Category Archives: Books

Reading List 4

Posted on January 3, 2016 by admin

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

Posted on November 15, 2015 by admin

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

Posted on September 8, 2015 by admin

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

Posted on August 8, 2015 by admin

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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A Treatise of Buggs

Posted on August 2, 2015 by admin

I had some light relief recently polishing off this little book at DP. In less than 50 pages, we get the strange but true* story of how the author discovered the secret of eliminating nitts from an ancient, but unnaturally … Continue reading →

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Reading List 3

Posted on July 2, 2015 by admin

45 books finished in the first half of the year. I’d roughly divide them into: Proper Litercher Quarantine — Jim Crace All That I Am — Anna Funder The Inn at the Edge of the World — Alice Thomas Ellis … Continue reading →

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A Year at the Shore

Posted on May 23, 2015 by admin

In Andrew O’Hagan’s “Our Fathers”, the narrator as a young boy is given a book by his old teacher as a parting gift: “A Year at the Shore”, by Philip Henry Gosse. Intrigued, I found a scan of the book … Continue reading →

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A Desk-Book of Errors in English

Posted on May 9, 2015 by admin

  My latest Distributed Proofreaders book has just been posted on Project Gutenberg: A Desk-Book of Errors in English, by Frank H. Vizetelly.  I first discovered this book via a little blog post noting the flapdoodlish nature of Vizetelly’s condemnation … Continue reading →

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Reading List 2

Posted on January 1, 2015 by admin

I got through 43 books in the second half of 2014, thanks to a lot of tram rides and three weeks on a ship with no Internet. There ended up being quite a range in terms of categories: Factual Everything … Continue reading →

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Reading List

Posted on July 11, 2014 by admin

This year, I vaguely thought that it would be nice to read a book a week. Fortunately I spend a lot of time on the trams of Bratislava, which have become my reading room, and (including Audible books) I managed … Continue reading →

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