celticman's blog

Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel Fleishman is in Trouble was an international bestseller. Long Island Compromise is her second novel. Awards and television series inevitably to follow. Grab your reader with the first line. It’s the kind of cliché right up there with the known knowns and the unknown knowns. Akner knows her readers will want something smart, bookish and literary, perhaps left-leaning. Aware of the paradox of what you’d need to...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0022vjc/in-my-own-words-series-1-alison-lapper Alison Lapper: ‘The whole point about art is having something to say ‘I didn’t think art was about fitting in.’ Alison Lapper – an artist, a muse, a mother – explores her life through art and archive in this visually rich and emotionally intimate documentary as she emerges from the most difficult period of her life after the loss of her son Parys My name is...

WHY DON’T YOU switch off your television set phone and go and do something less boring instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Don%27t_You%3F https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/11/put-phone-down-habit-reading-books-english-oxford Smartphones aren’t as bad for you as smoking but are the reason our kids are intoxicated by their screens as glue sniffers. Most people in London know somebody that has their phone snatched from their hands...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0023998/in-my-own-words-series-1-jackie-kay I was born around the same time as Jackie Kay. Like her, I wasn’t expected to live. I was brought home. She was given away by her white, birth, mother. Her father was Nigerian. She was put up for adoption. Her real mum and dad (Mr and Mrs Kay) already had a son. He too was adopted. She tells the story of how this happened. Her Glaswegian parents were told by...

I’d déjà vu reading Into the Uncanny . I felt that I’d read it before. Then again, I often pick books up, read a bit and put them down again. Danny Robins admits to being one of the lucky ones. One of the chosen. He was kicking around doing nothing very much with his life and trying to write a play about ghosts. Like me, he’d spent lots of time reading books about paranormal phenomena. Testing themselves by trying to bend my spoon by rubbing...

Resolution is the No. 1 Sunday Times Bestseller. For most authors that would be a life-changing event. But Irvine Welsh is not like most authors. Or, rather, he is, in that he puts down words on a page, creates characters, such as former Detective Ray Lennox. Gives the the boy from a Leith housing scheme a girlfriend with a name that would have him smacking his lips and wanting a bite of Carmel, but still want her pudding. I know, terrible joke...

‘A murder that wasn’t a murder.’ That’s the tagline. A Rebecca Connolly mystery. I don’t think I’ve read any other in this series. I was pretty sure I’d figured out who the murdered that wasn’t the murderer was. Like the Brexit result, I was wrong. Small margins. Leave or Remain? I voted to Leave England but remain in Europe. Most of Scotland voted for the latter, but not the former. Very few, then or now, voted in the Tories. The moron’s moron...

Lionel Shriver (2024) Mania. I read a wee bit of this book. Not for me. Mania is a conceit. Ostensibly it’s about the policing of language in an Orwellian sense and thereby the policing of thought and behaviour. No one can be called dumb. Everyone needs to practice being a snowflake. Right-wing media love that idea they’re fighting for something bigger than the moron’s moron Trump and his vile worldview. This is shown in the opening pages of ALT...

The Islanders and the Orb is a revised edition, extended by Calum MacLeod to cover the periods between 1995 and 2023. Hunter’s scholastic examination of the evolution of the Harris Tweed industry from the nineteenth century is enhanced by the afterword, which highlights its positive effect on the Islands. The new edition, like the old edition, is sponsored by the Harris Tweed Industry. You pay for what you get. ‘Tweel’ is defined in the Concise...

Taffy Brodesser-Akner (2019) Fleishman is in Trouble. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman is in Trouble, is no trouble to read. It’s pretty much perfect. I’m pretty much tempted to leave it at that and let the book speak of itself. But I’ll say a bit more. No prologue. Just a one line invitation: ‘Summon your witnesses.’ Aeschylus. It begins at the beginning, of course, but in medias res , which is a fancy way of saying, in the middle of things...