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Category: Essays

February 23, 2021

Chauvo-Feminism: On Sex, Power and #MeToo by Sam Mills

Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Remember the 1990s? It was a decade where lads’ mags decorated magazine shelves in supermarkets and where Men Are from…

February 2, 2021

Reviewer’s Choice: A New Sublime – Ten Timeless Lessons on the Classics by Piero Boitani

While Shiny New Books concentrates on the new, occasionally, we give our reviewers room to share previously published – ie: ‘not Shiny New Books’…

January 21, 2021

The Passenger: Japan

Reviewed by Terence Jagger Early last year, Europa launched a new imprint “for explorers of the world”: The Passenger.  Now, the list includes Berlin,…

December 3, 2020

Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman by Rebecca Tamás

Review by Peter Reason. This elegant and engaging collection of seven essays by poet and critic Rebecca Tamás—her first prose collection—is beautifully produced as…

October 27, 2020

Happy Half-Hours: Selected Writings of A.A. Milne

Review by Simon Thomas You might be familiar with the beautiful little hardbacks from Notting Hill Editions, where they select essays and other writings…

June 16, 2020

James and Nora: A Portrait of a Marriage by Edna O’Brien

Review by Rob Spence Last year, Weidenfeld and Nicholson reissued Edna O’Brien’s 1999 biography of Joyce, an entertainingly idiosyncratic volume, which is reviewed here….

September 18, 2018

On Rape by Germaine Greer

Review by Anna Hollingsworth To say that the statistics are grim is a blatant understatement. One woman in five will experience sexual violence, but…

February 8, 2018

The Lion and the Unicorn by George Orwell

Review by Karen Langley Although George Orwell’s name resonates most strongly with us nowadays because of his great novels – in particular “Nineteen Eighty…

February 1, 2018

The Russian Soul: Selections from A Writer’s Diary by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Introduced by Rosamund Bartlett Translated by Kenneth Lantz / Olga Shartse Reviewed by Karen Langley Notting Hill Editions will probably need no introduction to…

October 6, 2016

Rasputin and Other Ironies by Teffi

Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson and Rose France Reviewed by Karen Langley One of my highlights from 2014 was the…

June 28, 2016

The Abundance by Annie Dillard

Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Annie Dillard is one of those uncategorisable writers who poke fingers into all sorts of genres. Like Adam Gopnik, Rebecca…

January 26, 2016

Unicorn: The Poetry of Angela Carter, with an Essay by Rosemary Hill

Reviewed by Harriet I was a slow starter where Angela Carter was concerned. I was given what I now think of as her masterpiece, Nights…

January 19, 2016

Gratitude by Oliver Sacks

Reviewed by Simon I’ve had the privilege of reviewing three different books by Oliver Sacks for Shiny New Books now, but this is the first…

Beautiful and Impossible Things
December 10, 2015

Beautiful and Impossible Things by Oscar Wilde

Reviewed by Karen Langley There’s always the danger that when an author becomes more famous than his works, those works will become so eclipsed…

December 1, 2015

More by Max Beerbohm

Reviewed by Simon Max Beerbohm’s name is known today, if at all, as the author of Zuleika Dobson – a curious sort of modernised Greek myth,…

October 13, 2015

Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson

Reviewed by Simon This is the third Shiny New Books issue in which I’ve had the privilege of writing about Shirley Jackson’s works –…

July 9, 2015

Cyclogeography by Jon Day

Reviewed by Victoria The term ‘psychogeography’ may sound unwieldy but it’s actually rather an intriguing and lovely notion. It ties together the ideas that…

April 9, 2015

Portrait Inside My Head by Phillip Lopate

Reviewed by Victoria Readers may recognise Phillip Lopate’s name from the anthologies of American essay writing for which he is the editor, though in…

January 29, 2015

Where I’m Reading From by Tim Parks

Reviewed by Annabel Many of us who are booklovers enjoy nothing more than reading a book about books. I’m familiar with Tim Parks through…

January 27, 2015

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

Reviewed by Simon There are plenty of copies of Virginia Woolf’s famous feminist essay A Room of One’s Own available, new and second hand, but I…

Essays on the Self by Virginia Woolf
January 20, 2015

Essays on the Self by Virginia Woolf

Reviewed by Simon I should hang my colours to the mast from the outset: for my money, Virginia Woolf is the greatest writer of…

October 20, 2014

Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcom

Review by Victoria Best I’ve been a huge fan of Janet Malcolm since reading her brilliant biography of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, The Silent…

The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman
July 22, 2014

The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman

Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell My first encounter with Alan Lightman was through his 1992 novel Einstein’s Dreams, a fictional account of the scientist during the…

July 21, 2014

The Legs of Izolda Morgan by Bruno Jasieński

Translated by Soren A. Gauger and Guy Torr Reviewed by Karen Langley The boundaries and allegiances in Europe moved and blurred continually during the…

July 17, 2014

Pleasures and Landscapes by Sybille Bedford

Reviewed by Simon Thomas Are you ready to be transported back to postwar Europe? Although this collection of essays was first published as Pleasures and…

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