Announcing katemacdonald.net
Why I Really Like This Book is reborn, as katemacdonald.net! Also tweeting at @KateRLTB. Your usual reading entertainment and pernickety disquisitions on books and authors that Kate really, really...
View Articlerevisit these podcasts as blogs
I'm changing media, moving the podcasts into book blogs, so you can read what I think about the books that I really, really like on katemacdonald.net. The beauty of a blogsite is that I can recycle the...
View ArticleHarry Potter and The Deathly Hallows
It's the last Harry Potter book, and what a finale. All ends tied up, nothing flapping loose, all deaths accounted for, grudges paid off, revenges taken, and people growing up. For readers who like to...
View ArticleHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The gloom increases in Hary Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and there are devious dark doings in Voldemort's camp for us to worry about as well. Horcruxes become especially tricky. Ginny and Harry...
View ArticleHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
It just gets gloomier as the Ministry of Magic gets more authoritarian. The Order of the Phoenix is part teenage angst festival, and part 1984 with wands. Everything that could go wrong when teenagers...
View ArticleHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The biggest, the most dangerous, the emotionally tormenting so far, The Goblet of Fire is where Ron starts getting stroppy, Harry gets butterflies in his stomach, and Cedric doesn't do so well. It's a...
View ArticleHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
It's the Knight Bus, and Sirius Black, and Buckbeak, and Dementors, and Lupin: Harry Potter begins to grow up in The Prisoner of Azkaban so much we can almost see the hormones taking effect.
View ArticleHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Pod 2 in my survey of the Harry Potter novels. The Chamber of Secrets is about growing up and getting embarrassed, duels, the basilisk in the pipes, and interesting hallucinations brought on by an...
View ArticleHarry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Also called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first Harry Potter novel is a great source for questions and a lot of plotting for the future. But it's most rewarding as a journey into wonder...
View ArticleOwen Wister and Lady Baltimore
Lady Baltimore is a social satire of the Deep South, set in Charleston at the turn of the 19th century, where the New Rich of Newport have come down to see if Hortense Rieppe the fast modern girl will...
View ArticleSylvia Townsend Warner and The Corner That Held Them
Mud, fog, small beer, and not very much change in conversation over a lifetime spent in a 12th-century convent in eastern England. Sylvia Townsend Warner's pioneering historical novel The Corner That...
View ArticleJohn Buchan and Jacobite novels
For those with a fondness for Bonnie Prince Charlie, for lace jabots, snuff taken at the wrist, and the skirl of pipes on a wet foggy morning in the Highlands, these novels by John Buchan on the...
View ArticleGeoffrey Trease and The Crown of Violet
It's around 400 BC in Athens, and there's a plot to overthrow the city-state's democracy with a dictator. It's also the Spring Festival, and Alexis has entered a play against Aristophanes, which he and...
View ArticleNaomi Mitchison and The Blood of the Martyrs
We're in Ancient Rome, and we're waiting for the lions, with Naomi Mitchison's fine novel The Blood of the Martyrs. Not everyone in the cells is a Christian, and not everyone waiting to see the blood...
View ArticleLindsey Davis and Falco
Visit Ancient Rome and the nastier outposts of the Roman Empire in the company of Marcus Didius Falco, private detective and lovable put-upon family man, in the excellent novels by Lindsey Davis. For a...
View Articletalking about The Thirty-Nine Steps on BBC Radio Three
On Tuesday 24 June 2014 I'll be / will have been one of the interviewees on a BBC Radio Three programme called Free Thinking, discussing John Buchan's novel The Thirty-Nine Steps and its relationship...
View ArticleH G Wells and Mr Britling Sees It Through
Watch the First World War happen to a small village in Essex, and the household of Mr Britling, Everyman pundit and writer, with a son and friend who have just joined up, and very mixed feelings about...
View Articlewhoops, too early ...
Due to mechanical failure, the sun in my eyes, and a distracting essay-marking deadline, I released the Hemingway post immediately, today, rather than on 30 May, when it was supposed to be. Now I don't...
View ArticleErnest Hemingway and Islands in the Stream
Go fishing with Ernest Hemingway's novel Islands in the Stream and catch big man's stuff, like bonito, and U-boats, and bodies. Marvel at prose so pared down that it's just core, all peel flung out to...
View ArticleNancy Mitford and Wigs on the Green - History Podcasters collage
The History Podcasters got together recently to record a collage edition on the theme of Terrible Leaders. You can hear all three collage programmes (each 30 minutes long) on www.historypodcasters.com....
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