Books I Didn't Review: The Thinking Tank by Jae De Wylde It's about three or four years since I read The Thinking Tank, which was published in 2011. This is not a book I would normally have picked up. However, I happened to meet the author in Waterstone's bookshop at a promotion and after …
Category: Book Review
Goodreads and Me (2)
Books I Didn't Review: In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland My recollection is that I read this book around three years ago. I had to skim through it again to refresh my memory. In the Shadow of the Sword is a serious work of history, Tom Holland being one of the most …
F is for ……. friendship
Screw Friendship by RG Manse I picked up this book on a recommendation from WordPress. The main protagonist of this story, set in present-day Edinburgh, is Rosy, an eighteen-year-old student at Heriot Watt University. Rosy has never known her biological father, Frank Friendship, but has grown up with her mum Irene and step-dad Findlay. She's …
Of Elves and Men
The Children of Hurin by JRR Tolkein ' "You say it," said Morgoth. "I am the Elder King .... The shadow of my purpose lies upon Arda, and all that is in it slowly and surely to my will." ' The story of Hurin's children dates from around 1920 - or earlier - long before …
The Tale of Sakuntala
Sakuntala by Kalidasa (c. 400 CE, trans. Michael Coulson 1981) * Sakuntala by Abanindranath Tagore (1895, trans.William Radice 1992) * The story of Sakuntala and King Dushyanta (variously Dushmanta or Duhshanta) is an ancient tale, its origins going back thousands of years to the myths of India. The first known written version appears in a …
Harry Potter and the Flexible Title
The Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling Whilst I read most of the Harry Potter novels shortly after they were published - my daughter had a collection - I didn't get round to reading the final volume until a few weeks ago. I knew the story of course, having seen both the movies. However, so often, …
French Soap
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas 'If Dumas were alive today,' writes Keith Wren in his introduction to my current edition of The Three Musketeers, 'he would certainly not be bidding for the Nobel Prize for Literature but writing scripts for The Bill or Brookside.' Dr Wren's remark, written around 1993, may not strike many …
A Fisherman's Tale
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway '....nothing showed on the surface of the water but some patches of yellow, sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating close beside the boat.' His name is Santiago, and we are left to guess his age. What is …
Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen Having finished my review of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe with the words of Jane Austen, I can do no better here than allow Sir Walter to introduce this one: '[Jane Austen] had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful …
My body is not my own!
Female 22 by David Hulett Wilson A Review What would it be like to live part of your life in a body of the opposite sex? How would you cope with the little everyday details of being a woman, or a man, as the case may be? Not only would the anatomy be strange but …
Magda Green Books 