I WAS feeling pretty down the other day. In fact, on a scale of 1 to Adele, I was truly miserable. Unlike the angst-ridden singer, for me it wasn’t a case of love gone wrong, though. It was far worse – I’d been beaten by a word. That doesn’t happen to me very often. Actually, [...]

Wonderful typos in today’s MailOnline in a caption under a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II on a visit to London’s underground (in yet another of those pointless PR exercises): “Queen Elizabeth stands next to plague with her named on it on platform 1 of the Northern-bound Metropolitan Line” Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2296186/Pregnant-Kate-Middleton-laughs-handed-Baby-On-Board-badge-Tube.html#ixzz2O6BTnV00

I ALWAYS have music playing on the radio while I write – it has a comforting presence and yet the songs don’t usually impinge on what I’m doing. At a low level, they’re enough to keep any intermittent and unexpected background noise from disturbing my train of thought and yet, surprisingly, I’m able to tune in (and that pun really [...]

(… which may or may not be related to the Christmas comma!) (Pic taken by Stevie Godson at Retail Park, Beacon Bay, in South Africa’s glorious Eastern Cape)

Reviewed for New York Journal of Books by Stevie Godson IT’S been said that writing something down can be cathartic. I can only fervently hope that’s true for Richard Russo. For while the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist’s memoir is being marketed as “hilarious”, as well as moving, Elsewhere is anything but. Russo’s writing style might make [...]

Reviewed for New York Journal of Books by Stevie Godson AN ELDERLY actor explores the nature of memory as he reminisces about the two great events of his life: his seduction at age 15 by a 35-year-old housewife, and the loss, by suicide, of his only daughter. Sadly, the most extraordinary aspect of Man Booker [...]

… How to Avoid Unplanned and Unwanted Grammar Errors by Jenny Baranick Reviewed for New York Journal of Books by Stevie Godson With the current upsurge in popularity of salacious fiction, thanks largely to the stratospheric sales of “mommy porn” series 50 Shades of Grey — not to mention its myriad copycat offspring all skulking [...]

A novel by Carolyn Wall Reviewed for New York Journal of Books by Stevie Godson Lies, lust, and betrayal form the backbone of this Southern story. More Fried Green Tomatoes than Gone with the Wind, Playing with Matches is, of course, neither. But it is a quintessentially Southern novel populated by quintessentially Southern people who [...]

… by Ami McKay Reviewed for New York Journal of Books by Stevie Godson “I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.” So begins Ami McKay’s absorbing and occasionally distressing tale of a 12-year-old battling to survive in the [...]

WELL, I’ll be darned. While I thought Kindles and other e-readers were all about convenience, space and portability, others are not so high-minded. In fact, I’ve just discovered the devices could well be the reason for the sudden upsurge in what’s been called “mommy porn” – with one book in particular leading the charge. Fifty [...]