The English Miscellany

The Guardian recently selected Richardson's Clarissa as No. 4 on its list of the Top 100 great Novels of all time. Are such lists a snap-shot of current reading habits. Perhaps the choice of this 984,870 word text from 1748 is pure nostalgia. In my view, however, it sometimes makes sense to spend the entire week on Clarissa , or Middlemarch , or Tom Jones , or Bleak House , or War and Peace ; at other times several sonnets command the same investment of spirit, intellect and emotion. Clearly the great epics also repay re-reading, or at least selective re-sampling, of favourite passages and turning points. With regard to Clarissa , the reading process is an ordeal, a pleasure, and a discipline (rather like Foucault on sex). Reading an abridged version is perhaps like the difference between a one night stand and a longterm relationship... It's a different question how well these longer novels function academically in an over-crowded superfast highw...

For some people, I suspect, libraries have become an act of faith, or a kind of heritage; they hang on to libraries like cathedrals long after their belief in the deity has past away. No doubt the great libraries will survive. Those are the ones with vast national collections, or those with a special antiquity, or a majestic architecture. The fate of the rundown relics of suburbia is less clear; not matter how much we celebrate the power of the little library it appears that its extinction is as likely as the video-hire shop, or even the local bookshop, with its greeting cards, its quaint plantpots, and its local authors. Yet some of us still delight in tea-leaves, coffee-beans, and the safe solidity of printed books, long after the the victory of the instant download has streamlined the past, the present, and the future, in a dizzying sea of sameness. Sometimes there is something radical in remembering the past; it need not collapese into a conservative tear-torn nostalgia. Ga...

Time to take the Book Challenge. Please post comments and suggestion below, or use Twitter #bookchallenge Which book is most often stolen from a library? Is it possible to be poisoned by a book? How much did it cost to produce the world's most expensive book? What was Shakespeare's best insult? Who invented science fiction, or fantasy? When was the world's first novel written? What's the funniest moment in literature? Which book has the best opening line? What's the longest book ever written? Who is the world's best selling writer, alive or dead? Who is the most famous/infamous fictional woman to appear in a story? When was the first comic strip published? Who wrote the world's first romance? When was the world's first recipe book composed? Who was the world's most prolific author? Who invented young adult fiction? Which book has caused the most trouble? Who is the most liked/hated superhero?  Who was the world's slowest ...

But will your abstract fit inside the box? If you have been reading my blog on The Art of the Abstract , are you now ready for the quick guide? FORMAT Use one paragraph. Stick to the word length. Check the format style guides for the journal or awarding body / institution. Employ a professional style STYLE Use language that will be understood by readers in your field. Consider also the needs of the general reader. Think about the most relevant key words that need emphasis Write short sentences. Very short. Employ transitions between the sentences. Use the active voice, rather than passive constructions Use the third person singular. IT. Choose the past tense in the main body. Check your grammar Avoid abbreviations. Provide clear statements: avoid loose opinions. Employ the present tense for the introduction and the conclusion. PROCESS Learn from other respected scholars in your chosen field. Read journal abstracts in order to beco...

  ' Supervisor, I found Yorick's Abstract. ' “ Do you hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live .” --- Shakespeare’s Hamlet . Nowadays there is more pressure than ever to publish often and early. Such is the plight of the doctoral student and the early career academic; such is the life of any career academic. One of the tricks of the trade that every academic learns is how to write an effective abstract. Typically this activity was undertaken at the end of the third year of the Ph.D and was part of the processing of submitting your work for critical scrutiny. But really we were abstracting all the way along. The ability to compose a quick summary of what you have been reading is the beginning of abstraction. It’s a useful habit to acquire early in one’s intellectual development. What you find in the abstract will als...

Boys are underperforming by 10% or more, compared to girls' literacy. My experience working with boys and adolescents (9-15) in the last year has taught me that they do not have an insurmountable problem with reading or writing. But far too often they are being forced to answer tedious comprehension questions. Or they are pushed into commenting critically on subjects that do not relate at all to their interests. Research shows that often boys visualize reading as a female activity. So some of the problems are part of the current culture and construction of reading as an activity. At first, the key to success, in my view, is to work with their existing interests. That means that you need to find out what fires their imagination. In an overcrowded classroom that is sometimes difficult, and there is a tendency for the whole class to work on the same topics such as "Africa," or "Environment," or "Superheroes." The young people I've worked wi...