Words are my matter: writings about life and books, 2000-2016 with a journal of a writer's week

Foreword.

Talks, essays, and occasional pieces:

The operating instructions ; What it was like ; Genre: a word only a Frenchman could love ; "Things not actually present" ; A response, by ansible, from Tau Ceti ; The beast in the book ; Inventing languages ; How to read a poem: "Gray goose and gander" ; On David Hensel's submission to the Royal Academy of Art ; On serious literature ; Teasing myself out of thought ; Living in a work of art ; Staying awake ; Great nature's second course ; What women know ; Disappearing grandmothers ; Learning to write science fiction from Virginia Woolf ; The death of the book ; Le Guin's hypothesis ; Making up stories ; Freedom

Book introductions and notes on writers: A very good American novel : H.L. Davis's Honey in the Horn ; Philip K. Dick : The Man in the High Castle ; Huxley's bad trip ; Stanislaw Lem: Solaris ; George MacDonald : The Princess and the Goblin ; The wild winds of possibility : Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake ; Getting it right : Charles L. McNichols's Crazy Weather ; On Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago ; Examples of dignity : thoughts on the works of José Saramago ; Arkady and Boris Strugatsky : Roadside Picnic ; Jack Vance : The Languages of Pao ; H.G. Wells : The First Men in the Moon ; H.G. Wells : The Time Machine ; Wells's worlds.

Book reviews: Margaret Atwood : Moral Disorder ; Margaret Atwood : The Year of the Flood ; Margaret Atwood : Stone Mattress ; J.G. Ballard : Kingdom Come ; Roberto Bolaño : Monsieur Pain ; T.C. Boyle : When the Killing's Done ; Geraldine Brooks : People of the Book ; Italo Calvino : The Complete Cosmicomics ; Margaret Drabble : The Sea Lady ; Carol Emshwiller : Ledoyt ; Alan Garner : Boneland ; Kent Haruf : Benediction ; Kent Haruf : Our Souls at Night ; Tove Jansson : The True Deceiver ; Barbara Kingsolver : Flight Behavior ; Chang-Rae Lee : On Such a Full Sea ; Doris Lessing : The Cleft ; Donna Leon : Suffer the Little Children ; Yann Martel : The High Mountains of Portugal ; China Miéville : Embassytown ; China Miéville : Three Moments of an Explosion ; David Mitchell : The Bone Clocks ; Jan Morris : Hav ; Julie Otsuka : The Buddha in the Attic ; Salman Rushdie : The Enchantress of Florence ; Salman Rushdie : Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights ; José Saramago : Raised from the Ground ; José Saramago : Skylight ; Sylvia Townsend Warne r: Dorset Stories ; Jo Walton : Among Others ; Jeanette Winterson : The Stone Gods ; Stefan Zweig : The Post Office Girl.

The hope of rabbits : a journal of a writer's week.