But I noticed in passing a week or so ago a bit of a flurry about somebody going about Wow We Now Have A Female Hero, with Lyra in the televisation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and a lot of pushback with people listing all the books with heroine leads that they had been reading decades ago and that were a formative influence upon their ( Read more... )

What Happened When I (Tried to) Read 30 Books in 30 Days - surely that depends a lot on what books you pick? there are books that, if I have nothing else to do or long journeys on hand, I can get through several in a day, and others that, well, take longer - I might instance that A Suitable Boy was a suitable companion for a lengthy (several-day) ( Read more... )

I do think there's a weird dichotomy posited here between what people are doing on their 'handheld devices' and this new exciting (???) thing being offered of short stories on demand. I am sure that lots of people are reading things of a narrative nature on those devices already, there is this patronising attitude that they must be buried in apps ( Read more... )

Report that because 2 supermodel sisters have been seen carrying books, 'books are the new hot accessory'.
And indeed, I was initially, when my eye first skimmed over this report wherever I saw it, inclined to dismiss this as Yet Another Way In Which Books Are Deployed For Anything But Actual Reading, as in using them as amusing objects for the ( Read more... )

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Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction.
Weeelllll...
Puts on her orl moar komplik8d hat.
I have been thinking lately of the idea that is there in that piece that in the past books were revered and people were engaged in deep and reverent and serious reading -
And wondering a bit to what extent some of that is an artefact of survival, because ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Into the Fire.
For some reason, there tends to be a confluence between Slightly Foxed and Literary Review every three months (but I think The Scribbler may have been previous week and I forgot to log it). I suppose, re The Scribbler, that if you are featuring stories about learning to play the Old Joanna, and your wheelhouse is ( Read more... )

I was just skimming Reddit Relationships, and came across this:
My (24F) husband (28M) of one year thinks that buying books is a waste of money and space.
They have been married for a year and together for three and she has only just discovered the dead wives in the secret room that he has an implacable hostility to the notion that she might want a ( Read more... )

10 Famous Book Hoarders
(I think we may contest the term 'hoarders' for people with lotsaboox, hmmmm?)
In most of those cases I think we do see a real love of books, though I'm not sure about Hearst and whether 'ostentation' was not on his mind rather than use?
In some cases those appear to be the personal libraries that have fetched up in public ( Read more... )

I was responding to someone else's post and saying that I'm actually quite hesitant about recommending some of the writers/works that I love, because I can see that they have very individual and distinctive styles and that these may not work for everybody.
Some while ago (but failed to save the link) read a post somewhere pointing out that if you ( Read more... )

How do I stop friends from foisting books on me? What do you do or say when a friend loans you a book that you have no interest in reading? He or she usually thinks it’s a great book and wants you to share the experience. Happens to me often enough to wonder about the proper etiquette. I imagine I’ve done it to others as well.

Speaking as someone ( Read more... )