The Book Collector (not me, the evil sort)

by Lucy

I picked up ‘The Book Collector’ by Alice Thompson as a nice, spooky, Gothic, and hopefully indulgently bookish. Something light to add to the heavier books I am trying to all get cleared… Continue reading →

No, Keanu. Just no.

by Lucy

I am loving Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’. For a story I know so well, and I have seen a million vampire things, I was rather shocked at myself for not having read the original… Continue reading →

One down, nine to go.

by Lucy

I said I’d read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein ten times, and log how my understanding of the work deepens. I’m counting this as my first go through, as this time I read it with… Continue reading →

Read a book 100 times? Err…no.

by Lucy

Centireading. Apparently Anthony Hopkins reads his scripts 100 times, but like the author of this piece reading Hamlet 100 for a dissertation, a play or film script is not a book. A straight… Continue reading →

A slightly morbid, gothic birthday celebration for Charles Dickens. He’d have approved.

by Lucy

Happy 203rd birthday, Charles! The first thing I remember seeing related to Charles Dickens was a lock of his hair, at the museum of his birthplace, in Portsmouth, where I was also born… Continue reading →

Misery Loves Company

by Lucy

When it was published, reviewers said ‘Jeez, that’s one messed-up book’ (I’m paraphrasing there). It was the first adult classic I read. I was about twelve and didn’t understand large chunks of it,… Continue reading →

All Church And No Prostitutes Would Have Made Robert A Dull Boy

by Lucy

Jekyll and Hyde is more Gothic than a black cat wearing a skull collar, sat on the turret of a crumbling castle, listening to The Cure on its iPod. Stevenson wrote it whilst… Continue reading →