Blogs

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002k7zf/evil-does-not-exist Evil Does Not Exist - Wikipedia I felt quite cosmopolitan having already watched one of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s films, Drive My Car . Evil Does Not Exist begins and ends with a slow tracking shot of trees. Get a fucking move on was my thoughts. I suppose, I got the message in the end. Something poetical, slow moving. But to me just more trees (with no swear words). The plot is quite...

Everyone has a story—seen it, been it, done it. Agents and booksellers need a hook line or in marketing jargon, unique selling point. Something to reel in book buyers. Jackie Malton’s is in the title. Jackie Malton had a middle class upbringing. She couldn’t do maths, which meant she couldn’t go to university (which currently affects tens of thousands of others for much the same reason). Her parents thought her a bit thick. University was out of...

This Is Your Own Time You’re Wasting by Lee and Adam Parkinson — Manchester Primary school teachers and brothers. The duo behind the podcast Two Mr Ps, which has been listened to over four million times and authors of Put a Wet Paper Towel On It a Sunday Times bestseller. There are around 600 000 teachers in the UK (Scotland 53 400) which provide an audience for classroom mayhem and a ready pool of stories which involve shit, sick, sexual...

‘Freeconomic’ is a made-up word. We get it. Although few of us buy into it. Mark Boyle’s goal was quite simple. He outlines it in the Prologue. I wasn’t aware there was a ‘Buy Nothing Day’. Most of the days of my week are buy nothing days. But I’d be stretching it a bit to manage 365 days. Mark Boyle on Buy Nothing Day, 28 th November 2008, decided he wouldn’t spend a penny for a year. Ironically, he provoked a media feeding frenzy. ‘Be the...

Maureen Myant, like most writers, was a writer in search of a publisher. I’ve read the first and her latest, The Fallen , in her four book, South-side of Glasgow, police-procedural published by Hobeck Books. I also read a fair bit of her reissued first book, The Search . The Confession , which kicks off the crime series, is her best. The point of view shifted in her first Southside novel. Mostly the story was told from the point of view of DI...

Maureen Myant is on a roll four or five of the same books (around 80 000 words a year) same characters, Glasgow Southside Series. I read around a quarter of her first novel, The Search , which I take was her doctoral dissertation in Creative Writing from Glasgow Uni. It was set in Poland, 1942. OKish, I won’t finish reading it. Habeas corpus , you shall have the body. Police procedural centred on (the story being told mainly from point of view)...