Monica Dickens and My Turn to Make the Tea
It;s the 1950s and Monica Dickens is a very junior reporter on a very local paper. It's always her turn to make the tea. She bicycles everywhere. She lodges with the landlady from hell. Her stories...
View ArticleTerry Pratchett and The Truth
Brace yourself for deep truths about newspapers and reporting, in a world where the characters have names with a strange resemblance to typefaces, and where no magic is used to make the news, only...
View ArticleMark Twain and A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King ArthUr - Five Novels...
Here's a fine satire about ignorance and primitive living at Camelot, where the benign reign of King Arthur needs improving. Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee takes over the kingdom and brings the 19th...
View ArticleT H White and The Once and Future King - Five Novels about King Arthur
Not one novel about Arthur, but five: The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, The Ill-Made Knight, The Candle in the Wind, and The Book of Merlyn. Everything you ever wanted to know...
View ArticleRosemary Sutcliff and The Lantern-Bearers - Five Novels about King Arthur
A late period Rosemary Sutcliff novel, The Lantern-Bearers is set when the Roman Empire has pulled out of Britain, and there is no-one to hold back the Saxon hordes except the Roman-trained Aurelius...
View ArticleMary Stewart and The Crystal Cave - Five Novels about King Arthur
The story of Merlin, and how King Uther got to the Duchess of Cornwall's bedroom, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave fills in the gaps before Arthur's birth with the brilliant and believable story of...
View ArticleSusan Cooper and The Dark is Rising - Five Novels about King Arthur
The Dark is Rising was a set of excellent novels for decades before it was a film. Susan Cooper's 1970s series is timeless, a real world quest fantasy steeped in Arthurian magic, where Merlin is a...
View ArticleRosy Barnes and Sadomasochism for Accountants - Really Randoms 1
It's not at all what you think it is, although a lot of Rosy Barnes's novel Sadomasochism for Accountants takes place in a fetish club. Half of the characters are sweeties, the other half are vile:...
View ArticleGene Wolfe and The Shadow of the Torturer - Really Randoms 3
Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer is about Severian, an apprentice torturer who is banished by his masters. His crime: to allow a client to die sooner than the law had intended. His mission: to...
View ArticleRudyard Kipling and The Naulahka - Really Randoms 3
Rudyard Kipling's jointly written novel with a writer we've all forgotten is really very good. The Naulakha may be spelt wrong (Kipling's fault) but its a gripping mix of Victorian adventure and...
View ArticleLouisa May Alcott and Good Wives - Really Randoms 4
In Kipling's The Naulakha, Kate goes to New York to train as a nurse. In Louisa May Alcott's Good Wives, Jo goes to New York to work independently as a writer, and turns into a hack journalist for the...
View ArticleSusan Coolidge and the What Katy Did books - Really Randoms 5
Three stories of a girl growing up in Ohio, in Connecticut, and travelling in Europe, which make a wonderful picture of 19th-century Victorian America. Susan Coolidge's What Katy Did, What Katy Did At...
View ArticleE C Bentley and Trent's Last Case - Novels of 1913
Trent's Last Case is a very modern Edwardian detective novel, with a Bohemian setting, the police in a cosy relationship with the media, and a cracking good mystery to solve ahead of the...
View ArticleJohn Buchan and The Power-House - Novels of 1913
Join perplexed lawyer Edward Leithen in John Buchan's The Power-House as he battles assassination attempts in central London, and avoids kidnap by building site, just because he's made the connection...
View ArticleSaki and When William Came - Novels of 1913
When the German Empire invaded the British Empire's homeland, the British either scuttled off to Delhi, to live out their tragic, dispossessed lives in tea plantations where they could salute the Union...
View ArticleUna L Silberrad and Keren of Lowbole - Novels of 1913
The totally forgotten author Una L Silberrad and her totally wonderful historical novel of 1913, Keren of Lowbole: witchcraft, alchemy, theology, attempted adultery, a heroine more interested in being...
View ArticleHugh Walpole and Fortitude - Novels of 1913
Hugh Walpole's Fortitude is a weighty epic of London literary life, Cornish Gothic, Victorian anarchists and the necessity of a public school background for getting on in life. it also contains the...
View Articleone day at the 2013 Edinburgh Book Festival
Core sampling from the world of book publishing and book festivals in the 30th year of the Edinburgh Book Festival. With extra coverage of The Sorries at The Fringe.
View ArticleRose Macaulay and The Lee Shore - Novels of 1913
Oh, the awful fate of slithering down the social slope and losing one's class, one's home, one's respectability, but never one's honour. The public school morals of England are given pathos in Rose...
View ArticleArnold Bennett and The Regent - Novels of 1913
Bursley businessman takes on London snobbery about provincials and amateurs to build a theatre and run it for profit. Arnold Bennett's The Regent is sparkling, dogged, deeply satisfying, and a...
View ArticleE F Benson and Dodo's Daughter - Novels of 1913
Hang out with the frivolous young things of 1913 in a novel that's half Victorian epigram and half modernist stream of consciousness. Dodo's day is not yet over, as she's about to begin her third...
View ArticleSax Rohmer and The Mystery of Fu Manchu - Novels of 1913
Fiendish plots, deadly traps, poison delivered by centipede, psychotropic fungi and man-eating mushrooms. Sax Rohmer invents lots of very intricate ways to kill people, delivered by Fu Manchu with...
View ArticleElizabeth von Arnim and Enchanted April – Novels of 1922
In a wet and cold February, do you ever dream of escaping to a small Italian castle for sunshine and wisteria? Join four unhappy ladies who are longing for the right kind of love, and watch them unfold...
View ArticleJohn Buchan and Huntingtower - Novels of 1922
It's got hidden jewels, a princess who can run a mile, teenage military commanders, and the rejevenation of a retired grocer. Huntingtower is John Buchan's most delightful and exhilarating outdoor...
View ArticleRose Macaulay and Mystery at Geneva - Novels of 1922
Secrets and politics and multiple kidnappings at the League of Nations, and some pointed messages about early feminism. Rose Macaulay's Mystery at Geneva is a fine satirical novel in the mystery mode....
View ArticleUna L Silberrad and The Honest Man - Novels of 1922
It's the late 17th century, and Lady Otterby's spendthrift husband is betraying his friends and spending any money he can borrow as if honour was going out of fashion. Una L Silberrad's The Honest Man...
View ArticleE F Benson and Miss Mapp - Novels of 1922
Social tyranny in a small town, in E F Benson's novel of low cunning and outrageous scheming, Miss Mapp. For readers who play bridge for blood.
View ArticleP G Wodehouse and The Adventures of Sally - Novels of 1922
The Adventures of Sally is set in 1920s New York, London, the stage and the French Riviera, after she inherits a fortune. Also starring several besotted young men, a lousy boxer, two devious leading...
View Articlethe end of 1922, and something new coming up
Why I can't recommend Sapper's The Black Gang, and why I'm taking a short break.
View ArticleDornford Yates - Stuff That Really Happened 1
Dornford Yates's first two novels - Anthony Lyveden and Valerie French - were about the awful fate of the gentleman ex-officer who had to earn his living in domestic service. More melodrama comes from...
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....
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 ArticleAnnouncing 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...
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