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...
Basilicata bibliomotocarro
Antonio La Cava, a retired school teacher, converted a quintessential Italian vehicle, the three-wheeler micro-van, into a travelling library.
For...
The Old Man and the Sea
The finest book cover illustration I've seen for this slim, timeless, moving book, wrapping around the back cover and even...
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....
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...
Hoovering up ideas
There's such a zest to this account of the Armenian approach to dealing with invaders: translate everything you can get...
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...
Greek Myths and Legends
These enchanting, sunlit illustrations of a French children's rendition of Greek Myths delighted me. They are part of a series...
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...
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...
Book as mirror I
A great riposte, of course, and true to a large extent. Having dismissed a book, it sometimes happens that I...
Riding the spine of a book
The book as a kind of flying broomstick or galloping horse taking the boy into story land.
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