Category: Uncategorized

  • Out and About

    I spend an awful lot of time inside my own head. That’s okay – I know my way around and I’m quite safe there. But it does have the effect of making me marginally unsettled when I have to leave my imaginary worlds and interact with real people in the real world – unlike my…

  • The end isn’t in sight

    I’m cross and crotchety today. I feel like I’ve wasted my reading time this week on two books that didn’t end. Now, I don’t mean they were long, nor that they were dull. They didn’t end because their writers (and their editors and big, commercial publishers in turn) had failed to comprehend the fundamental requirement…

  • Share the love

    Books are wonderful things. I love reading them, I love writing them, I love enthusing about books, and over time I’ve grown to love reviewing books, too, which I do with other YA-loving friends on the Paisley Piranha site, as well as posting to Goodreads and Amazon. I read an interesting piece this week (Jenny…

  • Spoilt for Choice

    I was in enough trouble yesterday when I drafted this post. Then I went to the library. I didn’t need any more books, I wasn’t going to get any more books … but I thought I might as well have a little look, just in case. Yeah, well, all readers know how that one ends.…

  • School milk memories

    Today’s planned blog was derailed (in a good way) by a tweet. A twitter friend tweeted about plans in Scotland to return the “milk break” to all primary school children. (You can read the article here if it’s a topic of interest.) As one of the generation whose milk was “snatched” by Maggie Thatcher, this brought…

  • Previews

    I love paper books, as my overflowing bookshelves will attest. But I also have two eReaders (for Kindle and Kobo) and the feature I love best is their ability to let me read a preview before deciding to buy a book. It’s the equivalent of scanning the first page or two in the bookshop, but with the…

  • Books unread

    If books create a whole new world for readers to enjoy, then some books stand out as landmarks, familiar spots we can all relate to as a shared experience. Not to have read these giants of literature (if you are a person who reads) becomes a cause for surprise and even concern by others – akin…

  • Bias on my bookshelves

    I’ve been reading articles lately about gender bias in book reading and reviewing. It seems that men don’t read books by women, and ‘serious’ (whatever that means) publications are reluctant to review commercial fiction by women. They’ve made me think about my own bias, because if there is one, it definitely runs the other way.…

  • The Devil’s in the details

    Today’s blog was prompted by a discussion I had with friends about reviews and whether they’re actually any help to readers and whether anyone (except paranoid writers) pays any attention to them. Opinions varied with some readers always using reviews to help them decide whether or not to buy/read a book, while others paid no…

  • The End of the World?

    I read a thought-provoking blog this week (http://mumpsimus.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/ending-world-with-hope-and-comfort.html?m=1) which has been nagging at me ever since.  I’m paraphrasing enormously for the purpose of summary, but the basic gist was that the post-apocalyptic fiction so popular at present offers a cosily comforting picture of survival after catastrophe that is so at odds with what an apocalypse…