Category: Musings

  • The Ends Of Books

    Of lately, I seem to have a habit of looking at the end of a book before I start reading it. I hasten to add that I don’t mean that I read the very end of the story, although I do know people who (very strangely) do that. Instead what I’m after are those strange […]

  • TS Eliot

    Have just read a review of a new book about the letters of TS Eliot. This is published by Faber (of course!) and costs £60 so it won’t be finding a place on my bookshelves. Interestingly Eliot comments that he regards free verse as merely notes for a poem, particularly the work of DH Lawrence. […]

  • The Art of Writing According to Stephen King

    ‘The road to hell is paved with adverbs,’ so says the bestselling author. Also, ‘If you’re describing what a character says, just write “he said,” … not “he pleaded” or “he gasped.” Well, I wonder how many lessons I taught on both these parts of English language. Also, disparaging description, his writing must be spare, […]

  • Super!

    I very much enjoyed watching Wimbledon tennis a couple of weeks ago and inevitably I heard many interviews with the players. The rather facile questions that they are asked always include those about how they feel e.g. ‘how do you feel about playing on Centre Court?’ etc., etc. At that point I realised that there […]

  • To Be Othered

    I love the way language ebbs and flows. In many ways usage is all. The function of language is to communicate and maybe if it does that then it can’t be wrong. However, as I get older, it can be quite startling to realise that a word that has been used as an adjective and […]

  • Moving Forward

    I really can’t remember how I moved from looking at the shelves of children’s books in the library to those of adults. I certainly didn’t get any help or advice; not that I asked for it of course. Walking the bookshops (not the library you note. There is a change in culture and economic wealth) […]

  • Fitzcarraldo

    Fitzcarraldo is a small publishing house, only about 10 years old, based in Deptford, a yet to be gentrified area of London. It had ambitions from the very beginning: to remain independent, a tricky aim for any publishing company, and to specialise in literary fiction, in both original English and in translation. They were prepared […]

  • Like it or not

    Have you noticed how the word ‘like’ is now used in significantly different ways than a generation ago? I started to read up about ‘like’ and almost wished I hadn’t! There is so much going on with this word. I am quite aware that language ebbs and flows, changes, grows etc etc but this particular […]

  • The Lace Jacket

    A lady I met on an art course at Missenden Abbey had brought in a very old lace jacket. It was exquisite. She really didn’t know anything about its history and over coffee we made up a few possible scenarios. I said that the jacket deserved a story and I would write one and send […]

  • Done

    That is it. I am done with Hardy … Thomas that is. I was tempted back to my teenage enjoyment of the Hardy novels by loving the writing of David Nicholls. And, as had been said before, he is consumed by this late Victorian writer. I was looking up the ‘Tess’ quote that Nicholls uses […]