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…
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…
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….
Banned Books Week – The Russians
By Karen Langley “The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him.” (Anais Nin) The banning of books is an emotive topic; so much of the…
Anthony Burgess Centenary – a Reading List
By Rob Spence Anthony Burgess, whose centenary is celebrated this year, remarked ruefully on more than one occasion that he produced as many novels in a year as E.M. Forster…
Fairy tales: A Reading List
Selected by Helen Parry Christmas is traditionally a time of magic. Even if you’re no longer quite certain that Father C pops down the chimney with a sackful of toys…
The Promised Land: An American Reading List
Compiled by Eleanor Franzén So, the presidential election of 2016. As with the elections of 2012 and 2008, I will be telling my children exactly where I was when I…
Reading for Food and Drink
Written by Hayley Anderton Wine is a wonderful thing, a living, breathing, liquid that ages, changes, develops in bottle and glass. It has the capacity to be hugely disappointing (if…
Woolfalong
Written by Ali Hope My relationship with Virginia Woolf had a discouraging start when I first read To the Lighthouse in my very early twenties. It was a period when I was…
Dear Diary… Diaries in Fiction
Written by Charlotte Duff Since approximately the age of ten, I have tried to keep a diary. In fact, almost every Christmas I have asked for one. New Year’s Day…
Brexit Reading
Written by Victoria In the aftermath of the historic referendum vote on 23rd June, and before we really learn what it means for all of us, what can we read…
‘South of the River’: A Reading List
Compiled by Annabel The story goes that London cabbies won’t go ‘South of the River’ after dark – I have no proof of this, but it’s an enduring myth. Asked…
Reading for Student Experiences
Written by Anna Hollingsworth Finite, enclosed spaces, power relationships, the discovery of independence, and the pursuit of knowledge: university as a backdrop offers perhaps more grand themes for novels than…
Make it Southeast Asian
By Sharlene Tan The part of the world that is known as Southeast Asia may include the fourth most populous nation in the world but ask the average person to…
Reading Manchester
By Rob Spence After the recent Budget, the Treasury published a document outlining the government’s plans for regional spending. In among the references to particular cities and regions was a…
Reading Israel
Written by Danielle Simpson When was the last time you read a book by an Israeli author? Yes, I thought so. If you had asked me that question just over…
Reading Liverpool
Compiled by Beth Townsend Novels set in places I recognise are a special kind of thing. There is nothing I enjoy more than reading about a place and going, hang…
Suspense with Style: The Novels of Mary Stewart
Written by Lory Widmer Hess “The whole affair began so very quietly.” With the first line of her first novel, Mary Stewart already proclaimed herself a sublimely intelligent storyteller, saying…
Glimpses of Long-Past Summers: Four Vintage Canadian Authors to Explore
By Barb Scharf High summer in Canada brings long days of blue skies and sunshine, with blazing hot afternoons and late warm evenings and all around the vibrant growth of…
Books for Spring: A Reading List
Selected by Danielle Simpson The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim Any list of spring reading surely must begin with Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April. It begins one dreary April day in…
Reading Diversity
By Marilyn Dell Brady For the past three years, I have been reading globally and diversely, reading books written by people of color. The result has been exciting. By definition, people of…
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