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Thank you ABCTales for bringing us cool respite from the stinging world. Yet again there's been a host of wonderful writing. My first choice is something of a conundrum - is it a story - is it a poem? Whichever, it's disarming and exhilarating - the writer has categorised it as a story - so I'm going with that! Story of the week is Minor Prophet by Lithiviaoblivia: https://www.abctales.com/story/lithiviaoblivia/minor-prophet Poem of the week is...

I’ve a tendency to read short books like this quickly. I should have reviewed it quickly too, when it was fresh baked in my mind. I thought the last line in the book was ‘My name is Lucy Barton.’ Wrong. On the same page, (three from the end). ‘But this is my story.’ A first-person account of her life. ‘And yet it is the story of many. It is Molla’s story, my college roommate’s. It may be the story of the Pretty Nicely Girls. Mommy, Mom!’ The...

An epiphany is a moment of sudden insight or understanding. Gram Seed, the bad seed, died and came back to life. You know how the story goes. He was lost and now he was found. He was drunk on the Lord Jesus. This was one of Robert’s books. For a reader like me – a short read of a few hours. The park bench were Gram Seed decided was the best spot to drink himself to death, I know it well. It’s there on Dumbarton Road. On the square, across from...

King of Nineveh Truth can be ugly – there’s no money in it. Everything is connected. The Third World War has begun. Us against nature and we’re losing because we won’t recognise we’re all one. I can go biblical on you. Jonah 2:3 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the second time, saying, ‘Arise, go to Trumptown and proclaim to it the message I tell you.’ Jonah went to Trumptown and proclaimed the message, ‘Yet forty years, and Trumptown...

Our Story and Poem of the Month for November have been chosen by Rjnewlyn: Very well done to everyone for posting such excellent material during November. As always, it’s excruciatingly hard to select for the Pick of the Month. For prose, all credit to Drew Gummerson, last month’s winner, for the continuation of the “Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel” series – excellent, if often slightly uncomfortable reading ( https://www.abctales.com/user/...

I watched this film the other night. The one with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. I hadn’t heard of Bradley Cooper and had to google him. Google is a neologism. A Star is Born has been around longer than something we feel about words like googled, it has been here forever, but I was pretty pleased with myself, because I remembered the Judy Garland version and the name of her co-star, James Mason and the Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson...

Elton John (2019) Me Not many folk get to call their book, Me, and expect you to know who they’re talking about. The Glasgow imperative applies here: Who the fuck dae yeh think yeh are? If the answer is Elton John, you go, oh, aye, that’s alright then. Elton John seems to be everywhere at the moment, BBC 1, BBC 2, BBC 4, Radio Four, Channel 4, but I can’t find him on ITV, which is a bit disappointing. He’s an institution. I thought I’d have a...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000bqt9/the-man-who-saw-too-much The story of 106-year-old Boris Pahor is a eulogy to the twentieth century. The man who saw too much and experienced too much is a testament to man’s inhumanity to man. He wrote a memoir, Necrropolis- City of the Dead about his incarceration in a little-know Nazi concentration camp, Natzweiler-Struthhof in the mountainous regions of Alsace, France. He was also sent to Bergen...