Angela Young

LATEST ARTICLES ( 146 )

• Third Novel Delivered, and the Reith Lectures, 2016

  

  This month I delivered my third novel (working title For the Love of Life) to my agent, so now, while I do all the things I haven’t had time to do (updating my... Read more

  Posted on 14 November 2016 BOOKS

• Rose Tremain’s The Gustav Sonata and Dioni Mazaraki’s Silver Jewellery

  

  I’ve read all Rose Tremain‘s novels and I love the fact that they fail to fit neatly into any particular category (except the category of beautifully written... Read more

  Posted on 14 October 2016 BOOKS

• Theresa May, the Queen and Boris Johnson And, More Seriously, Kent Haruf

  

  A friend of mine sent me this sometime after the Brexit Bungle: The real reason Boris was appointed to the Foreign Office There’s not much else to say, is there? Read more

  Posted on 14 September 2016 BOOKS

• How Dramatic Stories Change Brain Chemistry, and NOT the Booker Prize

  

  Good strong stories, as we all know, transport us to other people’s worlds. So, when we’re reading fiction, even though we know the people we’re reading about... Read more

  Posted on 14 August 2016 BOOKS

• The UK Referendum, Brexit, and Meike Ziervogel on the Importance of Listening...

  

  On 1 July Meike Ziervogel, founder and publisher at Peirene Press, published this: Translation is Europe’s only common language. Read more

  Posted on 14 July 2016 BOOKS

• Why Readers Stop Reading; Lisa McInerney’s 2016 Bailey’s Win, and Penicillin

  

  An interesting survey on why readers stop reading: There’s more here. It’s published by Lit World Interviews (I found it on a TLC facebook post. Read more

  Posted on 14 June 2016 BOOKS

• Brainpickings and Mindset

  I’ve just discovered a website called brainpickings. I was noodling around on the internet, trying to find out something for one of my characters (what it was... Read more

  Posted on 14 May 2016 BOOKS

• Do You Want Escape Or Experience When You Read Fiction? And: from Food Desert...

  

  I found this definition of the distinction between genre and literary fiction here: The main reason for a person to read Genre Fiction is for entertainment,... Read more

  Posted on 14 April 2016 BOOKS

• Mindfulness, Fitzroy Square and Subversive (Guerilla) Gardening

  

  A few weeks ago I did an Introduction to Mindfulness day at the London Mindfulness Project (whose rooms are in the astonishingly beautiful, Georgian Fitzroy... Read more

  Posted on 14 March 2016 BOOKS

• A Valentine to Fear; and Visual Verse

  

  In Elizabeth Gilbert‘s brilliant new book Big Magic (I reviewed it here) she acknowledges that we need fear in our lives, otherwise we’d be: Straight-up... Read more

  Posted on 14 February 2016 BOOKS

• Mistakes, for a New Year

  The first days of this new year have brought oddly mixed emotions. Happiness and gratitude that all those celebrations with friends and family went well, mingle... Read more

  Posted on 14 January 2016 BOOKS

• Laurie Lee’s A Village Christmas, and Other Things

  

  I read about Laurie Lee’s A Village Christmas and Other Notes on the English Year at dovegreyreader’s wonderful blog early in November and I’m hoping it will en... Read more

  Posted on 14 December 2015 BOOKS

• Leslie House, Fife; and the Daily Good

  

  My great-grandmother Noël Rothes, whose life was the initial inspiration for my novel The Dance of Love, lived at Leslie House between 1904 and 1919. Read more

  Posted on 14 November 2015 BOOKS

• What It’s Like to Write and What It’s Like to Imagine You Might Write; and...

  

  In Edith Wharton‘s 1925 The Writing of Fiction in the section called ‘Constructing a Navel’ – obviously a typographical mistake but one I like for its... Read more

  Posted on 14 October 2015 BOOKS

• Mindfulness; 18 Things Creative People Do Differently and the Ever-magical...

  

  Mindfulness, according to The Mindfulness Project in London, is: A simple and very powerful practice of training our attention. Read more

  Posted on 14 September 2015 BOOKS

• How Incomprehensible Unworkable Things Inspire

  Joanna Briscoe and Grace Paley caught my attention this month. They’re very different writers but I’ve just read articles about writing by both. Grace Paley die... Read more

  Posted on 14 August 2015 BOOKS

• Ideas Are NOT Stories; and the Biblioteca Jardim

  

  It becomes obvious if you write, but perhaps not if you don’t: ideas are not stories. Before I wrote or, at least, before I finished a novel, I didn’t grasp thi... Read more

  Posted on 14 July 2015 BOOKS

• Men and Embroidery, and a Belated Apology

  

  Inspired by this post about John Craske and his delicate life and delicate embroidery in a new book by Julia Blackburn, at dovegreyreader earlier this week, I’v... Read more

  Posted on 14 June 2015 BOOKS

• Electoral Reform in the UK. And Inspiration.

  On 5 May 2011 a referendum on electoral reform was held in the UK: 68% of us voted No; 32% (including me) voted Yes; the turnout was 42%. Read more

  Posted on 14 May 2015 BOOKS

• 103 Years On, Titanic; and the Things That Come Unbidden When You Write

  

  One hundred and three years ago today more than 1,500 people died in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic when RMS Titanic hit the iceberg and then sank, i... Read more

  Posted on 14 April 2015 BOOKS