Wishing you a happy jólabókaflóð!
This lovely word is Icelandic for 'Christmas book flood'. As you may know, Iceland is home to the world's most...
My publisher, falsely so called…
Listening time: under 3 minutes.
I loved this drawn out account of Thoreau's dealings with a publisher wanting...
Marcel and me – memories of childhood
I grew up with Marcel. That is the French author Pagnol (1895-1974) was a part of our domestic library and...
The history of books
An idea so intrinsic to reading books, particularly those you love and remember, that I had never consciously thought of...
Stash it in the safe
The business model of publishing doesn't seem to have been very attractive then, whatever you think of it now. Thoreau...
Books hidden, books found
Armenians seemed to be particularly adept at averting bibliocide. Some cultures, threatened with bibliocide, committed books to memory. The Armenians,...
On the culling of books
I have long put off writing this post because I have an aversion to it. A while back I bought...
Department of Exceptions
‘All good publishers have a department of exceptions.’
Perhaps any institution worth its salt should have a department of exceptions:...
Happy San Jordi’s Day!
It was for a good reason, three in fact, that I chose 23 April to launch WritingRedux last year. San...
Hoovering up ideas
There's such a zest to this account of the Armenian approach to dealing with invaders: translate everything you can get...
Book as mirror II
One of the most reassuring and surprising insights I found in reading Harold Bloom's literary criticism, was the realization that...
Rules and readers
Many of us have been in situations where vague ‘conventions’ are cited, the unwritten rules governing this or that realm....
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