Worse than cocaine
If you were traversing the Soviet Union it was better to be caught with a kilo of cocaine than a...
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...
A wilderness of books
This vast languishing resource was first brought home to me in Erik Reinert's How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and...
Hoovering up ideas
There's such a zest to this account of the Armenian approach to dealing with invaders: translate everything you can get...
The delusional business of book selling
This lovely, zestful, imaginative novel has one of the protagonists finding a job in a bookshop. He tentatively shares with...
A capacious book thief
Steinbeck and Robert Capa spent a month in the Soviet Union. It took some time for Steinbeck to cotton on...
Arthur Ransome – cover illustrations
If you've been following WritingRedux, you may have noticed a number of pawky playful gems from Arthur Ransome's children's books....
Culling of books …
I sometimes feel like this when we go to the flea market in Geneva and survey a lifetime's worth of...
Publishers, monkeys, monkeys, publishers
I love the way Captain Flint sees his mission to find a monkey for the children as a refreshing change...
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...
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...
The history of books
An idea so intrinsic to reading books, particularly those you love and remember, that I had never consciously thought of...
© Beatrice Otto 2021 - design & content unless otherwise stated - all rights reserved