Category Archives: Books

Reading List 7

A total of 60 for the first six months of the year (helped by having very little gainful employment for most of the time). Literature Oranges are not the Only Fruit — Jeanette Winterson The Passion — Jeanette Winterson To … Continue reading

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Gutenberging 2017

This year I finally managed to complete and post two long-term projects. The first was Pictographs of the North American Indians — A preliminary paper by the American Bureau of Ethnology, which started on Distributed Proofreaders back in 2004. It’s … Continue reading

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Reading List 6

40 books read in the second half of 2016. The emphasis has been on “straight” literature, mainly because I’ve been working through some of the mountain of paper books which I bought in my youth and never got round to … Continue reading

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Homer, Language, and the Colleen Bawn

Recently, the third and concluding volume of Gladstone’s Homer and the Homeric Age finally made it to Project Gutenberg. The scanned versions available online all failed to include a map which was inserted at the end of the volume, showing … Continue reading

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Reading List 5

52 books finished in the last six months (though the number is inflated slightly by the small, if well-formed, Wildeana). Literature Girl Meets Boy — Ali Smith Between the Assassinations — Aravind Adiga Last Man in Tower — Aravind Adiga … Continue reading

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The History of the Highland Clearances

The latest book which I’ve had posted on Project Gutenberg is The History of the Highland Clearances, by Alexander Mackenzie. This was published in 1914, revised from a first edition of 1883; besides Mr Mackenzie’s own accounts, there are pieces … Continue reading

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Reading List 4

I finished 42 books in the second half of 2015. I had a fairly decent spread of (non-mutually exclusive) categories, I think; starting with Real Books How to be Both — Ali Smith High-Rise — J. G. Ballard The Narrow … Continue reading

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Maternity and Melville

Two recent completed books at Project Gutenberg: the first was “Maternity”, a collection of letters by working class women, published in 1915. The writers were officials of the Women’s Co-operative Guild, so typically rather better off than the average manual … Continue reading

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Literary Scotland

Through a combination of accident and design, our Scottish journey intersected with several literary sites. Our main target on the trip was the Cairngorms, at more or less the centre of which are the Pools of Dee: At the time … Continue reading

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The Wallace

This week, The Wallace by Blind Harry, or Henry the Minstrel, was finally posted to Project Gutenberg. It took just under two years for it to work its way through the Distributed Proofreaders site, which is actually pretty good, given … Continue reading

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