Why read the book? Nick Needham wrote 2000 Years of Christ's Power Volume 3: The Renaissance and Reformation. It is the third book in his clear and readable church history series. This volume covers the period from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation up to the early seventeenth century. Needham explains how new ideas, the printing press, and dissatisfaction with the church led to major changes. He gives clear accounts of Martin Luther, John Calvin, the…
The always stimulating Tom Whitwell was kind enough to put up with me asking him for some recommendations...
The first time I read UBTech wanted to build robotic replicas of your dead grandmother, I laughed. Then I remembered I once cried when a Roomba got stuck under a couch, and I thought: okay, maybe I am not the objective observer this story needs.But here we are. On June 30, 2026, at a launch event in Shenzhen that felt part iPhone keynote, part séance, UBTech unveiled the UWORLD U1 series: what the company calls the world's first full-size, mass-produced ultra-bionic humanoid robot. Silicone…
It’s weird, the things you remember from when you were a teenager. For instance, I used to devour TV reviews published in newspapers, whether I watched the shows in question or not. There are so many which stuck in my head, which I’ve never been able to trace again. I recall a particularly mean-spirited review of the final episode of Cheers, where some misery guts said that they couldn’t think of anything worse than being in a pub “where everybody knows your name”. Not even I would write…
Charles Henri Ford’s avant-garde magazine has been a sporadic visitor to these pages over the past 20 years, the subject of occasional posts as well as my complaints about the difficulties of finding online sources for important magazines and journals. The difficulties are now over where View is concerned…or almost over because this cache is an incomplete run, with the last seven issues absent. That still gives us 30 complete issues to look through, however, so I’ll temper my complaints. The…
I do not usually read fiction. The last 10 years, I think I read no more than three fictions. They are The Martian, Ready Player One and Red Rising. I prefer to read biography and history. The intention is to learn something new that I can implement in my life. Lately, I find myself losing interest in reading. I could not bring myself to pick up any books that I am reading. I just feel worn. I would rather doom scroll than to read. I thought I have lost interest in reading. A friend suggested…
This turned out to be a week accidentally dedicated to jazz. Any fan of jazz will enjoy Fred L. Joiner’s wonderful book of poetry, The Mirror in Our Music. It includes two series of poems in which he responds to photographs. I also passed the halfway mark in my way through the fiction of Toni Morrison. I finished Jazz, the sixth of her eleven novels. It happened to be the one she wrote the year before she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Despite the title, however, the book’s plot…
Homer's epic poem The Odyssey is one of the oldest surviving works of literature and a cornerstone of world literature and Western culture, directly inspiring such modern works as James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses, 1995's episode five of Wishbone, The Coen Brothers's 2000 film O, Brother Where Art Though? and the Animal Man passages of DC's 2006 weekly comic book series 52.Now comes perhaps most consequential retelling of The Odyssey, with major talents tackling the oft-told story in a much…
Finally, after too long, we get the next in the George Chance: The Ghost Archives series from Steeger Books, which reprints the Ghost/Green Ghost series from Thrilling, written by G.T. Fleming-Roberts. The character had 14 original stories from 1940-44. He first starred in his own pulp magazine in 1940, titled The Ghost-Super Detective, for three […]
The Satanic Panic and the Secret Appeal of Forbidden BooksI am currently reading Manly Wade Wellman for my Witches of Appendix N. He has a lot of occult investigators and talks a lot about dangerous occult texts. There is a strange magic to being told a book is dangerous.Not real magic. Not the kind the pamphlets warned us about. Not the sort of thing that appears when you mispronounce something in Latin while standing in a chalk circle at midnight. I mean the older, more human kind of magic.…
Afonydd: Poems for Welsh Rivers / Cerddi Afonydd Cymruby Sian Northey (editor), Ness Owen (editor)Genres: Poetry Pages: 111 Rating: Synopsis: Lleisiau hanner cant o feirdd yn llifo gydag afonydd Cymru. Pob cerdd yn Gymraeg a Saesneg, wedi'i chyfieithu o'r naill iaith i'r llall. Fifty Welsh poets speak for and with the rivers of Wales. Every poem translated Welsh to English, English to Welsh. I really loved Afonydd. It’s a great idea for a collection, put together by Sian Northey and Ness Owen,…
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Laura Kalpakian’s memoir Undesirable is a moving and profound exploration of her brother’s undesirable military discharge during the Vietnam War, her father’s attempts to change that, and…
In a post entitled, “You’re Writing a Book. So Stop Writing a Movie,” Rebecca Makkai writes: You want to set your movie in a futuristic New York where every building has a flying car port on top and there are highways through the air and half the people are genetically modified to be 7 feet tall and the sky is red and everyone’s left hand is a phone and all the police are robots? Cool—that will take you all of about ten seconds to get across onscreen. You want to do all that stuff on the page?…
Roseanna Pendlebury Under Review:The Mulai. Munir Hachemi, translated by Julia Sanches. Coach House, July 2026. Munir Hachemi’s The Mulai, translated by Julia Sanches, presents archaeologist Dr. Cordovero’s account of his time among a people called the Mulai, who live in a habitat dome on a partially terraformed exoplanet, alongside chapters from the perspective of a number of Mulai characters. The story explores his time with them, as well as their earlier history and the time after his…
I love thee, London! for thy many men, / And for thy mighty deeds and scenes of glory. Philip James Bailey (1816-1902), London, The Angel World and Other Poems
