Have I mentioned that I’ve been really enjoying Gene Wolfe’s Book of The New Sun? It’s one of the better genre stories around. Here’s Gene Wolfe, or Severian the once-torturer and future king, on stories: I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the…

You may not believe this but I’m a speed-reader. Well, a low-end speed-reader anyway. By low-end I mean that I hover around the absolute word-count of someone who reads sub-vocally, mimicking the human voice in their mind, and the bottom end of actual speed-reading, reading visually, reading the shapes of words instead. I mention this…

Recently launched website Play Shakespeare.com prides itself on, and actually looks like it will be, the ultimate free Shakespeare resource. Let’s run through it. All of Shakespeare’s plays are available here, for free of course. The plays are beautifully formatted for the web, organized by hyper-linked scene headings and properly indented – apparently the only…

Kim Roach, at productivity and organizing site, Lifehack has some good advice on being a creative genius: To become a creative genius, you must also be a voracious reader Reading enhances your mental ability and lets you experience the world from a brand new perspective. When we read a book, we let go of our…

The biggest story today in the world of somewhat amusing books and bookish things is not Harry Potter and Star Wars but my turn as a pulp-fiction sidekick to Doc Elliot. …Doc Elliot sprang back onto solid ground and quickly sent Peril’s men to join their boss. He was brushing the dust off his hands…