What’s the book you turn to?
Do you have a particular book that you turn to when you’re feeling lost or confused? Something that you’ve read or dipped into dozens of times, and that always makes you feel better? For me, that book is the Tao…
Rutherford Park by Elizabeth Cooke
Do you ever get the feeling that you’re not the target audience for a particular book? The cover of this one set my alarm bells ringing with its references to Downton Abbey and Catherine Cookson and Edwardian English country houses.…
Dog and Butterfly
Tolstoy famously wrote that “All happy families are alike”, but John Philip Riffice’s novel Dog and Butterfly proves that all good rules also have their exceptions. It’s a novel about a family that is, in general, very happy. The love between…
The Rag
I like literary magazines. I read a lot of them, although I don’t review them on here too often. I just read a new one called The Rag (well it’s new to me, but this is Issue 5 so I…
Meditation by James Hewitt
Meditation is a difficult subject for a ‘how to’ guide, because ultimately it doesn’t really matter how you do it. This is a pretty good attempt, though. James Hewitt gives the basic advice on posture, breathing, etc., and then takes…
The Almost Lizard by James Higgerson
James Higgerson’s debut novel follows a teenage boy whose habit of imagining himself in television soap operas develops from harmless fantasy into a cause for suicide. In a striking opening chapter, Danny Lizar announces that today is his 21st birthday…
A Primer of Freudian Psychology by Calvin S. Hall
I'd recommend this short, 120-page book to anyone who wants a lucid introduction to Freud's main ideas.
Bottled Air by Caleb Klaces
I read this book twice in quick succession. It’s only a short collection, 70 pages of generously-spaced poems and a few pages of notes, so it didn’t take long. Interestingly, the two readings were very different. The first time, I…