Many institutions and individual enthusiasts have started to share culture online, or had already started to do so long before we had even heard of Covid-19. If you’ve had enough Netflix to last you a lifetime and the thought of a jigsaw puzzle makes you cringe, here are a few places you can access from home to open your mind.
On day two of an almost complete lockdown, with nothing to do and nowhere to go apart from my NHS job, I’m feeling a need to write about literary escapism. My local library shut down indefinitely last Saturday, and although I’ve managed to get a stash of books that’ll last me a few weeks, I’m already missing my trips to pick up new ones. It’s all temporary, of course, and all for a good cause, but I’m probably not the only one for whom life feels rather odd and claustrophobic at the moment.
King’s central position in contemporary cultural imagination alone merits a proper look at his work. Sure, other authors have written novels that are more aesthetically pleasing, literarily challenging, or thematically groundbreaking. But the fact that his books just keep selling and selling suggest that King is on to something.
Other than that, I’m simply a massive King fan and will jump at any reason to revisit some of his books.
A review of Armistead Maupin, writer of Tales of the City, visiting Norwich. An evening of queer activism, literature, and… crabs.
A reflection on writing and walking, and writing about walking, upon reading Robert MacFarlane’s The Old Ways
After a few weeks of reading only for pleasure and writing only for work, I decided to take a break… Read more What I Learned from Reading about Insects: Some Thoughts
It’s always a joy to discover new authors. In my case there’s barely a method to the madness. When I stumbled upon Vasily Grossman’s An Armenian Sketchbook in my library’s travel section I borrowed the book for no other reason than liking to read about places I know next to nothing about. Little did I know.
If we consider ourselves as beings that are part of nature, protecting wildlife and combating climate change becomes more than something that “has to be done”. It becomes an act of self-preservation. Or, how an evening with nature writer Mark Cocker provoked some surprisingly deep thoughts.
What does it mean to be human? It’s perhaps one of the hardest questions one can ask oneself, or anyone else, and I’m not expecting to come across a coherent answer anytime soon. But, rather strikingly, two books I’ve read over the past week or so approach this existential problem from very different angles. The result being two books I’d highly recommend, not in the least because they speak to each other in quite unexpected ways.
What is it that makes nature writing so alluring? Can nature, or even just reading about it, be an antidote to stress? On tree hugging, daffodils and karate.
cococatani 