Blogs about Books and literature

Regeneration Pat Barker 1917 Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart. What to do with one of theirs who protests the war. With Wilfred Owen. The Eye in the Door Pat Barker The next in the series. I …

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk, 1990 An Italian traveling to Naples has his ship commandeered by an Ottoman fleet and is taken as a slave. Incidental medical knowledge and some simply treated injuries lets …

Brad Pitt as AchillesIn the previous post, concerning the pastoral genre, I sought to convey how much Goethe drew on traditional poetic genres in his poetry and dramas, but which he "modified" in such a …

Tsunami Books, Eugene, OR(Like The Indie Bob Spot on Facebook and follow The Indie Bob Spot on Twitter)What are the chances? I can travel far and wide and still I can stumble onto such coincidental …

"The danger of making a list," said Borges, "is that the omissions stand out and that people think of you as being insensitive." For every list of best books, a counter-list could be countered. To …

I wrote this for Times Higher Education a couple of weeks ago: The people who work in universities are made up of two tribes: tragedians and comedians. These tribes view each other with bewilderment across …

O much I love thee autumn sereWhen fragrant in the mellow yearWhile dropping leaves & blossoms deadMakes pillows for thy sunny bedWhile faint short wirlwinds puffing byeBreaths thy latest symphony& much I love thy checkerd …

When Jeanie’s aunt gifts her the beloved Pumpkin Spice Café in the small town of Dream Harbor, Jeanie jumps at the chance for a fresh start away from her very dull desk job. Logan is …

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. …

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994), Sucesivos Escolios a un Texto Implicito (Bogotá: Villegas Editores, 2005), p. 75 (my translation): Modern society surpasses past societies in only two respects: vulgarity and technology. La sociedad moderna no aventaja …

Barry Hughart (his surname is pronounced hew-gert) died in 2019 at the age of 85. His career as a writer of fantasy was short-lived, but his work was acclaimed. His first novel, Bridge of Birds: …

A friend writes in: What are you doing about the idiotic book bannings and attacks on Librarians and what can I do to help? It’s a mess and part of the mess is that it’s …

I was late. The minibus was already at the stop. I did something I very rarely do and broke into a run. I was the last one there. I was shown into a minibus that, …

The Guardian's 'The books of my life'-series has Jo Nesbø: ‘Tom Sawyer was my first murder mystery’. (His The Night House is just about out in English.)

So, what do you think? Never in your wildest dreams, right? It’s hard to know where to begin, because the house is almost unrecognizable, but let me show you around. You won’t believe what I’ve …

I was on the roof of my Brooklyn apartment building, in the dark, beating boiled daffodils with a rolling pin, when I had to admit that my path might be a creative, not an academic, …

“So crawls a toad on his belly into a bed of flowers.” —Jean Paul, tr. Charles T. Brooks Under the deepening brume of a once-splendid drunkenness, I sit under fluttering neon. Neon blushes, they say, …

Madeleine Rodrigue and Henri Rollan on the Eiffel Tower in Paris Qui Dort. There are few lovelier works of French surrealism than René Clair’s short 1924 film, Paris Qui Dort, usually translated inelegantly into English …

"It must have been made worse though,/having to fight your way through/those corridors clogged with/bullshitters and grifters/with the same depth as the mirror pools/outside their private schools."

The latest in our The Booksellers series, our cataloguer Callum Hill shares his journey into the rare book world, his interest in modern literature, and some of his favourite experiences working at Peter Harrington Rare …