language focus

Welcome to the 'language focus' tag page at Technorati. This page features content from the farthest reaches of the Blogosphere that authors have "tagged" with 'language focus'.

Latest blogosphere posts tagged “language focus”

• Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

  
  Blogging for a Good Book — Authority: 421
  I’ve read a number of books that present themselves as short story collections, but which, when taken as a whole, comprise powerful novels.  I think one reason that this succeeds is that the author can approach the same topic from a number of different angles without losing the narrative thread that ties the whole ...
  1 week ago

• The Gifts of the Jews, by Thomas Cahill

  
  Blogging for a Good Book — Authority: 421
    What is it about a ragtag group of nomads that has both inspired and outraged civilizations for four millenia?  In the second book of his Hinges of History series,  Thomas Cahill digs into the larger themes that separate the Jewish peoples from the people around them, and shows how the evolution of a culture, ...
  2 weeks ago

• Best Ghost Stories of J. S. LeFanu

  
  Blogging for a Good Book — Authority: 421
  Last fall, I wrote about M. R. James who many consider the master of the English ghost story. The other contestant for that title is the Irish writer Joseph Sheridan LeFanu. Born two generations earlier than James, LeFanu is a true Victorian, living from 1814 to 1873. If you like the leisurely-paced novels of ...
  2 weeks ago

• The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James

  
  Blogging for a Good Book — Authority: 421
  As I mentioned yesterday, in England ghost stories are  common fare for the Christmas season. In that tradition, James begins his chilling tale as a story offered at a holiday gathering long after the events of the tale have occurred. The guests at a holiday celebration gather around to hear one of their members ...
  2 weeks ago

• High Spirits, by Robertson Davies

  
  Blogging for a Good Book — Authority: 421
  Although we generally associate ghost stories with Halloween and October, there is a long tradition in Great Britain of telling ghost stories around the Christmas season. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a classic example, with Scrooge being haunted by spirits who offer him one last chance to see the error of ...
  3 weeks ago

• The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories

  
  Blogging for a Good Book — Authority: 421
  When autumn rolls around, it is always good to pull out a scary story or two. I am generally not a fan of visceral horror writing, where the horizon is strewn with blood and body parts at the end of the tale. I prefer a more mannered, genteel approach to my horror; I look for stories that can raise some goosebumps ...
  3 weeks ago

• The Bookshop, by Penelope Fitzgerald

  
  Blogging for a Good Book — Authority: 421
  It is my unscientific but educated opinion that most authors are better at short stories than longer works. With full-length narratives, authors are prone to blathering on or cramming in unnecessary details or cluttering the story with extraneous characters. With short stories they are forced to make careful choices ...
  3 weeks ago

• Hell, by Robert Olen Butler

  
  Blogging for a Good Book — Authority: 421
  Welcome to Hell. The toilets are backed up, a new Wal-Mart opened today, and the weather forecast calls for scattered sulfurous fiery storms. There are cockroaches everywhere, but no trees or animals (but they don’t deserve to be here, do they?). There are lots and lots and lots of people—Stalin and Hitler (no ...
  4 weeks ago

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