Culling of books …
I sometimes feel like this when we go to the flea market in Geneva and survey a lifetime's worth of...
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...
A wilderness of books
This vast languishing resource was first brought home to me in Erik Reinert's How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and...
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...
Publishers, monkeys, monkeys, publishers
I love the way Captain Flint sees his mission to find a monkey for the children as a refreshing change...
Tales from Australia and Oceania
This book cover and related illustrations are from a wonderful old French series of tales and stories from around the...
Fuel for the body or mind?
Book burning, or bibliocide, is usually something we associate with ideologues, political or religious, fearful of the free flow of...
My publisher, falsely so called…
Listening time: under 3 minutes.
I loved this drawn out account of Thoreau's dealings with a publisher wanting...
Book as mirror I
A great riposte, of course, and true to a large extent. Having dismissed a book, it sometimes happens that I...
Rules and readers
Many of us have been in situations where vague ‘conventions’ are cited, the unwritten rules governing this or that realm....
Worse than cocaine
If you were traversing the Soviet Union it was better to be caught with a kilo of cocaine than a...
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