Keith Oatley is a novelist and professor of cognitive psychology at the Univeristy of Toronto. He has some remakable things to say about the act of reading. His book, Such Stuff as Dreams suggests that when we read, our brains interpret social interactions in a work of fiction as the real thing – as far as [...]
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. . . written by Tom Cunliffe, of East Sussex, England (to read more about me see my About page).
It consists of book reviews and more general articles about reading and currently receives over 10,000 unique visitors each month. So far 290 book reviews have been published. My currently-reading shelf:  This website is archived for posterity in the British Library's UK Web Archive 
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This is a review of a book I was sent by Icon Books, but at my request – I would have purchased it anyway, especially after having read it, so thanks to Icon. I have been looking forward to reading Love, Sex, Death and Words for some time, having enjoyed John Sutherland’s earlier books like [...] As an avid reader I enjoy “books about books” and this one certainly falls into that category. Imagine a couple of lovers of literature who get the opportunity to open a book-shop which only sells “good” books, those which meet a criteria of literary worth, deliberately ignoring the current literary prizes and the year’s [...] British readers may remember Vitali Vitaliev from his time as Moscow correspondent on David Frost’s 1990s television programme, Saturday Night Clive, and many broadcasts on BBC Radio 4. Vitali was born in the Ukraine, eventually defecting to the West, living in Britain and Australia, and eventually returning to London where he is a successful journalist [...] I started to read the books of Franz Kafka as a young man and found them remarkably relevant to me at the time, describing as they do a sense of alienation from mainstream society which so fitted in with 1960/70s counter-culture. Working in my first boring office job, the thought of waking up as a [...] I suppose one of the quickest way to get an idea about someone is to look at their bookcase, or even better, to talk to them about books which have inspired them and guided them through life. Quite a few writers have been tempted to write about their life in books – I’m thinking about [...] I always enjoy John Sutherland’s writings having first come across his literary columns in The Guardian. I’ve already read this year How to Read a Novel and The Boy Who Loved Books, so when Curiosities of Literature came out a month or two ago it was a bit of a “must have”. In fact it [...] I always enjoy “books about books”, or books about the pleasure of reading, and remember Manguel’s A History of Reading as one of the greatest literary pleasure. Now he had presented us with what is effectively a history of libraries in The Library At Night and the effect is equally as satisfying. Perhaps “history” is [...] I’ve always enjoyed reading books about reading and have a few on my shelves (not least the excellent, A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel). Margaret heard John Sutherland talking about How to Read a Novel on the radio, and when she told me about it, I decided to see what it was like, and [...] I first came across Anne Fadiman some years ago via her book of reflections on reading Ex Libris. I enjoyed that little book more than its size would suggest, and when I read a review of At Large and Small I was intrigued enough to buy a copy. I found that it contains a collection [...] |
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