George Saunders & Claire Keegan
A look at Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These through the lens of George Saunders’s A Swim in the Pond in the Rain.
Read More'Small Things Like These': teaching notes 5
Teaching notes on the final section of Small Things Like These.
Read More'Small Things Like These': teaching notes 4
Teaching notes on Section 6 of Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These.
Read More'Small Things Like These': teaching notes 3
Teaching notes on Sections 4 and 5 of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These.
Read MoreOn Victoria Kennefick's 'Egg/Shell'
Victoria Kennefick’s second collection Egg/Shell builds on and deepens the achievements of Eat Or We Both Starve.
Read More'Small Things Like These': teaching notes 2
Second series of teaching notes on Small Things Like These, covering Section 3.
Read More'Small Things Like These': teaching notes 1
Post 1 of Teaching Notes on Claire Keegan’s novel 'Small Things Like These.
Read More'Small Things Like These': resources and links
A summary of useful resources and links on Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These. Notes follow in other posts.
Read MoreGabriel Josipovici's '100 Days'
Gabriel Josipovici’s 100 Days is an account both of the first three months of the pandemic, and of the author’s deep engagement with culture during his long life.
Read MoreDonna Leon's 'Wandering Through Life'
Donna Leon, at the age, has written a ‘memoir’ in the form of 30 vignettes about her life and cultural interests.
Read MoreTom Needham's 'Explicit English Teaching'
Tom Needham’s Explicit English Teaching is a rare example of a book for our subject that is based on the principles of cognitive science.
Read MoreBooks of the Year, 2023
My Books of 2023.
Read MoreReading Catch-up, December 2023
Some short reviews which first appeared in the Fortnightly since the summer.
Read MoreOn Eclectic Reading
A reflection on reading eclectically, and on how books connect to each other in surprising and fruitful ways.
Read MoreChetna Maroo's 'Western Lane'
Chetna Maroo’s short tight début novel tells the story of an 11 year-old girl who has lost her mother, and the ways she, her sisters and father try to cope, especially through the unlikely medium of the game of squash.
Read MoreMartin Doyle's 'Dirty Linen'
Martin Doyle’s Dirty Linen: the Troubles in my Home Place is a powerful mixture of memoir, journalism and history. In it, the lives of people murdered in a single parish during the Troubles are given due attention.
Read More'Sentence Models for Creating Writing' by Christopher Youles.
Christopher Youles’s Sentence Models for Creative Writing is a useful short book for English teachers, properly sub-titled ‘A practical resource for teaching writing.’
Read MoreLaura Cumming's 'Thunderclap'
Laura Cumming’s marvellous Thunderclap: a memoir of art and life & sudden death mulls over our gaps in the knowledge of the artist Carel Fabritius, but it is about so much more, especially her father, the Scottish artist James Cumming.
Read MoreWilliam Wall's 'Empty Bed Blues'
William Wall’s latest novel, Empty Bed Blues, is the story of an Irishwoman whose life has been torn apart by her husband’s betrayals . A small town in Liguria in Northern Italy helps her see how she might live again.
Read MoreEmily Dickinson Face to Face
Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s Emily Dickinson: Face to Face is a brilliant evocation of her aunt’s life next door in Amherst, Massachusetts.
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