Portable Magic by Emma Smith
Reviewed by Liz Dexter If classic status is registered in material book form, the stages leading up to this are also readable across different editions of the same work. Rachel…
Remainders of the Day by Shaun Bythell
Review by Julie Barham A further book recording life in all its humour and honesty, this is a brilliant read which captures so much from the perspective of Shaun Bythell,…
The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis
Review by Terence Jagger T S Eliot, when I read The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, was my introduction to modernism as a reluctant and noisily sceptical schoolboy, and…
Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book by Emma Smith
Review by Liz Dexter In stressing users of the First Folio, then, this book is not concerned with the discussions of how the Folio came to be published, the provenance…
Fantasy: How it Works, by Brian Attebery
Review by Helen Parry Over the last thirty years, the genre of fantasy has become more ‘respectable’. Although it has never been simply an excuse for plodding, Lord-of-the-Rings, Sword-and-Sorcery knock-offs,…
Literary Cats by Judith Robinson & Scott Pack
Reviewed by Annabel This super hardback book from Bodleian Library Publishing has ‘Christmas gift for the cat lover in your life’ written all over it. Who would have thought that…
The Life of Crime by Martin Edwards
Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies Here is a hefty and impressive package, a bumper fun book and prodigious resource guide for all serious crime fiction fans (and who isn’t these days,…
In the Margins by Elena Ferrante
Translated by Ann Goldstein Review by Anna Hollingsworth There’s something fascinating about writers writing about, well, writing and reading. I care more about writers’ preferred pens and books on their…
After Agatha: Women Write Crime by Sally Cline
Review by Karen Langley We readers have never been able to get enough of crime fiction, it seems, and in the 21st century the genre is as popular as it…
Biography & Memoir, Diaries
Books About Books, Publishing
History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology
Non Fiction
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader by Mark Hodkinson
Review by Liz Dexter While he’s now a publisher and editor with his own imprint, Hodkinson grew up in a terrace house in Rochdale with one book in the house…
Great Literary Friendships by Janet Phillips
Reviewed by Harriet When you see the title of this book, you may think, as I did initially, that it was going to be about friendships between writers (Pope and…
Stalin’s Library, by Geoffrey Roberts
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies One review of this book has come on quite strong against Roberts’ view of Stalin – prominent among the twentieth century’s most publicised murderous dictators and…
Living and Dying With Proust, by Christopher Prendergast
Review by Rob Spence Like Joyce’s Ulysses, Proust’s A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu is seen as a kind of literary Everest, to be attempted only by the brave or…
Faber & Faber: The Untold Story by Toby Faber
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long In 2019 I attended a lecture given by Toby Faber and found him to be as stylish and witty as his illustrious friends and relations, and…
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,…
Dreaming of Rose: A Biographer’s Journal, by Sarah LeFanu
Review by Helen Parry Reconstructing anyone’s life poses enormous difficulties, for however copious the evidence of letters, diaries, journals, and eye-witness accounts, the problem of interpretation remains, the problem of…
Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack by Richard Ovenden
Review by Liz Dexter The processes of selection, acquisition and cataloguing, as well as of disposal and retention, are never neutral acts. They are done by human beings, working in…
Reviewer’s Choice: Twentieth Century Paris (1900-1950) – A Literary Guide for Travellers by Marie-José Gransard
While Shiny New Books concentrates on the new, occasionally, we give our reviewers room to share previously published – ie: ‘not Shiny New Books’ – they have been enjoying. Review…
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…
Commemorative Modernisms by Alice Kelly
Review by Rob Spence Modernism has always resisted precise definition, and in recent years it has been normal in literary-critical circles to use the plural form in order to emphasise…
Hyphens & Hashtags* by Claire Cock-Starkey
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Subtitled “The stories behind the symbols on our keyboards” (the subtitle linked to the main title via an asterisk rather than a colon), this is a…
Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the world by Mark Aldridge
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long When I was younger and read every Agatha Christie book I could lay my hands on, she always produced a book at the festive season and…
The Secret Life of Books: Why They Mean More than Words by Tom Mole
Paperback review by Liz Dexter Tom Mole, as Professor of English Literature and Book History at the University of Edinburgh, is certainly qualified to write this Christmas-present-worthy joy of a…
The Artful Dickens by John Mullan
Reviewed by Harriet Professor John Mullan’s name will be familiar to many readers: he writes regularly in the Guardian and the London Review of Books, is the author of several…