Blogs

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 30 Sep 2022

Thanks to all who've posted such brilliant pieces this week. They've been a pleasure to read. Thank you also to the editors who keep everything going. We couldn't do it without you. Very quickly before I tell you about the picks of the week, I spoke to Tony Cook the other day who you'll be pleased to hear sounds back to his normal jolly self after his couple of mini strokes - anyway he asked if we'd think of having another London reading night (...

Jennette McCurdy (2022) I’m Glad My Mom Died.

Posted by celticman on Fri, 30 Sep 2022

The title struck me. I was glad my mum died too, but for different reasons. She had Alzheimer’s and her life wasn’t a life. The front cover has two quotes from famous people saying nice things about Jennette McCurdy’s autobiography. Jerrod Carmichael ‘Impressively funny’. I didn’t think so and I don’t know who that is. But before reading this book, which I did mostly in one sitting, leaving the last few chapters until the next day, I didn’t know...

Dick Lehr (2019) Nothing But The Truth.

Posted by celticman on Sat, 24 Sep 2022

The cover is a give-away: ‘A Father Behind Bars/A Daughter Determined to Free Him.’ Obviously I hadn’t been paying attention. I thought the narrator was a young black man. In the Author’s Note, Dick Lehr tells the reader the facts. ‘Nothing But the Truth has its origins in one of Boston’s most notorious murders—the shooting of twelve-year-old Tiffany Moore on a hot summer night in 1988. Tiffany was seated on a blue mailbox in Roxbury, swinging...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by Insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 23 Sep 2022

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 23 Sep 2022 We're living in a strange old world at the moment, one way and another, and our Story of the Week reflects this perfectly. Jane Hyphen's 'It's the year...' is sharply funny and surreal, and yet somehow all too believable. If you happen to know an Orca, now might be the time to start getting on the right side of it. It's the year. . . | ABCtales Our Poem of the Week takes the autumn equinox as its theme...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 23 Sep 2022

We're living in a strange old world at the moment, one way and another, and our Story of the Week reflects this perfectly. Jane Hyphen's 'It's the year...' is sharply funny and surreal, and yet somehow all too believable. If you happen to know an Orca, now might be the time to start getting on the right side of it. It's the year. . . | ABCtales Our Poem of the Week takes the autumn equinox as its theme. Jennifer Skinner's haunting 'Lucid Dreams...

Big Oil v the World, BBC iPlayer, Editor Ella Newton,Director Jane McMullen, and Series Producer Dan Edge.

Posted by celticman on Thu, 22 Sep 2022

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0cgqlv1/big-oil-v-the-world-series-1-1-denial https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0cgqlv7/big-oil-v-the-world-series-1-2-doubt https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0cgqlvk/big-oil-v-the-world-series-1-3-delay Your children are going to die. Here’s why. ‘We must not only go to zero emissions , we must actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere ’ (italics around text are Peter Wadhams (2016) A...

Andrew Miller (2011) Pure.

Posted by celticman on Sun, 18 Sep 2022

1785, before the emptying of The Bastille, The Great Terror and La Guillotine will separate the heads of the aristocracy from their bodies Jean-Baptiste Baratte is given a simple task by a Minister to empty a cemetery, Les Innocents. It lies in the centre of Paris. The putrefying dead are causing such a stink it might even affect the health of the Sun King, Louis XIV at his palace in Versailles. ‘The palace is full of mirrors. Living here it...

Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015) The Sympathizer

Posted by celticman on Fri, 16 Sep 2022

The Washington Post called Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel ‘a classic of war fiction’. The New York Times a ‘tour de force’. Yes and Yes. The narrator has written a confession. Looked out at the shore of himself. And decided there was nothing to see. What fuelled him wasn’t nihilism, but idealism. But that too was a lie. Something he was adept at. Being the bastard son of a priest. At fourteen, his Vietnamese peasant mother became the French father’s...

Eric Holthaus (2020) The Future Earth: A Radical Vision For What’s Possible in the Age of Warming.

Posted by celticman on Thu, 15 Sep 2022

Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist and he wanted to do something about global warming. He wrote a book and finished it November 2019. Here is some advice he gives: ‘The key to writing a good book is to write a bad book and then fix it.’ I like that. The key to writing a book is firstly to finish it. Then to fix it. Holthaus managed that. He’s an optimist. ‘In 2035’, for example, he suggests, ‘global emissions finally started to sharply decline—...

Image Use

Posted by Ewan on Thu, 15 Sep 2022

If you are wondering when you can (or can't) use an image you have found on line, this is an excellent article laying it all out in simple terms. It is important, as there are legal and possible monetary consequences for the use of material in contravention of copyright laws. Anyway, take a look here. And the terms for use of the accompanying image are here [then click on view terms at bottom right].

Pages