1] Guarded By Dragons by Rick Gekoski In Guarded by Dragons, Gekoski invites readers into this enchanted world as he reflects on the gems he has unearthed throughout his career. He takes us back to where his love of collecting began – perusing D.H. Lawrence first editions in a slightly suspect Birmingham carpark. What follows […]
Tag: George Orwell
Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian author born in February 1884. He studied engineering for the Imperial Russian Navy, lost his faith in Christianity, became an Atheist and a Marxist, and joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Zamyatin used literature to satirize and criticise the Soviet Union for its enforced conformity […]
1. Eragon by Christopher Paolini Eragon was my favourite book throughout my teen years, I read it over a dozen times whilst I waited for the sequels to come out. For anyone who doesn’t know this book or the series, Eragon is pretty much the fantasy version of Star Wars, but with dragons too. […]
A lot of people have been furloughed or have been put on reduced hours due to the coronavirus pandemic. High Streets have closed and many businesses are relying on government pay-outs and online sales. This includes your local, independent bookshops. With more time on our hands and less access to the outside world you may […]
Do you know the one thing that I cannot stand? Whinging Authors. Particularly authors who whinge about the lack of book sales, or even, whinge that they have sold a paperback version of their book but, because it’s not the kindle version, they get less in royalties. I mean come on! I know it’s tough […]
I already touched on this topic in Blog 37: On The Importance Of Words, but I wanted to write more about the language and terminology that we use. As a writer getting the language and terminology right for your characters, setting, plot and storyline is important. The writers who nail this often have the […]
The wonderful thing about writing is that you can write anything, including all those things that you really want to say but are too afraid to. Writers are commonly described as introverts, and I would tend to agree since I lean towards the introvert end of the spectrum myself. During my school years I was […]
‘Once Upon A Time’ to ‘Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive’. How and why did story writing change so much? And what can we learn from it? Traditionally, word of mouth was the only way to communicate and share stories, but with the advent of writing implements and machines, stories were recorded […]
I have recently read George Orwell’s essay ‘Bookshop Memories’ – the cynic in me was delighted. I’ve been working in a second hand bookshop part-time for the past couple of months and even though I haven’t come across all the types of customers Orwell describes, it’s safe to say I had little trouble imagining them. I can […]