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Tiger of Talmare by Nina Scott is a novella that I stumbled across while I was browsing Amazon for contemporary science fiction written by women. Mel is a space pirate who has been hired to hijack a spaceship carrying the cryogenically frozen Zach to be tried for a massacre on Talmare. Zach is a tiger-human…
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The Hidden Empire by Kevin J. Anderson is the first book in The Saga of Seven Suns series which runs to seven books. It’s a meaty space opera of around 660 pages. A nice substantial book to really get my teeth into. In theory. Humanity expanded out into the universe in generation ships. They encountered…
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Simile: a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is like a rose”. Similes are useful as a descriptive shortcut. They rely on the reader understanding what qualities a rose has that might be applied to a woman. Is it that she is a particular colour? Capable of…
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I love a big book – it’s very satisfying. There is a depth of immersion that just can’t be achieved in anything less than 500 pages. The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George is a big book at 960 pages and it is well worth the effort. The memoirs tell the story of the whole life of Cleopatra;…
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So, how do you review a book you didn’t finish? There might be a few more of these this year. A Diary of The Lady by Rachel Johnson is an account of her time as editor of The Lady magazine. She is the sister of Boris Johnson, a columnist for one of the broadsheets, and…
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I love new words. Especially when I’ve been looking for them for a long time. For ages I been trying to think of a way to describe those little phrases and saying that seem harmless but are actually harmful. They’re often said without intent, but tend to provoke defensiveness when challenged. Lo and behold, someone…
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Our lives are controlled by the things we believe and we’re not totally aware of everything we believe. Our beliefs can be revealed to us in the little phrases and sayings that we like to use. One of mine is ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’ and variations on that theme. The belief is that if…
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New for 2012! Book reviews for non-fiction titles! I read quite a bit of non-fiction and, as my reviews have slid away from being purely about what I’ve learned about writing through reading into more traditional book review territory, I thought it was time I started recording those as well. First book of the year…
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Under the label ‘Things I wish I’d written’, because they express a point I’ve been wanting make for ages, is this post from The F-Word blog on that hateful phrase ‘can’t you take a joke?‘ When someone says this to you, it isn’t because you had a sense of humour failure, it’s because they’re being hostile.
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I got a Kindle for Christmas. Yay me. Not exactly newsworthy on its own, but I noticed something interesting the other day. When I’m reading a book I get a tactile experience that reminded me of the habit forming behaviours that go along with smoking. With the Kindle, my hands are fidgety. I’m not a luddite…
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Boudica Marginalia 