I am fascinated by the nature of my own skin. This curiosity in my own body falls suddenly, as if it’s a shock that I am made up of cells and water and I’m not really sure what else. This is where my own ignorance falls down, cocooning myself in my books and my poetry… Read More some achingly pretentious Creative Writing, and a life update
There are many, many book reviews of The Good Immigrant out there. And many, many, of them are already better than mine, as I half-arse my way into finding the precise word to convey my curiously complex emotions. This is something different, because if I’m quite honest a couple of the essays in this book made me upset… Read More Responding to ‘The Good Immigrant’
Although I have now realised that if I don’t stop wandering round, reading random books at leisure, I may fail my exams, so this might be the last non-A-Level-reading-list post you’ll get for another five weeks. Other than that, The Awakening is actually a pretty good story. If I’m honest, I only read this because an extract… Read More The Awakening by Kate Chopin
There’s not a lot I can say about The Great Gatsby that you won’t hear from an English teacher, if I’m honest. I’m not a great Fitzgerald scholar – I’m not a great scholar, end of point – and there’s not a lot I can do apart from yell into the Great Internet Void. Which is precisely… Read More The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I don’t know quite where my peculiar affection for books about climbing stems from. As I’ve mentioned in this review of Jon Krakauer’s account of the disastrous 1996 climb of Everest, I’ve not been within 20 miles of a mountain, let alone bloody climb one. I also doubt that spending 2 hours stuck on the… Read More CR: Touching the Void by Joe Simpson
I’ve been digging through my laptop files, uncovering snippets of writing that I felt an urge to create but have lain dormant since. Here, take my heart. (also people need to stop judging the act of writing. as my English teacher says, you lose nothing from creating.) There is something of the young boy about… Read More Glimpses from 2017
I’m going to produce my metaphorical megaphone and yell into the internet void/echo chamber/cavern of Liberal Feminist Ideals. Look (listen?): NOVEL WITH FASCINATING FEMALE PROTAGONIST. The premise of this novel (by the late, great, Jenny Diski) is a tad weird, admittedly. It’s even weirder when you begin reading it at 5 am, hungover, after 3… Read More Like Mother by Jenny Diski
