Blogs

Football is a simple game. If you have the best players, you win. Would Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe get into the PSG team that won their first European Cup at a canter? But football is also a team game. Any and all of the above are no loss. This is a young Luis Enrique team that plays beautiful football. Each player works hard to close down their opponents so they don’t have time on the ball. None of the recognised stars of yesteryear...

I was driving home from work on a Friday afternoon. I had collected some bread and cakes from the bakers shop and delivered them to the local Salvation Army. As I drove the car through Sheffield City Centre, I recalled a conversation I had had in the school classroom 40 years before. My friend had been talking about going to church. I went to church more often than he did. Did I not think that I lived an extremely dull and boring life? I...

I’m a fan of Jenni Fagin’s writing. And the Sunlight Pilgrims is terrific. Sunlight Pilgrims are those supernatural beings we sometimes hear about that can live on light alone. There’s a joke there. It only works if you’re anorexic. Fagin’s characters are always gallus. Dylan McRae is six-foot-seven but rarely seen. He works as a projectionist in a Soho cinema. Or did. He lived with his mum and granny. Or did. They died. He lost the cinema to...

skin problem Some years ago I had an operation where some scin cancer was removed it turned out much worse than it should have I ended up rather badly scarred. My mother had been taking me for follow-ups to the academic state hospital in the meanwhile she passed on I had been ther five times, in the end during the botched routine biopsy i was slaughtered (nit intentionally i must add). Got the T-shirt. i consulted a private specialist at wich...

I only read the beginning of this book. You know the saying, you shouldn’t judge the book by the cover? Aye. Really? Well, it’s got ‘Global bestseller’ on the cover. That means lots of folk have bought it. Being translated from Japanese to English is also a mark of quality. I liked the idea of it. ‘Before your memory fades’. My memory is like a rubber that has already rubbed most of itself out. So there’s congruence there. There’s a relationship...

Cover the Bones was brought out as The Seven in Chris Hammer’s native Australia. The Seven refers to the founding fathers and elite of Yuwonderie. By founding fathers I don’t mean black folk. I mean the elite that committed genocide or paid a pittance for land belonging to the natives. I learned a new word. Squattocracy. When the seven founding fathers had been there long enough, the land they stole was legalised. Much like wealth or water...

Some of you will remember Joe Dunthorne, who used to write on here as (ahem, apologies, they were different days) "Spack": Joe's career took flight in 2008 with the publication of Submarine, (I have an image of a flying submarine in my head now ... sorry about that) which was made into a pretty good film, although Joe's book is/was better. Anyway, Joe has three novels published now and a poetry collection, but has taken a leap this year into non...

For all Archibald and Josiah fans (and I know we have many on ABCTales), I'm very pleased to announce that Dead Reckoning by Philip Whiteland is available today in paperback and can be ordered with this link: https://mybook.to/DRPrint

Reading is what I do. So what are you looking for in the library sounds like my kind of book. If, like former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, you argue there is no such thing as society then this is not for you. Existential nihilism it is not. In Michiko Aoyam’s novel everything is connected and everyone has a purpose but they might just need that little nudge to find their destiny. The beating heart of the book is Sayuri Komachi. She is...