As I have mentioned I’ll be soon teaching an elective subject on autobiographies and memoirs (in English). In preparation, I’ve been putting together a list of 100 remarkable pre-21st century texts in those genres, apart from the list of 21st century books my students need to read (each student chooses four from this list). This […]
I read in one sitting on January 1st Caroline Darian’s memoirs (in Spanish translation by Lydia Vázquez) Y dejé de llamarte papa (2025, Et j’ai cessé de t’appeler Papa). Caroline’s actual surname is Pelicot, but she is using a mixture of her brothers’ names (David and Florian) for her penname. In this touching book she […]
I was planning to teach this academic year an elective subject on narrative non-fiction of a journalistic type but I will be teaching instead autobiography and memoirs. I have included non-fiction as one of the four categories of contemporary prose students need to read in my Contemporary English Literature subject (the other three are varieties […]
Happy new academic year! May it brings plenty of positive energy for teachers and students, and the thorough defeat of patriarchal darkness in all fronts and nations (yes, I’m thinking of those awful guys). I’ll begin my sixteenth year as a blogger (how time passes!!), with a reminder that the all the yearly volumes can […]
2025 is turning out to be one of the worst years in my life as a reader, for two reasons. One is that I find it harder and harder to find novels that interest me, of any type. The other is that since Trump’s election, I’m spending at least two hours a day reading the […]
[No, I’m not writing about Donald Trump’s victory. I don’t agree with any of the analyses I have read and there will be time enough to consider the catastrophes that his cabinet will cause in the USA and around the world. If we survive.] A couple of my students asked me how come I have […]
I’m returning again after a couple of previous posts (see here the more recent one and here the older one) to the matter of nonfiction, which occupies me because I’m planning to teach an elective subject if not next year, then the following. As I explained in my previous posts, I find the label nonfiction […]
This post is inspired by two very different book reviews. On 7 November Laura Miller published in Slate the review of Rebecca Yarros’s Iron Flame. The piece is titled “‘I’ve Been Yours for Longer Than You Could Ever Imagine”: Is the dragon-school ‘romantasy’ series that’s dominating the bestseller lists actually any good?” On 10 November […]