Earlier this year, I also took part in a flash fiction challenge.Just like with the 100-word challenge, I didn’t make it to the second round. But this time, I received honorable mention, so I’m getting closer: Honorable Mention! The challenge was to write a 1,000-word story in just 48 hours, hence the “flash.” The story had to take place in an assigned location and include a specific object:GROUP: 12GENRE: Romantic ComedyLOCATION: A footbridgeOBJECT: Frozen foodHere is what I managed to…
Glory and Ruin implanted within the makings of three dragons. Centuries must pass for a dragon’s birth. This is the natural way. For this one moment the Child God decreed the magma pool would hasten. A moment elapsed. Three dragons were born, flying from the caldera. Two sisters there were and one brother too. They circled the volcano. The newborns landed and changing their forms entered the hidden city. Each dragon was struck with unbidden need, compelling desires to hoard. Glory and Ruin had…
To say yes to the world, to reproduce it, is simultaneously to re-create the world and oneself, to become the great artist, the creator. —Albert Camus Note 1: If you have not already done so, please take a moment to read and consider my Read This First page before proceeding to the essay below. The topics I write about in this essay may be triggering to some. Note 2: If you purchase items from Amazon using the book links below, I will receive a (paltry) commission. My first encounter with…
2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission. This is the weeks of Jul 6 – Jul 19. Stats Stories Finished: 3 Submissions Currently Out: 3 Submissions Total: 20 Rejections: 19 Acceptances: 0 Submissions and Responses I had two form rejections come back this week: a magazine submission for Dr. Clipboard’s Miracle Wonder Drug, and an anthology submission for Taco Cat. Not much to say for these. The anthology was a…
Some people make it into the history books by becoming world leaders. Some do so through acts of daring or heroism. Some do so by creating immortal works of art. And some, like the hero of today’s post, do so by eating an entire sheep in one sitting.It’s a funny old world.About all we know for sure about Nicholas Wood of Harrietsham, Kent, England, is that he would have been a devil at today’s “all you can eat” buffets. Virtually all of our information about him comes from a 1630 pamphlet, “The…
These aren’t polished essays or tidy aphorisms. They’re scraps I’ve carried around this month—half-heard thoughts, borrowed lines, sudden recognitions—that refused to be forgotten. Zuihitsu literally means “following the brush,” and while my version is shorter and scrappier than the classical form, the impulse feels the same: to catch what drifts across the mind before it dissolves. They’re not meant to be a system or a manifesto, just a trail of mental breadcrumbs. If any resonate, keep them.…
Happy Monday! Time for Fantasy with Friends: all the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about tropes in children’s fantasy: Is there a common trope or concept you see in children’s fantasy stories that you think would be fun to see more of in adult fantasy? I don’t actually read children’s fantasy or YA these days — at least not very often, except maaaaaybe a bit in graphic novel form — so I’m a little bit stumped here. If I think back to the…
By way of follow-up to this post: I’ve been able to publish so widely because I am always attentive to the character of the publishing house or periodical I hope to write for. What kinds of books and authors do they publish? What is their core audience? Whom do they hope to reach? I make sure that my pitches and/or drafts are well-tailored to the character of the venue, and don’t push too hard against its boundaries and conventions. I’ve made a point of this because I’ve learned that, while…
Some years ago, while reviewing Agatha Christie's The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), I claimed the biggest difference between the Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple series is that the latter never produced a genre classic or even a great detective novel – like Murder on the Orient Express (1934), The ABC Murders (1936) and Death on the Nile (1937). Even some of Christie's standalones, like And Then There Were None (1939) and Towards Zero (1944), rank higher than the best Miss Marple novels. The…
Happy 55th Birthday, Marcie! We interrupt our California Route 66 tour for a special announcement. July 20th is Peanuts’ Marcie Day, and I’m celebrating with my namesake. Over 70 distinct characters were introduced in the Peanuts comic strip during its 50-year run. My favorite, of course, was Marcie. She’s a studious character, known for her appreciation of the arts, nature, and truth, and a best friend to Peppermint Patty. Marcie was first introduced on July 20, 1971, so at age 55 this year,…
Jude continues her machinations to ensure the future of Faerie. I enjoyed this less than the first book in the series. I suppose there was more political intrigue, but it all felt a little tedious. The “romance” fizzled completely for me. I suppose it’s to be seen as a slow burn, but they should both cut their losses and move on, seriously. Betrayal, turn-around, comeuppances, it’s all in here, but I’m just not invested enough to actually care very much. Only one book left, so will finish the…
Book title: Compulsory Author: Martha Wells Rating: 4/5 Is it fair to count this as a book with only 8 pages? (It has an ISBN number, so the answer is yes!) I know nothing about the series except it has a TV show on Apple TV.
As some of you may have seen on social media recently, an enjoyable reread of Anri Yasuda’s excellent Beauty Matters: Modern Japanese Literature and the Question of Aesthetics – 1890-1930 had me caving in once again and reaching for my wallet. I ended up with four new books, one for each of the main chapters, and I’ll hopefully be getting to each of them in turn over the coming months. However, I was actually fortunate enough to get one of them as a review copy, courtesy of Prototype…
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen published 1938 This picture is Boredom, 1935 Alexander Deineka – I don’t believe Portia would have worn such a low-cut dress, BUT her elbows feature a surprising amount in the book, and there are several mentions like this one: ‘Portia nursing her elbows as though they had been a couple of loved cats’ I very much enjoyed a recent re-read of Friends and Relations by Elizabeth Bowen I liked it much more than I remembered and found a lot to talk about. So…
