Blogs

Pierre Lemaitre is a winner of The Prix Concourt Award. I’ve no idea what that is, but I’m suitably impressed and he’s also an international bestseller. The Silence and the Rage is part of a trilogy that follows The Pelletier family. I’ve not read the other two books but have read (and reviewed) one of his other novels ((2018) Three Days and a Life ). Like Emile Zola, he can pull the reader into historical events and have you rooting for his...

Initial reminder of the online course about mediaeval magic practices came from Oxford University yesterday, sadly just by email, not by Owl Post*. Email contained links to the short course handbook, reading list, and such. How to cite and how not to. (Am already practicing, although have not yet studied the Harvard ‘Cite Them Right’ method as their grammar is irritating. I expected more; could Harvard not ‘Cite Them Correctly’? Even in titles...

In Drew Gummerson’s reimagining of Kafka’s Metamorphosis one day Gregor wakes to find his parents have been turned into bugs. What to do?

My apologies to anyone who has been wondering what happened to me. I'm pleased to say that it's not due to anything sinister or, for that matter, exciting! Back in February, my aunt, who lived in Spain, unexpectedly passed away. As her primary contact, I had to deal with the funeral arrangements and her property (which included eight cats!) I don't know if you've had the pleasure of dealing with Spanish bureaucracy but it's a bit like British...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent I was at the party where Sherwood Anderson swallowed the thing that killed him, and I did not see it happen, and neither did he. It was late February of 1941, on a ship at a New York pier, one of those bon-voyage affairs that were still permitted then, where the friends of the traveler come aboard before sailing and drink the traveler's health in the traveler's stateroom and up on the deck until...

Email mountain is down to c.1900. Nothing pre-Cambrian exists in the inbox. Some still to be marked as read, some subscriptions to be deleted. Audible trying to tempt a return, bloody Emma Bridgewater making more gorgeous stuff, dammit, and ironically, the Stoic guy’s newsletter which I skim-read, nod along to and return to my merry non-Stoical ways. Consistent at least. During the mind-numbing, sometimes poignant, process of ridding the past,...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002zljp/monster ‘What is truth?’ Pontius Pilot is alleged to have asked this kind of question before passing judgement. It may have seemed to him a sensible thing to do. For Judeans that was passing the bronze prutah. An institutional washing of the hands that predated Moses. Monster has a tripartite structure. It looks through the lens of the story from different points of view. Saori Mugino (Sakura Andō...

After the early bird raid on the Huntly Hairst, went to that liminal of places, Leith Hall, to meet a cousin for tea and walk the gardens. Was too early, so walked to the pond thinking of chi gunging the pine forest as I used to of a Saturday morning when there was nobody around. Was horrified to find the ancient pine trees had been felled. All of them. The soil scarred by the machinery that had burst through it all. Ravaging the forest. The air...

Most career criminals live in grey areas and not the eternal sunshine of the superwealthy. Some of us may know them. Paul Tait for example came out as The Bad Guru and offers redemption. I knew he indirectly bought and ran with his brother many legitimate businesses in Clydebank, such as The Horse and Barge. A Celtic pub. What interested me more from an authorial perspective were his links with the IRA and his ability to flit from country to...

Wasn’t intending to go to the Huntly Hairst (Harvest) this year, as it started to appear on the list of ‘things-I-can’t-be-arsed-with-anymore’. The same stalls of oils, honeys, teas, soaps, terrible crafts by people who really should take up crosswords instead of spreading ugliness in the world, and home-made kombucha at a fiver a bottle, usually made by someone who looks like they haven’t washed. Angry wasps, angrier pensioners, parking sagas,...