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Traditional publishing doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being fast-paced, but the onslaught of AI (artificial intelligence) tools, ‘scandals’ and borderline (and over-the-line!) misuse m...

Monsters can take many forms in literature and popular culture, but what’s interesting about them is that they often represent the beliefs of an era or appear as metaphors for human fears. Monste...

In 1999, UNESCO designated 21 February as International Mother Language Day. It’s an opportunity for all of us to acknowledge and celebrate language diversity and to resist the suppression of min...

While the e-book was (incorrectly) hailed as “the death of the paperback”, many readers still love to see a well-stocked bookshelf standing pride of place. There’s just something about a frie...

If you’re environmentally conscious, don’t work in online relisting. The wastefulness will terrify you. As just one example, Amazon destroys millions of items of unsold stock (including books) ...

Mental health is a popular theme in fiction but negative stereotypes abound. Charlotte Brontë has a lot to answer for with her madwoman in the attic in the classic novel Jane Eyre. As a former cli...

We’ve all been there — you finish the last page, you close the book you were reading, and a feeling of emptiness crashes over you. You hopefully enjoyed the book, and if it was a particularly g...

Most readers have a TBR pile, even if they don’t know what a TBR pile is. In book lingo, a ”TBR Pile” is your to-be-read pile. It’s all those books that you’ve stacked up with the honest ...

In a 2013 Guardian article the novelist Penelope Lively, then aged 80, bemoaned the depiction of older characters in fiction: The stereotypes of old age run from the smiling old dear to the grumbli...

Before I began writing fiction, I was an academic living in a publish-or-perish world. I submitted articles to journals that accepted them, rejected them or (most often) asked me to revise and resu...

Minority rights aren’t only deeply important for minorities. Like the canary in the coal mine, they can also indicate a society’s flexibility, respect and overall health. Equality benefits ever...

Over the last decade, buying books online has become commonplace thanks to big-name stores. And we’re not just talking about that online-only store, either. For any reader who’s trying not to d...

As much as individuality and the support of friends, (cyberpunk) music is one of the prime thematic focuses of Oshibana Complex. In a cyberpunk future where humanity is grown rather than born and c...

Avid readers know how book can be an incredible form of escapism where almost anything is possible and you never quite know what’s going to happen next. This is especially true when we look at gr...

Books to console, inspire and escape into… With all but essential workers on lockdown, and our social lives on hold, the time seems ripe for a (lockdown) reading revolution. But this is no ho...

Magic and the fantasy fiction genre, they go together like Bert and Ernie – or should I say Frodo and Sam? Wherever you look in fantasy, you’ll see examples of magic. Lord of the Rings, of ...

When you first decide to be a writer, you might read books on how to write a blockbuster, you might work on your grammar and punctuation or you put hours of research into your favourite genre by re...

I often get to the end of a novel and think Now I know where it’s going, I’d love to read it again. But, as a book blogger reading around 150 contemporary novels a year, I rarely do. But short ...