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...
Beach books
We recently enjoyed a month's holiday - the longest we've ever had - to celebrate Luiz's retirement. One of the...
Culling of books …
I sometimes feel like this when we go to the flea market in Geneva and survey a lifetime's worth of...
The spirit of a book
I like that the spirit of the book lives as much in the readers as in the writers. When I...
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...
A gallery of readers
To celebrate World Book Day, please visit this image gallery by the photographer Steve McCurry, a beautiful...
Doors opening wherever she turned
Alan Bennett was born in Leeds and I liked this quotation chalked on a board in a café there. It's...
Thoughts on the physiology of reading
As conveyors of ideas and knowledge, books have a wondrous physicality to them, more individual the longer they are in...
Worse than cocaine
If you were traversing the Soviet Union it was better to be caught with a kilo of cocaine than a...
My publisher, falsely so called…
Listening time: under 3 minutes.
I loved this drawn out account of Thoreau's dealings with a publisher wanting...
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...
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...
© Beatrice Otto 2021 - design & content unless otherwise stated - all rights reserved