celticman's blog

Sometimes you pick a book and sometimes a book picks you. I’d looked at this book, read a little and put it down again, read a little and put it down again. It looked to be one of those books I tend to specialise in writing that nobody ever reads and fades from memory quicker than a cuttlefish. You might not know what a cuttlefish is and neither might I, but somewhere in the world someone does, and that’s enough guff. The sign of a good book is...

This book is described as a fable, a conceit, a what if? It’s I’d guess aimed at children or adolescents, although, of course books like the Northern Lights series, Harry Potter, Little Women or Treasure Island were also read and enjoyed by those that can be described as being more adult. I can’t say I enjoyed The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas much, but maybe that proves I’ve finally grown up and become more mature. It’s quite a simple tale. Nine-...

I’ve read a few of Burke’s books. He’s a bit like Stephen King, so prolific, it’s difficult to keep up with him. I could tell you which ones I’ve read, and what happens. I know there were some bad guys that needed sorting and there’s a yearning, a wisful longing, in Burke’s books for a better world. In his narratives good triumphs over evil. That’s a given and allowed me to read only the first 150 pages of this and the last 100 pages. The Light...

I’ve an admission to make I was once a member of the Sally Army. I wasn’t a cadet more a lowly conscript. A Sherrif’s Office told me to join them or go to that other blasted place. So I’m not neutral about this, I was saved and the meals we served were very cheap and nutritious too. So in a way I’m family. William Booth, the Methodist minister, started it all off in 1865 and quickly recruited his wife and eighteen children into his ready made...

There is no end to war and in 2014 there will be a lot of political shuffling and looking back at The Great War to end all wars. Remarrque shows the landscape and futility of life on the front line. Paul Baumer is the first-person narrator, and the book is structred so that it moves only to the impersonal third person in the last paragraph: He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so still and quiet along the entire front line that the army...

I’ve read this book before, like many books my head is full of cheap wood-glue and nothing really sticks. In terms of narrative structure it’s quite straight forward and has been overtaken by international events such as the kidnapping of Natascha Kampush, or the kidnapping of the Cleveden Trio. The latter, in particular, shows that foresight and planning aren’t really necessary and the hideaway doesn’t have to be a remote cellar. Commentors...

This programme should have been on The History Channel. It reminds us of a time when Manchester United and Arsenal were the powerhouses of The Premier League and mowing down teams to win doubles and trebles. The Invincible Arsenal team of 2003-4 were unbeaten over a league season, something I suspect will never be repeated. But their last trophy was an FA cup win in 2005. Manchester United were pipped at the post on the last seconds of the...

Kazuo Ishiguro (2005) Never Let Me Go . Ishiguro won the Booker Prize for The Remains of the Day which begins with Stevens at Darlington Hall fretting whether he should go on an expedition to the West Country in Mr Farraday’s Ford. It doesn’t seem to him quite proper, Stevens being a butler and, well, Farraday being less of a master that allows such things. The big question of what is a life for? is asked. The same question pops up in Never Let...

Directed by Cary J Fukanaga with a screenplay by Moira Buffini this is an elegant adaptation of Chatlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. It begins with Jane’s (Mia Wasikwaska) flight away from Thrornfield Hall across wide sky and desolate moors, which is more difficult than you imagine when respectable women of that era were expected to wear a whale-bone phone booth nipped at the waist until they couldn’t breath properly. It skates over Jane having to gnaw...

This is a memoir ghosted by Rom Broomby, with a dedication ‘To the memory of Ernie Lobert, and a man, I knew only as Hans’. The title of the book is misleading. Denis Avey did not break into Auschwitz. He was a British prisoner of war working as a slave labourer constructing a plant for IB Farben (now called Bayer IG Farben) in Auschwitz. In the camp hierarchy he was literally at the top of the food chain. His uniform kept him relatively warm...