Book review: “Eye of the Monster” by Andre Norton
Andre Norton’s short 1962 novel Eye of the Monster is a disturbing story in which the native race of a world called Ishkur, pejoratively nicknamed Crocs, are brutal, foul-smelling and bestial.
For twenty years, the Crocs have been held at bay by the Empire’s Patrol — a space army of sorts — while humans have exerted colonial rule over the planet. Some have mined the world for its natural riches. Others, who have treated the Crocs with kindness, have studied…
Book review: “William Shakespeare: A Handbook — A Narrative, Interpretive Account of Shakespeare’s Life as a Playwright and actor and of His Works in Drama and Poetry” by Thomas Marc Parrott
Much is not known about William Shakespeare, as Thomas Marc Parrott acknowledges in his agile, erudite and very helpful 1934 book William Shakespeare: A Handbook. But the man’s plays and poems do provide a great many clues.
For instance, the details that work their way into Shakespeare’s writings indicate that he was not a bookish boy, Parrott writes.
More particularly Shakespeare’s familiarity with field sports, hawking and hunting, and with the care and training of horse, hawk and hound, point…to…
Book review: “Shakespeare” by Germaine Greer
William Shakespeare’s plays and poetry have been the touchstone of English and world literature for more than four centuries ago. But the man behind them, known in his time as an important actor as well as a writer, has been a cipher for later generations.
This has bedeviled many scholars over the hundreds of years, trying to tease out the mystery of Shakespeare. Germaine Greer, though, has a different take:
An essential aspect of the mind and art of Shakespeare,…