Category Archives: Books

Homer, Language, and the Colleen Bawn

Posted on September 13, 2016 by admin

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

Posted on July 1, 2016 by admin

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

Posted on February 25, 2016 by admin

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

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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