Books into Film: Fall 2024
By Arti The annual film festival season kicks off in late August, and come September, there are arrays of new offerings on streaming platforms. I haven’t done actual research, but…
Interview with Kate Macdonald of Handheld Press
Interview by Harriet Harriet: Hi Kate – thanks for agreeing to do this. We know you’re working on a memoir of your Handheld days, so this will be a special…
Q&A with Nicholas Royle, author of David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine
Questions by Annabel Hello Nicholas, it’s great to ask you some questions about your fascinating new book which I enjoyed reading so much. I fondly remember our previous encounter for…
6 Sides of Lockdown Literature
By Anne Goodwin How has the Covid pandemic affected your reading? Have you lapped up lockdown literature or have you avoided it – cliché alert – like the plague? For…
Shiny Archive Reading List #4 – The Kings & Queens of England
Compiled by Annabel It’s time for another one of our themed lists, and what better subject for the Coronation of King Charles III tomorrow than a look back through the…
Q&A with Charlotte Vassell, on The Other Half
Questions by Harriet Harriet: Hi Charlotte. Thanks for agreeing to answer some questions. I have to tell you that The Other Half was one of the most enjoyable novels I’ve…
Shiny Archive Reading List #3 – Snow and Ice!
Compiled by Annabel In its ninth year, Shiny New Books passed the 2000 mark in published posts. We thought it would be fun to go back through our archives to…
Shiny Archive Reading List #2: Character Duos
Compiled by Annabel In its ninth year, Shiny New Books has passed the 2000 mark in published posts. We thought it would be good to go back through our archives…
Shiny Archive Reading List #1: Birds in Fiction
Compiled by Annabel In its ninth year, Shiny New Books has passed the 2000 mark in published posts. We thought it would be good to go back through our archives…
‘Sensational Books’ at the Bodleian
By Annabel On Tuesday I was privileged to be invited to join a press event for the Bodleian Libraries’ new (much-delayed by Covid) exhibition in Oxford which celebrates ‘Sensational Books‘….
Guest Post: Sally Emerson on the themes and inspiration for her new book, ‘Perfect, Stories of the Impossible’.
Back in 2017, Shiny editor Harriet reviewed a reprint of one of Sally Emerson’s novels, Separation, first published in 1992 – describing it as ‘a novel of immense subtlety and…
‘Passing’ by Nella Larsen, from Novella to Screen
Chicago born author Nella Larsen is the daughter of a Dutch mother and a father of mixed race Afro-Caribbean from Danish West Indies. With that multiplicity in racial background and…
Adam O’Riordan answers questions on The Falling Thread
Interview by Harriet As an already successful poet and short-story writer, what made you turn to the novel? Was it a sudden decision or a long-term ambition? It was a…
Five fascinating facts about fictional asylums
By Anne Goodwin In my professional life as a clinical psychologist, I visited around a dozen of the hundred or so long-stay psychiatric hospitals in England and Wales. Since then,…
A Vertical Art – Oxford Lectures by Simon Armitage
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth According to a recent Ipsos MORI poll, 90 per cent of people said that they’d read a novel in the last six months. For poetry, however,…
Nomadland: From Book to Screen
By Diana Cheng It first started with journalist Jessica Bruder camping in a tent then later in a van for three winters in the desert around Quartzsite, Arizona. Her plan…
Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History by Anna Aslanyan
Review by Karen Langley As bookish people, when we think about translation we’re probably thinking about it in literary terms. There’s a rich seam of literature from other languages available…
Five Fascinating Facts About… Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Compiled by Annabel The Royal Society of Literature is celebrating ‘Dalloway Day‘ today – a Wednesday in the middle of June – when Virginia Woolf’s novel in a day is…
The Craft of Poetry by Lucy Newlyn
Reviewed by Rob Spence Lucy Newlyn is a intriguing literary figure. She had a career as an Oxford don, publishing well-regarded studies of Romantic poets as well as collections of…
Spotlight on Publishers: Renard Press
Questions by Karen Langley 2020 has in many ways been the year of independent publishers; print books have been fighting back against the march of the e-book, and recently any…
Bookshop.Org is OPEN in the UK
Please excuse the plug post, but now we’re going back into lockdown it is more important than ever to support our indie bookshops online. From today, there’s a new way…
On the origins of ‘Pomeranski’, by Gerald Jacobs
Today we are delighted to be taking part in a short blog tour for the novel ‘Pomeranski’ by Gerald Jacobs, just published by Quartet Books. Gerald Jacobs is the literary…
Puzzles, constraints and cryptograms: An Oulipo beginner’s primer
By Karen Langley Although you may never have heard the name of the literary group Oulipo, there’s a good chance you might actually have read one of the members’ books….
Interview with Jane Badger about Pony Books
Interview by Liz Dexter Jane Badger started off as a dealer in horse and pony books, becoming known for her extremely extensive website on the subject: https://janebadgerbooks.co.uk/. She’s even written…