Bookanista

Bookanista is a regularly refreshed online magazine that showcases interviews with authors, thought-provoking essays, new fictional works, excerpts from books, reading suggestions, visual stories, diary entries, and blogs centered around the world of published literature.

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The short story vs. the novel

1 month ago | bookanista.com | Paul McVeigh

SOME WRITERS BELIEVE short stories are harder to write than novels. They may put this down to every word having to count in a short story, while in the novel the narrative is allowed to meander. Although this is true to an extent, it would be foolish to think the novel is the easy option, it has major challenges too. For example, how do you keep a reader engaged right to the end of your long journey? The length certainly matters.
Friends and traitors

Jan 16, 2025 | bookanista.com | Holly Watt

IMAGINE A GROUP OF BEST FRIENDS from university, now in their early forties, reuniting for a weekend to celebrate their enduring friendship. But this isn’t just any reunion – they’re about to open predictions they made about each other twenty years ago. This is the intriguing premise of Holly Watt’s sophisticated crime thriller, a page-turner that delves into the complexities of long-term friendships, ambition and the secrets we keep.
A perfect life

Jan 15, 2025 | bookanista.com | Kirsty Gunn

THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG with the garden. You couldn’t see it, nothing was obvious. There were no strange plants organised in certain shapes, or sinister looking growths and weeds; the paths were orderly, and the lawns. Roses grew, and pinks, in the places that had been set there for them, and in autumn, berries came out on the crab apple trees along the west side of the wall beside the vegetable plot. It was lovely, actually. Even so, something was not right. And never had been.
Dark, ingenious and daring: Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn

Jan 15, 2025 | bookanista.com | Wendy Erskine

THE WAY PEOPLE TALK ABOUT short stories often inclines to silversmithing analogies: burnished, finely wrought, beautifully crafted. That, or Fabergé eggs. And we say short story collection rather than group. Collection suggests careful selection from an array of available possibilities, white daisies on a vast lawn.
Hemingway in Havana

Jan 10, 2025 | bookanista.com | Norman Lewis

Ian Fleming, then Foreign Editor of The Sunday Times, sent Norman Lewis to Cuba in December 1957. Fleming had recently met Lewis, and became a fan of his writing. Having been sent a proof-copy of The Volcanoes Above Us, he wrote to Lewis’s editor, ‘Volcanoes is a wonderful book… showing a fascinating mind and really startling powers of description and simile.
That first night

Nov 15, 2024 | bookanista.com | Nicola Dinan

I WORE A DRESS on the night I first met Ming. A crowd swarmed the union bar, and my shoulders jostled as boys dressed as girls and girls dressed as boys pushed in and out of the front line. A tightness seized my brain, a vacuum-pack seal over its folds. I looked up. Large paper flowers hung from the vaulted ceilings, tinsel streamers stretched from one corner of the long Victorian hall to the other, music blared through the double doors opposite the bar.
The Hill-Country Music Contest

Oct 14, 2024 | bookanista.com | Xan Brooks

HE HAD PULLED INTO SUTTON shortly after sundown, rocking and bouncing down the deserted main drag. His eyes were bloodshot and he was in need of a shave. The girl on the desk at the Bedford hotel glanced up from her ledger. “You the recording fellow from New York?” she said. “John Coughlin, that’s right.”She looked him up and down. “You?” she said, unimpressed. He had slept fitfully and awoken feeling sluggish – and now here came Bucky Garner with his loud voice and extravagant friendliness.
The legend of Mawther Meg

Oct 3, 2024 | bookanista.com | Edward Carey

Sometime in the fourteenth century (during the time of Julian the anchorite), Norwich was overcome by a great plague of beetles. The beetles, which are especially common in the flat, damp lands of East Anglia, are larger in this part of the world. An ordinary deathwatch beetle grows up to a half inch in length, but here East Anglian deathwatches have been known to reach near two inches. And these beetles threatened to devour the city, which was then mostly made of wood.
BFI London Film Festival 2024 unveils star-studded line-up

Sep 6, 2024 | bookanista.com | Mark Reynolds |Farhana Gani

Lights, camera, action! The 68th BFI London Film Festival is set to dazzle audiences for twelve days in October. From Steve McQueen’s Blitz to French auteur-provocateur François Ozon’s latest, to animated marvel Flow, the festival promises a cinematic feast spanning genres, generations, original features and literary adaptations in a rich tapestry of storytelling, showcasing celebrated superstars and emerging talents across the world.
Harriet Constable: The Instrumentalist

Aug 15, 2024 | bookanista.com | Farhana Gani

In 1696 a baby was posted through the wall of the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage in Venice. She was named Anna Maria della Pietà and become one of the greatest violinists of the eighteenth century. Her teacher was Antonio Vivaldi…YET THIS EXTRAORDINARY MUSICIAN remains largely unknown today. Numerous historical records exist – she dazzled Catherine the Great, won acclaim from the elite and critics alike, and even inspired Rousseau and Casanova. Vivaldi himself owed much of his success to her.