Tag Archives: books

I first read Ray Bradbury back when I was in university. I had just discovered the brilliance of novels like 1984 and Brave New World, so a literary-minded friend recommended Fahrenheit 451 to me. At the time, I knew of Bradbury through my father, a ...

Recently I attended the Writers’ Workshop Festival of Writing where I had the opportunity to have the first chapters of my work in progress novel read by an agent. The agent in question told me my prose was excellent but ...

Every now and then a book will take you completely by surprise. It will sweep you off your feet; your need to keep reading will border on an unhealthy obsession, and your emotional reactions to fictional occurrences will be questionable ...

Noemi Gamel first came to my attention as a strong proponent of the We Need Diverse Books campaign. The campaign’s goal is to highlight the need for diversity in children’s books, be that the representation of LGBT characters, people of ...

It’s been a long while since I’ve had such a strong – and yet so conflicted – reaction to reading a novel. At times The Magicians is a wonderful novel, exploring areas of fantasy that often get swept under the ...

I began reading Wool knowing little about the book other than it had roots in self-publishing, was hugely popular and highly regarded in the SF community. I had far more of an awareness of the author, Hugh Howey, from his ...

The subject matter of After Before is far from a barrel of laughs: genocide and terminal cancer with another harrowing event thrown in for good measure that for spoiler-free reasons I can’t elaborate on here. As the title may suggest, ...

Perhaps there is something in the air during the month of August. On August 4th, 2011, Mark Duggan was shot dead by London police, becoming the main inciting incident for the riots that began on August 6th. On August 9th, ...

In everyone’s childhood there are a few stories that leave their mark. For me, those stories included Star Wars, The Hero and the Crown, Disney’s The Little Mermaid, tales of King Arthur and his Knights, and The Chronicles of Prydain. ...

Sometimes being a writer is hard going. Like many, writing is almost a compulsion with me, but that doesn’t mean it brings me endless joys. There are plenty of nights where I stare at the blank screen or piece of ...