October Words. 1. Recent goings-onHello! Winter has come. Well, actually it’s autumn - basically not Summer, though. Although we have had a bit of an Indian Summer in the UK.2. For the Misfortune fansThe characters are taking over. Thank goodness for writing.3. For the DaydreamersThe words people use, in fiction and in real life, reveal a lot about them.“All …
Category: Literature
Interviewed at the Drovers Gap
Interviewed at the Drovers Gap by the charming Henry Mitchell, who reads and writes in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Northern Carolina. Henry to Henry... https://droversgap.blogspot.com/2021/02/henry-to-henry.html Picture from Henry's Website DROVERS GAP. . . A STORY PLACE, NOT TOTALLY A FICTION, NOT QUITE ON A MAP. February 25, 2021HENRY TO HENRY… I read Henry Anderson's …
Words for Mud, Ray Bradbury, Catherine Crowe.
Catherine Crowe Recent goings on. Hello. It’s February 2021. As I type this the rain is beating on the conservatory roof. Nearly all the paths around where I live are thick mud. Other words for mud, incidentally, include slobber, slabber, slutch, and lutulence, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. An unpleasant new variant of COVID, first detected …
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Audiobooks and me.
Audiobooks Saved my Life. I lay silent for months, unable to move. Then, one day, words come out of the darkness and exploded in my ears. Not everyone likes talking books. “You’re not getting the whole thing”, my friend Dave once claimed, “just an actor’s interpretation of it. I want to read it for myself.” …
Looking Something Up in an Actual Book.
An interest in Buddhism, a fluctuating chronic illness and a near-fatal bout of cancer has left me with a feeling that belongings aren’t terribly important. However, probably because I studied English at University, I absolutely love my bonkers, hard-to-use, compact Oxford English Dictionary. We’ve been through a lot together. The complete twenty volumes of the …
Edgar Allan Poe’s Less Successful First Detective.
Edgar Allan Poe It is often claimed Edgar Allan Poe invented the modern detective story in “The Murder in the Rue Morgue.” When the character of C. Auguste Dupin first appeared in 1841, the word detective did not yet exist. Poe claimed this new type of story was a tale of “ratiocination”- in which the …
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Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Green Tea” and The Horror of Psychological Horror
Illustration from Sheridan Le Fanu's "Green Tea," by Edward Ardizzone. There are no monsters in real-life, right? No ghosts, vampires or werewolves? So to avoid being laughed at some supernatural writers choose to go down the psychological route. As is the case, for instance, in the short story "Green Tea," written by Irish author Joseph Sheridan …
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