Reflection on BWF – do books make us think?
It was wonderful to listen to Lucy Treloar, Charlotte Wood and Jane Rawson discuss whether books can change a reader…
The best book characters I’ve encountered recently
As an introvert, I find that book characters can be better company than real people. Rather than exhausting me as…
I’ve had enough of the childish narrator … for now
Some of my favourite narrators are children. It can be incredibly moving to immerse yourself in the life of a…
Cilka is a real-life hero who is too good to be true
In Cilka’s Journey, we are introduced to Cilka Klein, who first appeared in the bestselling The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Cilka…
Olive’s ordinariness is just the tonic for extraordinary times
I’ve been reading Elisabeth Strout's Olive, Again and in doing so have been reminded of how endearing the often grumpy,…
There’s more to life than a happy ending
It was unlikely that the ending was going to be a happy one, given the title of the most recent…
The beauty of a book in which nothing ‘happens’
Most journalism students learn to write a news story as if describing an event to a friend. Start with the…
