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Continue reading →: Book Review: Literary Theory – A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler
Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler My rating: 3 of 5 stars Despite best intentions to take last year off exclusively for writing books, I found that the small amount of private tutoring work I took on to help ‘make ends meet’ while I wasn’t earning commercially…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
American Gods by Neil Gaiman My rating: 4 of 5 stars I have always wanted to read some Neil Gaiman by himself after reading the brilliantly funny ‘Good Omens’ he wrote with Terry Pratchett eleven years before ‘American Gods’. Prior that this I’d only associated Gaiman with comic books (‘Sandman’…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
Quite honestly, despite looking forward to reading a book I’d heard so much about and thought of as a brilliant idea, I found Ensler’s ‘Vagina Monologues’ awful in the extreme. The principle idea was a superb one – giving voice to women who have had to suppress sexuality and honesty…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling: The Complete Jungle Books [The Jungle Book & The Second Jungle Book] by Rudyard Kipling My rating: 4 of 5 stars Bias Alert: Any book which deals in any way with India or the Indian subcontinent automatically makes me sad – both while reading it and especially when…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
I’ll be blunt and say ‘Tales of the City’ is not the kind of book I would normally bother to read; and having now read it, it’s not a classic, I should warn you. I got hold of it because it is a favourite book of a very special friend…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: The Butterfly Effect by Jon Ronson
The Butterfly Effect by Jon Ronson My rating: 5 of 5 stars I often find myself championing strange, even unpopular, causes. Prostitution, for instance, is something I’d like to see un-demonized. Not because of some perverse predilection of mine (I’ve simply never found the idea of ‘stranger sex’ appealing) but…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’ll confess that I have only come to read this classic sci-fi novel because of the movie Bladerunner. My love for that film has been rekindled because of the sequel newly released. Those of…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy is proving to be a most annoying author, to say the least. For much of this story, her second novel, I frowned. The sense that Roy is actually a bit of a loony hasn’t left me since reading her classic ‘The God of Small Things’. ‘The Ministry of…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I have become accustomed to disappointment when picking up a relatively new book (as in, written with the last 15 years) which everyone tells me is ‘a classic’. I can think of several such books I’ve read where, at best, they are good – but certainly not worthy of the…
Hello, I’m Ken.
Welcome to Write Out Loud, my blog dedicated to all sorts of things to do with writing.
This page will be updated constantly every week with book reviews and writing-related stuff.
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Write Out Loud (Reviews and Writing) 