Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on TV and in newspapers, but in 1989 I read Alexand…
This is one of my most surprising discoveries in second-hand bookshop trawls in the far off days when they existed, especially because it was found i…
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk The first reason to celebrate Shelley Frisch’s…
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us , says Kafka in the famous letter. I wondered what this might mean as the 'books of the ye…
"My compulsion to write does not occlude the uselessness of filling pages with words" writes Fernando Sdrigotti . "I know that what I …
You have made me unhappy. I bought your "Metamorphosis" as a present for my cousin, but she doesn't know what to make of the story. …
I don't know how people can read an emotional novel. Unless the reader is hoodwinked into thinking the novel can deliver 'real' emotion.…
A question arises from my breathless response to volume one of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle : have I contradicted my exasperated review of Dav…
I think we ought to read only books that wound and stab us. Kafka's letter, sent one hundred and eight years ago, is one I've quoted often…