Posts Tagged ‘ Blogposts ’

Today is polling day for the books blog's coveted award: time to choose which of the many nominated books should make the shortlistGiven that so many people sent so many excellent nominations in for the first round of this year's Not the Booker prize, ...
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This time, a remarkable supple kind of pastoral that makes room for a number of unexpected and daring fusionsDr Johnson, while recognising Milton's genius, took a famously dim view of this week's poem. "Such is the power of reputation justly acquired t...
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Bookshops are crucial infrastructure for any free society. The retail chain, which once exemplified this, seems to have lost touch with thisWhatever happened to Waterstone's? Like many bookshop lovers, and fans of Tim Waterstone's achievements in the 1...
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It's the start of another school year and I'm dreaming of new pencil cases, satchels and the books I read in class. But what are the books you remember from your own school days?Fourteen years after I finished school, there's still something about Sept...
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Again and again, while reading submissions for the Guardian first book award, I have noticed editing letting the writing downLast week I tweeted with frustration about the standards of editing I had encountered while longlisting the Guardian First Book...
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I trust you've been following to some extent the Jonathan Franzen-New York Times-chick lit debate. If not, it is summed up well here, in this Slate piece in which the authors counted up every piece of adult fiction reviewed in the NYT over the last two...
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By invoking the deity, the eminent scientist has discovered the formula for creating a popular success from abstruse scienceHold onto your mitres, folks: Stephen Hawking is back in the news, with the revelation that science has proved the universe can ...
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I have very limited tolerance for malady memoirs, but Frigyes Karinthy's astonishing account of his own brain tumour almost cured me of my aversionPublishers love to flog fads to death. Consider the recent mania for "misery memoirs", which (mercifully)...
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Tony Blair thinks the media got McCain and Obama the wrong way around in 2008, according to his autobiographyWhat did Tony Blair think of the 2008 US presidential election? Chris Brooke, who is valiantly live-tweeting his reading of Tony Blair's memoir...
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The former prime minister wearing a poppy in Jonathan Yeo's portrait was no coincidence. It was the first step in a deliberate plan to influence his political legacyIn January 2008, a portrait of Tony Blair by Jonathan Yeo was unveiled in which the for...
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