“On the small, quiet island [nation] of Nollop ... the letter z has fallen from the statue of Nevin Nollop, revered author of the sentence ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’ - and the island’s rulers interpret this as a sign of divine displeasure and ban its use in any form” (2003 blurb from Methuen ( Read more... )

(A meta on metaness)

I went looking for meta on Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On, and found this: many reviewers have complained that the book is “too meta” and hence too confusing. Do they deplore Shakespeare’s players in Hamlet? Who knows. But Rowell’s book is really not confusing. At most, if you are bad at describing things, then your description of ( Read more... )

This is not a book about English kings; it is a book about English usage and grammar.

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There is a restaurant that is ignominiously named The Ducks Nuts, to which I refused to go for years because the name made me angry.

However. One day I did go, whereupon it immediately became one of my favourites.

“Sorrel,” this experience seemed to say to me, “Sorrel: you should not judge a book by its title.”

This maxim brings me to the ( Read more... )

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This story is thoughtful, complex and beautifully written. It’s a little more sombre than I usually like, but I didn’t get angry with the story itself, or end up feel emotionally exhausted as I do when confronted with most grand tragedy.

The author gives us a lot to consider, but I won’t be articulating all of my considering here. The following ( Read more... )

This book was written as a ‘non-fictional novelisation’ of the English Summer of 1911: a chatty kind of history, if you will, focusing on the colour of everyday life and the social and political climate just before the war.

Unfortunately, the author did not quite manage to pull off the novelisation conceit convincingly; poorly managed points of ( Read more... )

Col is slated to be the next Supreme Commander of the Juggernaut Worldshaker ("a mobile city as big as a mountain") and is determined to live up to his family’s expectations. It is an inconvenient time for him to realise that some of those expectations are grounded in morally suspect traditions, as he has much to lose if he decides to challenge the ( Read more... )

In a universe where aetheric icthyomorphs flit through space and Sir Isaac Newton discovered the key to accessible space travel, the British Empire is far reaching, and the Mumby family live contentedly in their quirky orbital home... Until they are attacked by giant pseudo spiders.

What follows is "A Rousing Tale of Dauntless Pluck in the ( Read more... )