E C Bentley and Trent’s Last Case

Sir Humphry Davy Was not fond of gravy. He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium E C Bentley published his first collection of clerihews in 1905, as Biography for Beginners, and in this he was clearly the inspiration for such other classics of amateur history interpretations as 1066 And All That, and … Continue reading E C Bentley and Trent’s Last Case →

Glyn Maxwell Drinks With Dead Poets

Warning: part-way through this novel about the author teaching poetry and drinking with Keats and Walt Whitman, I realised that it’s a sequel, of sorts. I’ve now got a copy of it, Maxwell’s On Poetry, but I haven’t read it yet. So I might have missed something in this review. Bear with me. Glyn … Continue reading Glyn Maxwell Drinks With Dead Poets →

A working girl in New York: Louisa M Alcott’s Good Wives

In this week's Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up, I re-read that bit in Louisa M Alcott's Good Wives (1869) where Jo March goes to work in New York. (I should warn any Alcott scholars looking in that I haven’t read any Alcott criticism for years.) Alcott was a great believer in work – on evangelical grounds, … Continue reading A working girl in New York: Louisa M Alcott’s Good Wives →

When is poetry bad? Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry

As regular readers will recall, I bought this book on spec before Christmas from a wily book catalogue. Reading it - it is a long essay on why people hate poetry - is an unfolding sequence of stimulants, a nuggetty book about what poetry is and does, from the perspective of those who hate it. Lerner, … Continue reading When is poetry bad? Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry →

Now posting on Vulpes Libris: a really terrible biography

I've wielded the hatchet over at Vulpes Libris, on a biography of William Wilberforce. Great subject, awful execution.

The Rudyard Kipling novel no-one ever remembers: The Naulahka

This week in the Really Like This Book podcast scripts catch-up, I plunge into Rudyard Kipling’s least read novel, The Naulahka. It was an absolute joy to read, because it was a rare treat: a novel by one of my favourite authors that I hadn’t already read, despite having been reading Kipling for about 40 years. I simply … Continue reading The Rudyard Kipling novel no-one ever remembers: The Naulahka →

Microbes are out there: Aliens, ed. Jim Al-Khalili

I love it when Jim Al-Khalili communicates science. He’s a physicist, a BBC Radio 4 presenter of science programmes (The Life Scientific is a great podcast, btw) and he’s written, among other books, a fine work on the history of medieval Arabic science. (I have no idea about his academic publications because I can’t read … Continue reading Microbes are out there: Aliens, ed. Jim Al-Khalili →

Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer

This podcast scripts catch-up from Really Like This Book is on the first of Gene Wolfe’s epic science-fiction & fantasy tetralogy The Book of the New Sun, The Shadow of the Torturer (1981), the only one of the four I have been able to finish. It is EPIC, a tremendous, sprawling feast of fantastical invention slathered over … Continue reading Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer →

A little recap: C L Moore and Anne McCaffrey

Hello, 2017. Look, I'm jet-lagged, I'm about to set up house in a different country to where I currently live, and I start a new job next week. I'm a bit distracted. Please amuse yourself with these short reviews written for the SF Ruminations series on short stories by female sf writers published before 1969: … Continue reading A little recap: C L Moore and Anne McCaffrey →