Neil Gaiman interviews Terry Pratchett
On the publication of Snuff, Terry Pratchett was interviewed by his one-time collaborator Neil Gaiman. Lovely reading. On Sam Vimes, Coppers are easy to write for; they tend to run on rails. On...
View ArticleLa Belle et la Bête
Meat Loaf, “I’d Do Anything for Love” Angela Lansbury, “Beauty and The Beast” In other news, I have just bought, but not yet read, Ana Mardoll’s novel Pulchritude, an adaption and reworking of the...
View ArticlePassover: Meaning in narrative
On The Slacktiverse, Froborr writes insightfully about the meanings he finds in the Passover story and its tale of liberation from oppression. It’s an empty, meaningless ritual dedicated to the worship...
View ArticleThe Exile of the elder Pevensies
At the end of Prince Caspian, the older Pevensies, Peter and Susan, were told they could nevermore return to Narnia. Why not? TRiG.
View ArticlePunk the Mustard Seed
Fred Clark has an interesting idea for a game. ‘Hi, I’m looking for a Christian book …’ As always with a link to Slacktivist, I recommend you read the comments too. They expand on and play with the...
View ArticleOut of the marvelous
The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise Were all at prayers inside the oratory A ship appeared above them in the air. I’ve loved Seamus Heaney’s “Lightnings viii” since first I read it. The...
View ArticleWriting Signs (in Unicode)
Here’s a little article I wrote a while ago about signed languages, and the various efforts that have been used to make them writable. Sutton SignWriting is probably the most interesting. I have...
View Article“The world is wide and there is room for both of us to be wrong”
A letter from HG Wells to James Joyce on the draft version of what eventually became Finnegans Wake. Your training has been Catholic, Irish, insurrectionary; mine, such as it was, was scientific,...
View ArticleKit Whitfield on first sentences
Kit Whitfield has published a large number of analyses of the first sentences of novels. (These really are analyses, not book reviews. They’re involved, detailed and based on a thoughtful close reading...
View Article“Strong Female Characters”
Can a female character be a “brilliant, solitary, abrasive, Bohemian, whimsical, brave, sad, manipulative, neurotic, vain, untidy, fastidious, artistic, courteous, rude, polymath genius”? Well, I don’t...
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