Showing results by author "John Lennard" in All Categories

The Haywire Heart is the first book to examine heart conditions in athletes. Intended for anyone who competes in endurance sports like cycling, triathlon, running races of all distances, and cross-country skiing, The Haywire Heart presents the evidence that going too hard or too long can damage your heart forever. You'll find what to watch out for, what to do about it, and how to protect your heart so you can enjoy the sports you love for years to come.

Faulkner is notoriously a 'difficult' writer to study, especially for first-time readers. This introductory study begins with three chapters clearly setting out the important facts of his life, mapping the people and history of his recurrent fictional setting, Yoknapatawpha County, and analysing the oddities and problems of his prose style. Later chapters turn directly to Faulkner's great novel Go Down, Moses and his later collection Big Woods, dealing in detail with each story and the intertexts and showing how they connect and add up to something much more than loose collections. Readers ...

Octavia Butler’s premature and sudden death in 2006 has been very widely lamented, unhappily confirming her influence as a vital African-American and female pioneer in Science Fiction. ‘Xenogenesis’ (retitled ‘Lilith’s Brood’ in 2000) is one of Butler’s most important works, and comprises the novels ‘Dawn’ (1987), ‘Adulthood Rites’ (1988), and ‘Imago’ (1989). The Notes cover Octavia Butler’s life and work; the background and structure of the trilogy; (Black) SF in relation to race and gender; the tradition of dystopias; and the work in genetics that is central to...

Tamora Pierce is a prolific and very unusual modern master of fantasy for young adults and the first such author to appear regularly on the New York Times bestseller lists. The four books making up The Protector of the Small are the 9th to 12th (of 15) novels set in Tortall, and follow the progress of Keladry of Mindelan from the first openly female page in more than a century to her attainment of Knighthood and introduction to war. The Notes cover Tamora Pierce's life and work; the world of Tortall (including the geography, cast, and neighbouring cultures); the strange menagerie of ...

An illuminating study of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel with special attention to its film versions. From its first publication in 1955 Nabokov's Lolita has been denounced as immoral filth, hailed as a moral masterpiece, and both praised and damned for stylistic excess. In this fresh appraisal John Lennard provides convenient overviews of Nabokov's life and of the novel (including both Kubrick's and Lyne's film-adaptations), before considering Lolita as pornography, as lepidoptery, as film noir, and as parody. John Lennard has taught for the Universities of London, Cambridge, the ...

The Genre Fiction Sightlines series is designed to enable readers to appreciate in much greater depth than usual the richness of fine examples of genre fiction. Walter Mosley, a favourite author of President Bill Clinton, is the most important African-American writer of crime fiction since Chester B. Himes. This guide offers the reader of Mosley's fiction extensive and illuminating notes and annotations, plus an appreciative essay and a bibliography, all designed to enrich the reader's experience of this writer and this novel. Mosley's novels chronicling the investigations of Easy Rawlins ...

Tamora Pierce is a prolific and very unusual modern master of fantasy for young adults and the first such author to appear regularly on the New York Times bestseller lists. The four books making up ‘The Immortals’ are the 5th–8th (of 15) novels set in Tortall, and introduce the ‘Wildmage’, Veralidaine Sarrasri, who appears in most later novels in the Tortall series. Each book in the Sightlines series is designed to enable readers to appreciate in much greater depth than usual the richness of fine examples of genre fiction. The Notes in this book cover Tamora Pierce’s life and ...

Taking up where ‘Of Modern Dragons’ (2007) left off, these essays continue Lennard's investigation of the praxis of serial reading and the best genre fiction of recent decades, including work by Bill James, Walter Mosley, Lois Mcmaster Bujold, and Ursula K. Le Guin. There are groundbreaking studies of contemporary paranormal romance, and of Hornblower's transition to space, while the final essay deals with the phenomenon and explosive growth of fanfiction, and with the increasingly empowered status of the reader in a digital world. There is an extensive bibliography of genre and ...

This book, also available in paperback direct from Troubador.co.uk, aims to introduce students (including those with little or no prior experience of the field) to the worlds of Shakespeare and his theatre revealed in ‘Hamlet’. It begins by ‘Approaching Shakespeare’ as utterly a man of the theatre, a professional actor before he was a playwright and a resident dramatist who knew intimately the actors for whom he wrote. It continues by ‘Approaching Hamlet’ in that light, and as a revenge tragedy deliberately overloaded with complications. The middle chapters look in detail at the...

Genre Fiction Sightlines from Humanities-Ebooks are intended to enrich the reader's experience of popular works of genre fiction by drawing attention to levels of significance that may pass undetected on a cursory reading. Reginald Hill is an acknowledged modern master of crime, winning a CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 1995. 'On Beulah Height' is the 15th of his superlative Dalziel-&-Pascoe novels. In this book Reginald Hill himself has provided some previously unpublished comments and glosses—a must for fans of Dalziel-&-Pascoe and a treat for all. In this guide, ...

Sightlines are guides to popular fiction, pointing out the richness of texts that are too often read only in a cursory fashion. Ian McDonald is a major SF writer, whose 'River of Gods' (2004) won the British Science Fiction Association award for Best Novel, and was shortlisted for the corresponding Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke, and British Fantasy Society awards. 'Chaga' (published in the US as 'Evolution’s Shore') is the first novel of his ‘Chaga Saga’ (1995–2000), about a very unusual alien invasion of Kenya and the southern hemisphere. It was short-listed for the John W. Campbell ...

This book aims to introduce students (including those with little or no prior experience of the field) to the worlds of Shakespeare and his theatre revealed in King Lear. It begins by ‘Approaching Shakespeare’ as utterly a man of the theatre, a professional actor before he was a playwright and a resident dramatist who knew intimately the actors for whom he wrote. It continues by discussing ‘King Lear’ in that light. The middle chapters look in detail at the ‘Actors and Players’ of the drama, and at Shakespeare’s favourite ‘Acts and Devices’ as deployed within it. A final ...

The first of John Lennard's two volumes of essays exploring some of the best genre fiction of the last 40 years. The essays cover work by Reginald Hill, Thomas Harris, Dorothy L. Sayers, Nora Roberts, J. D. Robb (since 2000 the world's best-selling novelist), J. R. R. Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, Ian McDonald, Octavia E. Butler, and The Tortallan World of Tamora Pierce. John Lennard was Professor of English and American Literature at the University of the West Indies--Mona, from 2004 to 2009, and has also aught in Cambridge and London. His books include ‘But I Digress’ (...

Genre Fiction Sightlines are guides to popular fiction, pointing out the richness of texts that are too often read only in a cursory fashion. Ian McDonald is a major SF writer, whose 'River of Gods' (2004) won the British Science Fiction Association award for Best Novel, and was shortlisted for the corresponding Hugo, Arthur C. Clarke, and British Fantasy Society awards. 'Chaga' (published in the US as 'Evolution’s Shore') is the first novel of his ‘Chaga Saga’ (1995–2000), about a very unusual alien invasion of Kenya and the southern hemisphere. It was short-listed for the John W. ...