Embracing the Echoes: The Significance and Allure of Literary Retellings
'The concept of reimagining an existing story is relatively new in the context of storytelling, emerging more prominently in recent years.'
Rabelais’s Gargantua: Formulating Free Will in the Twenty-First Century
"It can feel, at times, that various sources are all fighting to influence you. Not Rabelais."
Give a Book, Give a Smile!
"If it were up to me, I would make every day International Book Giving Day."
Dahl in the Dock; or, the publishing industry and its consequences
"Modern editors aim to unanchor texts from their historical moorage."
The Death and Resurrection of Z-Library
"Z-Library opened up doors for people who were barred by too many locked doors."
Of Libraries, With Love
"Here we are in a city of libraries, and it is never enough."
My Favourite Childhood Book: Anne of Green Gables
"Anne is such an iconic figure in children’s literature that I’m sure many relate to my enjoyment of her character"
Babel, or the Beauty of Multilingualism
Emerald Ace-Acquah reflects on the complexities of language, colonisation, and power, as explored in R. F. Kuang's new novel.
Beyond the Etonians: Simon Kuper’s Chums in today’s Oxford
"If the structure of undergraduate life then had such adverse outcomes and is so worthy of condemnation – and the structure fundamentally hasn’t changed – what does that imply for Oxford now?"
Maxim Biller and Ukraine: The resignation of a German-Jewish author?
I am well aware that for the sake of switching off from university, or from the cruel news about Ukraine, it is better to...
Jewish reading recommendations
It is these expressions of Jewish life before the war - beset with jokes, neuroses, and anguish - which stay alive long after reading the texts. I would highly recommend.
Review – Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention
a review of the book 'Stolen Focus' by Johann Hari
Rubbish representation in schools, syllabuses and beyond
But it’s not good enough to leave it to often privileged tutors, canon-compilers and Education Secretaries to dictate which texts we study. Time and time again, they have failed to achieve even the remotest degree of representation, a damning outcome in a subject which is so linked to identity and the self. The texts we study at school and beyond should be chosen and shaped by the diverse populations reading them.
Family-owned Blackwell’s bookstore put up for sale for the first time
Blackwell’s, the iconic family-owned bookstore, has been put up for sale for the first time in its 143-year history.
