"These were the hidden violences. Day-long deaths that snuffed out our small and limited futures. Since we grew up around London towers, struggle was a standard echo in our speech, in thought, in action. But it was only after the release of that one video, clipped from a phone of a witness, that everyone else … Continue reading Review: In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne
Another month has flown by and it seems that we're heading unrelentingly into summer. Summer in the US midwest is actually the setting for some incredibly productive reading time. If possible, I become even more reclusive than in the winter, as part of a desperate attempt to avoid the heat. Not only am I completely … Continue reading The Monthly Reader: May 2019
It has been an excellent couple of years for dystopian fiction. The closer we feel to the brink of humanistic and political catastrophe, the more we turn to fictional dystopias, as though to torment ourselves with the preponderance of warnings to stay alert to the erosion - however gradual - of the freedoms that we … Continue reading Monday Musing: Why We Love Dystopian Fiction In A World Of ‘Alternative Facts’
Of all the challenges that we face as individuals, grief is perhaps the most universal. There are few - if any - people able to get through life without experiencing loss, making grief an inevitability for all of us. I am lucky to have reached 30 without losing any of the people close to me … Continue reading Bibliotherapy For Grief: Fiction Recommendations For Tough Times
It's no secret that I love a good adaptation. I spent much of my teenage years on the verge of an incredibly unhealthy obsession with Colin Firth's portrayal of Mr. Darcy (who am I kidding? It was sufficiently extreme that I performed a pilgrimage to the lake from his infamous diving scene). While I've yet … Continue reading The Best TV And Film Adaptations Of Classic Novels
There are many contemporary online trends - particularly those that have to do with social media - that cast a problematic light on the way that consumers interact with the work that they're consuming. Social media has brought us closer than ever before to the people from whom art emerges - musicians, authors, and other … Continue reading Monday Musing: Should Authors Be Exempt From ‘Cancel Culture’?
"He knew my work - where it was, what I did there, the hours, the days and the twenty-past-eight bus I caught every morning when it wasn't being hijacked to get me into town to it. Also he made the pronouncement that I never caught this bus home. This was true. Every weekday, rain or … Continue reading Review: Milkman by Anna Burns
April has flown by in the breathless fury that always seems to associate itself with mid-spring. Although I remain devastated at my loss of the UK's four-day Easter weekend, April remains one of my favourite months of the year. It is also just about the only mild month that the US midwest seems to get … Continue reading The Monthly Reader: April 2019
"To be a Parisian in Nablus was to be out of step with the times, locked in an old colonial formula where subjects imitated masters as if in the seams of their old garments they hoped to find some dust of power left trapped. This was not precisely the case with Midhat, who seemed rather … Continue reading Review: The Parisian by Isabella Hammad
Returning to a theme on which I've been harping for a long time, The Guardian has reported that, over the course of a decade, less than 2% of authors and illustrators for children's fiction were people of colour. According to a report by BookTrust, 2017 was the least diverse year for children's fiction since 2009, … Continue reading Monday Musing: Addressing The Lack Of Diversity In Children’s Fiction
The Book Habit 