Authors Electric

This time last year I opened the Christmas month by waxing lyrical over one of my favourite books as a child: The Magic Pudding , the Australian children’s classic by Norman Lindsay. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster By Book, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/ w/index.php?curid=14265163 So this December I thought I’d follow that by enthusing about another great favourite: The Phantom Tollbooth by the American author, Norton Juster.  This glorious fantasy novel, bursting with puns and wordplay, leads Milo, a boy with nothing to do except drive his pedal car, into the Kingdom of Wisdom which has been rent asunder by disagreement between the two brothers ruling it. In Dictionopolis, King Azaz the Unabridged (a title I fell in love with on the spot) maintains that words are more important than numbers, while at the other end of the land, the Mathemagician insists, from his fortress of Digitopolis, that - yes, you’ve guessed it - the reverse is true. As a result the princesses, ...

Wikimedia It's nearly Christmas and we're all even shorter of money than usual, so -- what to give as Christmas presents? BOOKS! Books, of course. And here's a link to BookShepherd, a site where you can find books recommended by 'authors and super-readers,' people who really know a good book when they find it. Book Shepherd You can even tailor your search by consulting such lists as 'The best books by journalists which capture a moment in time or history' or 'The best books that show life in the big city isn't all glitz and glam.' Recently, Book Shepherd asked me (and even some other writers) to report the best three books they'd read in the last year. Here's my Book Shepherd three... Follow the link to read the reviews There's also Book Shepherd's   '100 Best Books of 2023'   -- as voted for by '1,021 writers and super-readers. And the winner is.... You have to go and find out for yourself. But if you're buying ...

When I was a kid, this was my favorite time of year. Not really Christmas, per se, but the weeks leading up to it. I loved the TV specials, especially A Charlie Brown Christmas , How the Grinch Stole Christmas , and Frosty the Snowman . I also liked the Rankin-Bass stop-motion specials, but they often scared the hell out of me (especially the Abominable Snowman in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer ). I loved the sappy smell of the Christmas tree, and I especially loved the electric candles my parents put in the windows every year (they provided a better than excellent light by which I could read in bed without anyone paying heed to the brightness in the room). Seriously, these things could light up a bedroom like St. Patrick's Cathedral. My favorite bit, though, was none of these things. It wasn't the opening of presents either: After all, by noon, that joy was spent to be replaced by having to clean up the piles of wrapping paper and then go to some relative's house fo...

Christmas Day will be here in less than a week. The street decorations have been lit for the past month. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone. The retail stores are counting their footfall and profits, and wondering whether there will be a last minute rush. Children are writing their Santa letters, and parents are ignoring their ever increasing credit card spending. Am I the only one who wonders, in the midst of this spending frenzy, where the magic has gone, the simple pleasures, and the enjoyment of what was once a religious festival. Memory Lane is sometimes a place it’s better not to visit. Everything in the past wasn’t perfect, and life for many has improved substantially, but in the process maybe we have become more disillusioned and less satisfied with the simple pleasures of the past. However, the temptation to wander through Christmases past is beckoning. There were no expensive presents left in the stocking I pinned up every year when I was a young ...

It’s (almost) that time of year again, when the entire Western world embarks upon a huge sweaty orgy of buying and selling, and we all demand to have our stockings well and truly stuffed. When having fun is mandatory, and rapidly-sobering revellers are admitted to A&E Departments after attempting injudiciously ambitious dance moves at office parties. It’s... No, wait! There’s no way I can say it as well as this gentleman: Let the Festive foolishness begin! I try to hate Christmas, I really do. I fulminate against the crass commercialism of it all, at the way a jolly Midwinter festival has been hijacked by the crazed forces of global hyper-Capitalism. But the moment I see a twinkly Christmas tree or hear the strains of Jingle Bell Rock , all is in vain. Sooner or later, my inner Scrooge always gets socked in the mouth by my inner six-year-old. He's not going down without a fight, though... Someone – it might have been my inner six-year-old, come to t...