Blogs

Daniel Woodrell (1998) Tomato Red; (2006) Winter's Bone.

Both of these are short books. I read Tomato Red in about three hours. Winter's Bone is about the same length. Both are situated in small Missouri towns, but in Winter's Bone Ozak is almost a backwood identity, and Ree Dolly Jessup is part of that crazed religion of don't tell and take care of your own kin. It's told in the third person. Here's how it starts: Ree 'Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries...

North Korea: Crossing the Line. BBC 4 10.50, written and directed by Daniel Gordon.

North Korea is the kind of place that Team America: World Police can make fun of with impunity. But with KimJong-Un, son of Kim Jong-Il 'testing' rockets and threatening nuclear war the world seems nearer Armageddon. This documentary gives some insight into North Korea. But mass starvation and the death of perhaps millions to hunger is quickly passed over. The 'labour' camps in which three generations of families are send to be routinely...

Susan Cain (2012) Quiet. The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking.

I am introverted, so why am I telling you this? Does that make me an extroverted introvert, or worse, is it an affectation something I've adopted along the way to make myself more interesting, like a lisp and a way of twisting my finger upwards when drinking tea, but nobody noticed? The answer, of course, is it's complicated. Introversion or extroversion is on a continuum. I scored about 15 out of 20 in the initial check-list score, with 2 or 3...

Fracine Prose (2006) Reading Like a Writer.

This is a delightful book. I've read it a couple of times and while I can't say I now read like a writer I can say anyway with called Prose knows their prose, in the same way that someone called pist knows their...Ok it's a rubbish analogy. This is one of my favourite quotes from Babel: 'I work like a pack mule, but it's my own choice. I'm like a galley slave who's chained for life at his oar, but who loves the oar. Everything about it...I go...

Rio (Update)

Although he's only run twice this season and finished third both times, Rio is going to have a rest for a few months before next seasons campaign starts all over again. The weather has been our worst enemy this year, with meetings being cancelled or abandonded due to flooding or heavy snow. We would have liked him to have four races at least but two will have to do. A couple of months playing in the field and eating well will do him the world of...

Mayer Hawthorne

About six years ago i was introduced to this guy's music. The recomendation came from a much older mate of mine ( sadly no longer with us ). He knew that we had similar tastes in music ( Soul, Funk, Jazz etc etc). He'd just released his first album. I listened to the album, it reminded me of Hall and Oates in their prime.The voice was falsetto with a rich soulfull tone. Bit, boppy, bit commercial, but the hooks were contagious. I pictured the...

Remember Me (2010) directed by Allan Coulter; written by Will Fetters.

Tyler Hawkins (Robert Pattison) and Ally Craig (Emilie de Ravin) get togehter for all the wrong reasons but turn out to the be the right reasons. It starts literally with a bang. Ally's mum is shot in a subway mugging, whilst she looks on. Ally's dad (Chris Cooper) by one of those film script quirks is a cop that pulls back the sheet on his wife's body. Flash forward ten years. Tyler is the kind of guy that kicks his latest conquest out of bed...

CREATION

BY ALAN LAMBERTON JNR It starts with a spark. An idea you want to grow. You want to shout it from the rooftops, but at this stage you can't let people know. Time to get work and there will be lots to do, but if you sit around, profits won't find you.

Stories...

Hello everyone. I'm working on a larger story that will hopefully be a novel, called Almost Human. I posted the first draft of the intro on here for you all to read. I'm also working on poems, and other short stories. I hope that you all can read them. I'll be updating regularly. Thanks!

Isaac Newton: The Last Magician, BBC 2, 9pm.

There was no calculus which, for me, was magical enough. Newton did not study mathematics or science, but natural philosophy. What was natural for him, was unnatural for me, although to be fair I did get a C grade at arithmetic. Using those well know variables of time, speed and motion Newton worked out how the planets moved, how gravity worked and how an apple fell from a tree. This was a ha-ha moment, because, of course, he wasn't sitting...

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