Books & Writing – Elizabeth Allan

Cormac McCarthy – All The Pretty Horses

September 18, 2018 by Elizabeth Allan

It doesn’t matter how much I read, I never seem to make any headway on the literary canon: novels by the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Saul Bellows, Toni Morrison, and Virginia Woolf — not to mention the sagas of Homer… Read more →

Philosophy of Mind and the Body

April 7, 2018 by E. Beth Allan

As a teenager I was certain there was life after death and at university I learned this meant I sat on the side of Dualism when it came to the Mind/Body philosophical conundrum. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy… Read more →

Greek Mythology according to Stephen Fry

April 4, 2018 by E. Beth Allan

Mythology Versus Religion Reading Stephen Fry’s retelling of Greek mythology in his novel Mythos, I had an epiphany as to how it is possible for Creationists to believe the world was created in six days, little more than 6000 years… Read more →

Anti-Social Media

March 7, 2018 by E. Beth Allan

Zadie Smith recently released a collection of essays in a book called Feel Free. One of the older essays, Generation Why?, is a review of the Facebook-inspired movie The Social Network as well as a savage indictment of social media… Read more →

A+ Women Writers

December 20, 2017 by E. Beth Allan

Solipsistic, narcissistic, neurotic – these terms could relate equally to myself as to the protagonists of pretty much every book I’ve managed to finish over the last couple of years. I can’t seem to deviate from thirty-something females living in… Read more →

Master of Creative Writing

July 21, 2017 by E. Beth Allan

Halfway through the programme, the time seems ripe to commit a few phrases to memory. The novel I’m writing as my thesis will be my sixth and I’m doing a masters in order to understand the process better, and to… Read more →

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

November 29, 2016 by E. Beth Allan

Unlike my other literary heroines—Jane Austen and George Eliot—I feel lucky to be Zadie Smith’s contemporary and to have read each of her novels upon release. I’ve grown up with her themes and Swing Time is no exception. The details… Read more →

Game of Thrones S06E10

June 27, 2016 by E. Beth Allan

The final episode of the season offered everything you could have hoped for in terms of plot, but the score courtesy of Ramin Djawadi, was also sensational—as was the lighting. So much so I watched the episode twice in a… Read more →

Hello Friends and Allies

June 20, 2016 by E. Beth Allan

Recently I read Patti Smith’s memoir M Train and it became clear she loves a good cafe as much as I do. In the book Smith spends a lot of time in her local Greenwich Village cafe, where she eats… Read more →

Patti Smith

June 1, 2016 by E. Beth Allan

I had long heard the name Patti Smith and associated it with the exciting time in NYC, somewhere between Warhol and the Ramones. I thought of her first as a musician, like an American PJ Harvey perhaps – though she’s… Read more →

Osho

December 13, 2015 by E. Beth Allan

Today I was tidying up my papers in preparation for going back to NZ from Saudi and I came across a pamphlet on Rudra Meditation, which I’d been meaning to read for years. The final pointer was: “The greatest sadhana… Read more →

Wayne Dyer’s Books

October 10, 2015 by E. Beth Allan

I plan to read all of Dr. Wayne Dyer‘s books and quote my favourite parts below. I’ve realised some of the 41 books shown on his website include anthologies or re-editions, so I’m aiming to read the 34 listed on… Read more →

A Night in Riyadh, KSA

September 4, 2015 by E. Beth Allan

Until last night my experience of Riyadh nightlife consisted only of going to and from a mall: sitting in the school bus or a taxi, inching along the enormous highways in a traffic jam or zooming through the glittering lights… Read more →

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

January 28, 2015 by E. Beth Allan

I haven’t found anything wildly compelling to read since devouring the first five books in George R. R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire, in the wake of watching four seasons of the TV show (Game of… Read more →

Game of Thrones

July 25, 2014 by E. Beth Allan

Better late than never, as they say. The HBO series based on George R.R. Martin’s books has been winning viewers steadily since it first aired a few years ago, and I am its latest super fan. I had seen the… Read more →

Renegade Collective Magazine

June 7, 2014 by E. Beth Allan

As part of a birthday package, my mother recently hunted around for a magazine that she thought I’d like and came up with Renegade Collective, which neither of us had seen before. The Aussie mag proved to be a great… Read more →

Melvin the Dragon

May 16, 2014 by Elizabeth Allan

Melvin the dragon lived in a cave on top of a hill and at the bottom of the hill was a village called Idyll. Melvin couldn’t breathe fire and had stubby little wings, so had no chance of flying, except… Read more →

Dirty, Violent New Zealand

November 5, 2013 by E. Beth Allan

A month or two ago a single pipe in one of Fonterra’s many tentacles was discovered to be “dirty” and this was blamed for the contamination of milk, which was used in the processing of infant formula – some… Read more →

Thoughts on Self-Promoting

September 24, 2013 by E. Beth Allan

So I hosted a non-literary book launch in a cafe a few weeks ago, which was closely patterned on the parties my friends throw at nightclubs: Book some DJs; make a poster; stick them up in appropriate public places; list… Read more →

“Promote Your Book”

August 14, 2013 by E. Beth Allan

This book by Patricia Fry (Allworth Press, 2011) certainly gives a self-published author a lot to think about. I have sped-read my way through and my mind has often boggled at some of the suggestions. On the other hand, some… Read more →

Google Poems

July 18, 2013 by E. Beth Allan

These 4-line ditties have hit the headlines lately, after Google Poetics drew our attention to the fact that when you type a word or two into Google, the search engine gives you four popular ways to complete the phrase. I… Read more →

“Quietly Devastating”

March 17, 2013 by E. Beth Allan

That phrase came from a review of Zadie Smith’s recent novel NW but could as easily be applied to two movies I’ve been wanting to see for a while but – based on the reviews – couldn’t quite face.… Read more →

Shadow Dance

September 21, 2012 by E. Beth Allan

The cover of this book doesn’t do it any favours but one of the recommendations on the back says: “As useful a self-help book as one is likely to find.” And I would tend to agree! There’s a certain amount… Read more →

Street Lit

April 28, 2012 by E. Beth Allan

I’ve changed my URL to Street-lit.com as part of the marketing strategy for my novels. Street Literature encompasses modern urban life: pop culture, music, fashion, slang, partying, ambition, creativity, despair… wracked by guilt for how far we’ve come from our… Read more →

Photek

April 12, 2012 by E. Beth Allan

Photek has been my favourite electronic music producer since I first heard his stuff in 1996 and I kind of expect everyone else to have heard of him and adore him too. But no doubt some people are still in… Read more →

Hemingway

April 11, 2012 by E. Beth Allan

This pic is snuck from the fabulous blog: fuckyeahhemingway.tumblr.com where it was submitted by somebody called jwock. I’ve loved a lot of Hemingway’s work but I’d particularly recommend the book I just read: Islands in the Stream. It’s broken into… Read more →

Noise Control

March 30, 2012 by E. Beth Allan

To quote my own novel: “It’s so wack and it happens all the time: places get hip on the strength of their nightlife and independent vibe then corporate types move in and make it mediocre faster than it takes a… Read more →

How to Write a Novel

March 28, 2012 by E. Beth Allan

Although most of my work is still confined to my hard drive, I’ve been writing non-stop since I was 17 and have reason to believe I will some day succeed as a published author. Sometimes I’m even solicited for advice… Read more →

Category: <span>Books & Writing</span>