celticman's blog

The librarian said you’re going to love this book. It’s exactly how young girls behave when they go on holiday. She was buzzed about it and even smiled. And it was longlisted for the Man Brooker Prize in 2010. But any good stories got a BUT, I use them a lot. The laws of diminishing returns apply here. I did love Morvern Caller , Alan Warner’s debut novel. The Sopranos was great, six eighteen-year old girls from a Catholic school and a wee town...

BBC 2, BBC iPlayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09wfrk0 Hatred has no country. Ironically, I watched this programme on BBC Catch-up on Easter Sunday in memory of the resurrection. I read in The Observer about Israeli snipers on Good Friday shooting Palestinian demonstrators, or terrorists, depending on how those shot are defined. Around 16 dead. Hospitals in Gaza report 284 injured people, the majority with bullet wounds. 70 wounded,...

BBC 1 Scotland, 10.45. BBC iPlayer https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p060xfr6/unsolved-the-man-with-no-alibi-1-the-night-of https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0618hs2/unsolved-the-man-with-no-alibi-2-no-smoke-without-fire https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p061bm2d/unsolved-the-man-with-no-alibi-3-the-truth-and-other-lies https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p061bmtv/unsolved-the-man-with-no-alibi-4-hot-shoe-shuffle https://www.bbc...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09xptp8/reggie-yates-searching-for-grenfells-lost-lives?ns_mchannel=email&ns_source=pan_newsletter&ns_campaign=PANUK_NLT_13_SCO_HospitalComeHome&ns_linkname=bbctwo_reggieyatesgrenfellsearchingforlostlives_FactualCurrentaffairs_reggieyatesgrenfellsearchingforlostlives&ns_fee=0 I write stuff, which nobody much reads, but I’ve got a roof over my head and I’m not hungry or cold and need to queue...

I rattled through this book in no time. A simple story told in the first person voice of Tom Hazard who was born on the 3 rd March 1581 and is now—I’m crap at arithmetic, so I’ll jump from page 1 to page 316, near the end of the book—and say Tom is around 439 years old. He’s done a lot of living. And his daughter, Marion, who is also over 400 years old, calls the American President ‘a motherfucker’. Wisdom comes with age. Only it doesn’t. Look...

The Sopranos is a cumming-of-age novel. Let’s start at the beginning. Page 1. Our Lady of Perpetual Succour School for Girls. Fionnula tells us the school motto, ‘Noses up…knickers DOWN!’ Warning, this novel contains a rape scene, but it’s wee Orla that’s doing the raping. The Sopranos are the elite of the ‘Hoors of the Sacred Heart’. These are the girls in the fifth-year school choir that can hit the highest notes. There’s Fionnula, Orla, (Ra)...

I loved this book. It should really be read in conjunction with Jed Mercurio’s debut novel Bodies . Yeh, that Jed Mercurio that writes scripts for the BBC, Bodies and Line of Duty . Adam Kay is following a similar trajectory, half way between the drama of Jed Mercurio and the upbeat chortleness of Harry Hill. You’re probably thinking why should the tax payer should spend all that money training junior doctors, indirectly subsidising the...

I don’t know Maggy van Eijk, but I’ve read her poetry on ABCtales. It’s memorable because it’s amazing. But don’t ask me to tell you the names of any of her poems. Often I can’t remember my own name. What stands out is her loopy ability to juxtapose two images that makes sense. I’d like to give you an example, but I can’t be arsed looking. I had her down at one of those exotic younger women that had pretty much everything and jam on top. ‘...

Usually, I know what I’m going to say, although I’m not quite sure how I’m going to say it. I guess I’ll start with the author, George Saunders. He’s won a stack of awards and a litany of writers—Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, Thomas Pynchon, Jennifer Egan, Junot Diaz, Lorrie Moore, Hairi Kunzru and Tobias Wolff—are stacked like library cards to testify to his originality and brilliance. I find Saunders hard work. And I don’t like reading to be...

In my smug way I thought I’d read Morvern Caller before and been unimpressed. I vaguely remembered a film of Alan Warner's book starring Ewan McGregor. I was reading an interview director Lynne Ramsay gave to The Observer. I had another look at the book and realised I hadn’t read it, there was no film with Ewan or any other McGregor and I loved it’s in your face style. It’s the kind of people I know. Quite simply, Morvern Caller talks like us...