I have been working my way through a number of classic science fiction novels, an area of my reading I’ve felt has been lacking. The latest was Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I found the novel a ...
Read More »Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel
Welcome to Night Vale surprised almost everyone when it topped the podcast chart in the US. Since then, it has developed a loyal, cult following. And there’s no surprise in that. The podcast is creepy, sometimes terrifying, weird, surreal, and ...
Read More »Should we care about gender flipped reimaginings?
No one can deny that the history of popular stories – be it novels, comics, films, TV – is littered with stories focused on the male experience, featuring male protagonists and a general male view of the world. With all ...
Read More »The Cheltenham Literature Festival: Part 2
Following on from yesterday, here’s a further breakdown of some more of the events at one of the year’s biggest literary celebrations: Julian Barnes The Man-Booker winner was talking about his latest piece of non-fiction, Keeping An Eye Open: Essays ...
Read More »The Cheltenham Literature Festival: Part 1
A yearly event in the idyllic spa town of South West England, the Cheltenham Literature Festival hosted by the Times and Sunday Times brings together big names across the fields of writing (and a great deal of smaller names who ...
Read More »Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson: Stop talking to your hat and get over here.
Sanderson is currently the poster child for popular fantasy writing. And there’s a blood good reason for that – he’s great. It was the original Mistborn series that first made me fall for Sanderson’s storytelling and since then The Stormlight ...
Read More »The new Star Wars Expanded Universe: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig
With all the hype around the new Star Wars films and Disney’s decision to depart from the original Expanded Universe, a new ‘official’ Star Wars novel being added to the cannon was always going to be controversial. Throw in a ...
Read More »Why you should be reading Liz de Jager’s Blackhart Legacy
I’m a big fan of Young Adult novels. Forget the haters who claim that the books should only be read by the intended target audience. Screw that! Read what you want to read. There should be no rules about what ...
Read More »Kindred: There are so many interesting times we could have visited
I am ashamed of myself and having to seriously questioning my geeky credentials… I had never even heard of Octavia Butler when I spotted Kindred in the SF section of the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. There was a ...
Read More »Paper Towns: What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person
I like to pretend I’m not, but when it comes down to it, I’m a book snob. All I really knew about John Green was that he wrote The Fault in Our Stars and the premise of that story sounded ...
Read More »