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All the books I read in 2024
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A paper on the connections between Diana Wynne Jones’ Fire and Hemlock, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, and other literature.
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A roundup of the books I read in 2023.
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A preview of my travel writing book.
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My goal this year is to read 100 books, but also regularly write small reviews of them. Here’s the first instalment, with Alan Garner, Seanan McGuire and Matt Wesolowski.
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I’ve made a children’s activity book about various locations in Margate, with open-ended drawing and writing activities that encourage observation, exploration and creativity, with very clear layouts and instructions. Suitable for age 7+.
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This is probably the end of the line for me making zines. There’s no big dramatic or bad reason, I just hadn’t been feeling it any more for quite a while. However I’ve racked up quite a back catalogue, so it felt like time to do a compilation. I haven’t put absolutely everything in, because…
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In the Bonesetter’s Waiting Room, The Making of Home and Woman on the Edge of Time. Indian medicine, social history, the brutality of psychiatric hospitals and ecofeminist utopias.
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I’ve been working on these comics for a while now, and the first collection is now available for pre-order. It has some older black and white comics redone in colour, and some entirely new stuff. I am aiming to send them to the printers at the end of March, with delivery in April. ÂŁ8.50. UK…
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My reading for January and February
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(Forbidden Books by Alexander Rossi) Every year I do the Goodreads Challenge. In 2020 my target was 52 books and I ended up reading 56. It looks like I won’t be going anywhere much until March this year due to lockdown and lockdown-related unemployment, so I’ve set this year’s target to an ambitious 100 (which…
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Happy Christmas, if you celebrate it. I was brought up unreligious, by unbelieving parents, in a not very religious country, and there are no young children in my immediate family, so I’m not that fussed about Christmas these days (and as I live in a Tier 4 lockdown area, all my plans had to be…
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Another charity shop book- this time from the 70s. It’s a slightly strange mix of technicolour things made from recycling bin objects or fabric scraps, and then a section about making candles.
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This edition has a behind the scenes of Captain Pugwash, extracts from Tove Jansson, Jill Patton-Walsh, an article about CS Lewis, and interviews with various different authors.
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Another book from a charity shop in Austria. I love how incredibly cack-handed some of the cakes are. Most themed cake books are impossibly professional, these ones actually look like the result you’d realistically get.
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I got this craft book for kids from a charity shop in Austria earlier this year. Austria doesn’t have the same volume of charity shops as the UK, but when you do find one they’re usually really good, especially in small towns, where vintage isn’t really a big thing.
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This charity shop fancy dress book is certainly… something. Lots of 80s actors modelling the costumes.
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After finishing the Borges project, I realised that one of the book covers with a little alteration and the addition of a cow parsley silhouette I already had, also worked for another fictional book from a favourite novel of mine-the collection of short stories titled “Times Out of Mind” and “Stories from Nowhere” in the…
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Jorge Luis Borges loved to create fictional books in his stories, using non-fiction formats like book reviews of non-existent books to tell a story. If you haven’t read any Borges I can’t recommend him highly enough- I would recommend the story collection Labyrinths. I have also linked to free online versions of the stories these…
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Tim and the Hidden People is a series of children’s school reading books from the late 70s/early 80s that a lot of schools had. They have a strange, bleak folk-horror atmosphere, and the illustrations in the first three collections are a little uncanny valley. Tim is always walking along lonely canal paths with strict instructions…
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My living room has a very handy built-in bookshelf (although the amount of different compartments meant it took a long time when I moved in to paint over the old nicotine-stained paint). The majority of my books live on the bigger bookshelves in my bedroom, but the living room houses the Shame Pile.
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This was my April 2014 piece for Storyboard , a writing site with monthly prompts run by a friend. I couldn’t think of a story idea, so I wrote a kind of essay instead.The theme that month was “Ichi-go ichi-e”: a never again moment. I couldn’t think of a story, so I decided to talk…
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I thought while stuck at home I’d do regular posts showing things I like which other people may not have heard of. Ivan Bilibin was a Russian artist most famous for his lavishly illustrated books of fairy tales taking inspiration from Japanese wood prints, Russian icon painting and Ye Olde Slavonic script.
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A few years back I made a zine with articles about writer Diana Wynne Jones (probably best known for writing Howl’s Moving Castle), and an interview I conducted with her before she sadly died. The paper edition is still available here, but for the foreseeable future I can only send physical copies to the UK.…
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Every year I take part in the Good Reads challenge. My target this year was 52 books. I completed it with one for luck- 53 books this year. As I read each book I took a photo for instagram and gave a brief opinion- I’ve copied and pasted them all here. I’ve separated them into…
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If you study Latin in the UK, there’s a very good chance you will use the Cambridge Latin books from the 1970s. Although they’re forty years old, they’re still in print (and also on the Apple Store), and have a special place in people’s hearts.Â
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Here is another scan of a vintage book I have had since I was a child. This is a collection of myths and legends from around the world. It was originally Czech and translated to English, and has a large selection of central European stories less known in the UK, along with stories from places…
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Around this time of year on the Solstice there are two things I like to do as a personal tradition- go for a walk to Botany Bay around sunset and read the ghost stories of M.R. James. Includes full text of Whistle My Lad, and links to read the stories and watch the 1970s films…
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I found this book in a charity shop. It’s a practical guide to alternative living in London from 1969/70 covering a wide range of topics from rent laws, to sexuality, drugs and communes to join. This is the first edition, there were yearly updates throughout the 70s.
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Here are some scans from a 1970s craft book I got from my grandparents’ house.
