Blogs

Disoccidented by Alfie Shoyger: A Review

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Sun, 17 Mar 2019

I 've been asked to share this review Alfie Shoyger received for his first collection which is on sale now, and I do so with pleasure: "Disoccidented" is the first collection published by Alfie Shoyger, a poet with whose work I am familiar through the writer’s website ABCTales. “Caveat Lector” is perhaps what I should say first. Some sentiments and opinions within the collection may well offend the sensibilities of readers. This should in no way...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 15 Mar 2019

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 15 Mar 2019 Our Story of the Week is proudwing's mysterious and witty 'The Paperweight'. Works wonderfully as a standalone, but we are promised more, and hopefully soon! https://www.abctales.com/story/proudwing/paperweight-part-1 Poem of the Week is Alfie Shoyger's bonkers and brilliantly funny 'Squirrel Quarrel, North Hackney'. A real treat that brightened up my week: https://www.abctales.com/story/alfie-shoyger/...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 15 Mar 2019

Our Story of the Week is proudwing's mysterious and witty 'The Paperweight'. Works wonderfully as a standalone, but we are promised more, and hopefully soon! https://www.abctales.com/story/proudwing/paperweight-part-1 Poem of the Week is Alfie Shoyger's bonkers and brilliantly funny 'Squirrel Quarrel, North Hackney'. A real treat that brightened up my week: https://www.abctales.com/story/alfie-shoyger/squirrel-quarrel-north-hackney This week's...

Time Travel

Posted by Tom Brown on Wed, 13 Mar 2019

The scans illustrate typical behaviour of graphs, the equations in themselves are not important just the shapes. The sketches are not accurate one needs only to understand the characteristic properties. With this blog I am trying to explain some concepts to a layman. page 1 These two sketches illustrate some types of long term behavior of curves such as bounded or unbounded graphs, singularity, limits and asymptotes. page 2 A sequence of...

POETRY MONTHLY

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Mon, 11 Mar 2019

Many thanks to Alfie Shoyger for March's slightly delayed Poetry Monthly: Rimas Dissolutas. This is a form where, within verses, there are no rhymes at all. However, all subsequent verses rhyme with the first one. Each verse can be as long as you want, and you can have as many verses as you want, so for example it could be ABCD ABCD ABCD etc, or ABCDEF ABCDEF ABCDEF, or whatever. Picture Credit: http://tinyurl.com/y3vsyaqe

Mick Kitson (2018) Sal

Posted by celticman on Sun, 10 Mar 2019

Sal , Mick Kitson’s debut novel is set in Scotland. It’s a first-person narrative about Sal, a thirteen-year-old kid trying to take care of her sister Peppa, who’s only ten. When I picked it up, it reminded me a bit of Sylvia Hehir’s, soon to be released, debut novel Sea Change/ Safe Ground . I’d read a few bits and very early drafts of Dr Hehir’s novel and I look forward to reading more. Sal’s story is quite simple to explain. She kills her mum...

#Leaving Neverland: Michael Jackson and Me, Channel 4, My4, director Dan Reed.

Posted by celticman on Thu, 07 Mar 2019

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/leaving-neverland-michael-jackson-and-me/on-demand/63905-001 It’s easy to condemn now that we know that Michael Jackson was a serial paedophile. Money and fame kept him safe. I remember reading something and it went along the lines of one of Michael Jackson’s advisors warned him not to have young boys in his bed. To stop having sex with them. And Michael Jackson said, ‘No’. There’s a line here that rings out...

Svetlana Alexievich (1985, 2017) The Unwomanly Face of War, translated by Richard Pewar and Larissa Volokhonsky.

Posted by celticman on Tue, 05 Mar 2019

Books are holy relics and none more so than this love letter to the lost. The Great Patriotic War as it is sold to the Russian people by the capitalist oligarchs is something to which they can hold on to. Something to which they can be proud. Forget the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and Stalin’s deal with Hitler and the division of Eastern European countries such as Poland. Forget the millions killed in countries such as the Ukraine by Stalin’s policy...

John Kennedy Toole (1980) A Confederacy of Dunces

Posted by celticman on Sun, 03 Mar 2019

I got to page 35 of this book and gave up. The tale of Ignatius J. Reilly who has a high opinion of himself and a low opinion of humanity and his poor, put-upon mother whom he lives with, and is dependent on, could be described as farce. Anthony Burgess on the cover describes it as ‘A Fine Funny Novel. This is the kind of book one wants to keep quoting from.’ I don’t feel any great need to do that. The story of how I and so many others came to...

STORY AND POEM OF THE MONTH

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Sun, 03 Mar 2019

Our Story and Poem for the month of February very kindly chosen by Jolono: It never gets any easier. Choosing the winners for February gave me a few headaches, and no it wasn’t the three glasses of Red wine that I had whilst going through all of them! But winners have to be picked and here they are... This month’s winner for SOTM is TFH with La Femme d’argent. https://www.abctales.com/story/tfh/la-femme-dargent A moving tale of a romantic visit...

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