celticman's blog

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—...

A woman of ninety-six died. I don’t need to tell you she was old. In another life she’d have made a decent teacher of French and English, who sometimes rapped your knuckles. But we acted in concert as if it was a surprise, with the odd bum notes. My worry was that football would be cancelled and I’d miss Rangers getting stuffed for the third time in a just over a week. As a destitute person—of the no dogs, no coloured and no Irish—I’m aware rich...

Frankie Boyle is a Scottish comedian. No Mean City . Meantime. The Scottish bit suggests that there is an outside chance he might be funny. But after comedian, I need to write, allegedly. Everybody in Glasgow thinks they are a comedian. In fact, that’s often a reason for a square-go: ‘You think yer a comedian, pal?’ Everybody in Glasgow also thinks they’re a writer, including me. The proof is in the booze and also in the number of copies sold...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001b7jh/panorama-the-billionpound-savings-scandal Britain is the money-laundering capital of the world. An estimated billion pounds is lost every year to companies that go bust, create ‘anonymous’ limited accounts, disappear or hide their wealth in tax havens in former British colonies. Panorama follows one company, Blackmore Bonds and other subsidiaries to an address in Gibraltar. Blackmore as a limited...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0018364/lullaby Leila Slimani brings the screen her international bestselling novel Lullaby , directed by Lucie Borleteau. Another case of preferring the film to the novel. I read about half the book, or more, before I stopped reading. I knew what was going to happen and didn’t particularly like any of the characters. I’ve nothing against books about nannies. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is a classic, none...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03n1svn/midnights-children I like films, but I love books, but I don’t love Salman Rushdie’s books. I read about the first fifty pages of Midnight’s Children and didn’t go any further. But I enjoyed the film. It’s a simplified version of the book, and being quite simple that’s the version for me. I get the same kind of thing with Shakespeare. It’s not something I’d read for pleasure. And when you get to a...

The same, but different. Most writers write the same book again and again. (I do that too). Publishers like that. It’s an easy sell, especially if your debut novel won the Booker Prize. Different characters, different haircuts, the same predicaments, with much the same outcomes. Write what you know. Young Mungo (Hamilton-Buchanan) is Shuggie Bain . A rundown housing estate in the Dennistoun, East End of Glasgow (of course) after Thatcher...

‘We elected a meme.’ Conspiracy beliefs eat you from the inside. I know this having been brought up a Roman Catholic. Guardian journalist Van Badham tells the reader her book is about two things, i) the internet, ii) belief. It was personal for her. ‘My interest in the internet’s extremist underworld resulted from my experience of its attacks…I found myself on the very public online radar of misogynists, racists, homophobes and outright fascists...

This is a big book in lots of ways. 720 pages. There’s nothing little about A Little Life . I’d picked up hints about this book in my reading. The Great American Novel. It made it a must read. Yanagihara’s second novel won acclaim from all the major players in literary fiction. The Wall Street Journal , for example, ‘Announces [on the flyleaf] Yanagihara as a major American novelist. The New York Times bestseller. A panegyric from Edmund White...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0019n5y/the-mule Based on a true story (kinda, but not really). An article in The New York Times reported that Earl Stone, aged 90, had been convicted for transporting drugs for a Mexican cartel. If Earl Stone had been aged 30 or 40, or even 50, there’d be no story. The story is in his age. He was just doing what a man gotta do. You have, for example, Brian Cox leaving the Scottish islands and chasing...