5 years old today!
Dear Kind Readers,
When we launched WritingRedux on Shakespeare's and Cervantes' birthday five years ago, we had the freedom to...
Kingly encouragement
Surely one of the pithiest, funniest and most ebulliently floor-wiping book criticisms in the history of scribbling and patronage. All...
Making invisible friends
This is a book lover's book, and the protagonist is the son of a bookseller, whose bookshop he takes over...
How to build a library … Alexandrian style
The Library of Alexandria had 30-50 state-funded scholars and agents scouring the Mediterranean for new books. It's believed that...
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 Cemetery of Forgotten Books
The whole intricate plot of Ruiz Zafón's Shadow of the Wind begins with his father taking him to this labyrinthine...
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...
Reading to live more intensely
Reading allows you to meet people, places, periods and perspectives you might never otherwise encounter, intensifying your experience of life. ...
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...
Reading as travel
The Rat is a street-savvy kid in a barely known children's book by the author of the infinitely famous
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