted fan who was kind enough to read the whole lot out loud,this signifies the end.
Spotted in The Telegraph today – another attempt to come up with a definitive list of the 100 (plus ten this time, couldn’t they bring it in at a round figure?) books you should be displaying smugly to visitors, or shouldn’t reach retirement age without reading, or whatever it is this time around.
Often the introductions to these Titan reprints of complete stories from the long-running Modesty Blaise cartoon strip are among the most interesting bits of the book. That is because the author, Peter O’Donnell generally writes a bit about how he came to dream up the story, about his relationship with artists or publishers or a little about the craft of creating a comic strip.
This is an important volume in Titan’s Modesty Blaise series, and for a sad reason. Almost exactly half-way through artist Jim Holdaway, who had been responsible for originally creating the visuals for Modesty and Willie as we know them, died suddenly. The introduction to this volume contains a tribute to him from Peter O’Donnell and an explanation of how his replacement, the Catalan artist Enrique Badia Romero, came to take over.