(adapted from my novel The Dark Side of the Fylfot. Fourteen-year-old Gretl is eager to hear the story behind the talisman her grandfather wears at his throat) 'Jemshid, son of Tahmuras, ruled Persia for seven hundred years. He was a wise and just monarch, skilled in forging weapons, weaving fine cloths, and shaping ornaments from …
Category: Writing and Publishing
The Man in the High Castle
Philip K Dick's Hugo Award-winning science fiction novel is a novel without a hero or villain. Instead, the various characters mill around somewhat aimlessly, doing meaningless jobs (or none at all), consulting the I Ching and reading yet another novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Several are not what they seem or claim to be. …
Dan's Hymn to Dante
Inferno by Dan Brown In his latest novel, Dan Brown sends his unlikely hero, Harvard professor Robert Langdon on a romp round Florence. Accompanied by Sienna Brooks, a young doctor with an IQ of 208, Langdon embarks on a quest to find and destroy a deadly virus. Planted by a misguided idealist Bertrand Zobrist, the …
Summer is Fading Fast
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With …
It's Not Harry Potter
The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling The death of Barry Fairbrother, a leading citizen of Pagford, a small town "in the West Country", leaves a vacancy on the parish council. Pagford residents are lined up on two sides of a dispute about the future of a crime-soaked estate known as the Fields, and the composition …
Mataoka – Epilogue
"The real stories of John Smith and Pocahontas have seldom been fully told, much as they are a part of the popular imagination." Pocahontas by Joseph Bruchac A Review I discovered this novel while researching Mataoka and the origins of the colony of Virginia. Informative and entertaining as historical accounts are, they do not always …
10 Great Quotations from George Bernard Shaw on His Birthday
A man of great wit indeed! My favorite is "Do not do unto others....."
First Anniversary
It scarcely seems possible but it's already a year since I posted my first book review on WordPress! It seems I've written 54 blogs since then. 36 of them have been book reviews, including 10 "classics" for the Classics Club. Since I'm committed to read and review 50 of these classic novels in five years …
The Road to Fotheringhay
In the Footsteps of a Queen by Andrew G Lockhart Fotheringhay hides its past well. The village comprises a few dwellings, a charming hostelry and an historic church. The River Nene meanders through its fields on the way from the Grand Union Canal at Northampton to the North Sea. From time to time, a narrow …
Sex and Politics in Winter
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K le Guin Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness is surely one of the best sci-fi novels ever written. I read it first in the seventies and now, about four decades later, it comes across as inventive and fresh as on that first reading. "Consider:" writes …
Magda Green Books 