Anyone who knows me knows that the part of my brain that doesn't do the academic stuff is mostly full of feathers. Actually, I suspect the feathers are trying to invade the academic bit, but that's a story for another day.
The feathery bit of me doesn't read serious book unless absolutely necessary. Like research or something. I have lots of samples of books on my Kindle - Marlowe and Shakespeare, labyrinths and mazes, Queen Guinevere, various guide books, railways, grimoires and other spooky stuff, - all research which I will turn into full scale books when the time is right. Or maybe write. At the moment they are marking the place, as it were. Otherwise I only read trashy books. Nothing that is going to teach me anything, preferably as far away from real life as possible. I can get plenty of real life at home, thanks.
Which makes it rather a surprise that I am currently reading Phillip Pullman's Daemon Voices, which is a books of essays (yes, essays) on storytelling. It's a serious book, made up of lectures and short articles and programme notes and other odds and ends, with an index and everything, and I am enjoying it. I think the last time I read essays was Orwell and that was in school, but this is about telling stories, and about being a writer, and what sort of writer and where do you get your ideas from and all that kind of thing.
I don't do book reviews either, and this isn't one, but I think a reader would be interested and a writer fascinated by a lot of what Pullman has to say. I am.
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