A while back, I wrote here about William Maxwell's Time Will Darken It. Since then, I've read more of his work, and have just finished The Chateau - a novel that could hardly be more different from Time Will Darken It, or, come to that, from any of the others - ... Read More...
The 1p Book Review
Books for a penny
In about 1996, I got a deal to write a book about unlicensed boxing. I was arrogant enough to think I could actually write a book. I wish I had the excuse of being young, but I wasn’t really. I was just younger, which is no excuse at all. What ... Read More...
Do you know, I am increasingly of the opinion that a very large percentage – perhaps the majority - of the best works of literature are children’s books. Each Peach Pear Plum is a work of terrible craft and ingenuity, to be examined with deep concentration and seriousness by tots. The ... Read More...
This 1p Review is provided by Hannah Stoneham, voracious reader, prolific reviewer and friend of The Dabbler. You can read her fine book blog here. I should say that 1p spent on Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns, is 1p well spent. Charming and funny, touching and direct – this is an ... Read More...
The Bookshop, by Penelope Fitzgerald (available at 1p here) concerns the attempt by a widow called Florence Green – “small, wispy and wiry, somewhat insignificant from the front view, and totally so from the back ” – to set up a bookshop in Hardborough, a small town on the East ... Read More...
William Maxwell is one of those American writers whose reputation seems not to have crossed the Atlantic. He was little more than a name to me - but as the name was quite often mentioned on Patrick Kurp's incomparable blog, I was already on the lookout for his works when ... Read More...
Rosie Bell was born in New Zealand and after doing her degree moved to Edinburgh. She writes songs and poems, as well as blog posts for her eponymous blog. She contributes to Harry's Place and Shiraz Socialist. We're delighted to welcome her to The Dabbler. Today she has not one but two books ... Read More...
This pithy prose-poem of a 1p Book Review has been sent in by discerning Dabbler reader Stephen Buckley... I’ve just bought Colm Toibin’s Bad Blood for a penny. History has cracked along since he wrote it yet has also continued its sluggish brown drag reminiscent of the peat streams Toibin observes flowing into the ... Read More...
TH White, author of the strange and indelible Arthurian sequence The Once and Future King, is also the author of a strange and indelible memoir called England Have My Bones. It is available for 1p here and for a cent here. England Have My Bones is ostensibly a diary of a ... Read More...
The strange ways of internet commerce have meant that countless secondhand books can be bought online for £0.01 plus postage. The Dabbler will be recommending some of the out-of-print, forgotten or neglected gems that can be yours, at the time of writing, for a penny. Today, guest writer Jon Hotten recommends ... Read More...
