Tell Me What You Read: Christopher Williams

Choreographer and dancer Christopher Williams answers some reading questions about his art and life. Tell me which authors, or what reading, you can see now were influential in your life and career? My childhood reading of mythology and folklore sparked a personal mythopoetic quest that remains the hallmark of my choreographic career to this day. Apart from … Continue reading Tell Me What You Read: Christopher Williams →

Karel Čapek’s War With the Newts

I needed to read Karel Čapek’s RUR, his 1920 play in which he invents the robot, so I bought it in the SF Masterworks edition. The other half of this edition is an extraordinary novel called War With the Newts, which was an unexpected pleasure. It was almost the last thing Čapek published, in 1936, … Continue reading Karel Čapek’s War With the Newts →

A G Macdonell and England, Their England

Today’s letter in the Really Like This Book's podcast script rerun is M. A G Macdonell’s England, Their England, from 1933, is a satirical novel about English society, and has long had a grip on my understanding of the English. I was (am) a hybrid Anglo-Scot, never quite accepted by my Scottish school-friends or my English cousins … Continue reading A G Macdonell and England, Their England →

Interview with Laila Lalami, author of The Moor’s Account

I interviewed Laila Lalami about her longlisted Man Booker novel, The Moor's Account, which I reviewed some weeks ago. I began by asking about her literary techniques. The narrative of The Moor’s Account mimics real life, in that there isn’t a climactic ending. The events in the last section don’t seem to be presented by … Continue reading Interview with Laila Lalami, author of The Moor’s Account →

Vita Sackville-West’s No Signposts in the Sea

This is Vita Sackville’s West’s last novel, and it is exquisite. For once I agree with the blurb on the back of the Virago edition: ‘this haunting, elegiac tale, published the year before her death, is her last and finest novel’. I do NOT agree with Victoria Glendinning, who wrote an introduction, who says that … Continue reading Vita Sackville-West’s No Signposts in the Sea →

Merlin versus the vivisectionists, in C S Lewis’s That Hideous Strength

Today’s letter in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts recap is L, and I’ve gone straight to Clive Staples Lewis. Along with much of the western world, as a child I was deeply into his Narnia stories. As I got older I found them less satisfying, because too many questions kept being thrown at … Continue reading Merlin versus the vivisectionists, in C S Lewis’s That Hideous Strength →

My very own book: Novelists Against Social Change

Novelists Against Social Change: Conservative Popular Fiction, 1920-1960 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) This is my very own book, that I've been writing for what seems like forever: a long study of how John Buchan, Dornford Yates and Angela Thirkell wrote their conservatism into their best-selling fiction. It's now finally been published, with stunning cover art by Barry Rowe. … Continue reading My very own book: Novelists Against Social Change →

Now Posting on Vulpes Libris: Nan Shepherd’s The Quarry Wood

I posted a review of Nan Shepherd's 1928 novel The Quarry Wood over at Vulpes Libris today. Liked the novel very much, the first in a trilogy of north-east Scottish farming novels that I should have read decades ago, reprinted by Canongate as a collected works called The Grampian Quartet (there's a non-fiction memoir of … Continue reading Now Posting on Vulpes Libris: Nan Shepherd’s The Quarry Wood →

Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang

Three months ago I had never heard of Kate Wilhelm. Science Fiction and other Suspect Ruminations ran a week of Wilhelm guest reviews recently, which alerted me to her existence. I found Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang in Aberdeen's fine second-hand bookshop Books and Beans, a week after that, and carried it home in triumph. Where Late won … Continue reading Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang →

Rudyard Kipling and Captains Courageous

Today’s letter in the Really Like This Book podcast script reruns is K, for Rudyard Kipling, and a Kipling novel that has nothing to do with India, or the war, or about soldiers: three of his most well-known subject areas. Instead, it's about the deep-sea cod fisheries off the north-east coast of Massachusetts. He published Captains Courageous … Continue reading Rudyard Kipling and Captains Courageous →