I was driving home from work on a Friday afternoon. I had collected some bread and cakes from the bakers shop and delivered them to the local Salvation Army. As I drove the car through Sheffield City Centre, I recalled a conversation I had had in the school classroom 40 years before. My friend had been talking about going to church. I went to church more often than he did. Did I not think that I lived an extremely dull and boring life? I...

I’m a fan of Jenni Fagin’s writing. And the Sunlight Pilgrims is terrific. Sunlight Pilgrims are those supernatural beings we sometimes hear about that can live on light alone. There’s a joke there. It only works if you’re anorexic. Fagin’s characters are always gallus. Dylan McRae is six-foot-seven but rarely seen. He works as a projectionist in a Soho cinema. Or did. He lived with his mum and granny. Or did. They died. He lost the cinema to...

skin problem Some years ago I had an operation where some scin cancer was removed it turned out much worse than it should have I ended up rather badly scarred. My mother had been taking me for follow-ups to the academic state hospital in the meanwhile she passed on I had been ther five times, in the end during the botched routine biopsy i was slaughtered (nit intentionally i must add). Got the T-shirt. i consulted a private specialist at wich...

I only read the beginning of this book. You know the saying, you shouldn’t judge the book by the cover? Aye. Really? Well, it’s got ‘Global bestseller’ on the cover. That means lots of folk have bought it. Being translated from Japanese to English is also a mark of quality. I liked the idea of it. ‘Before your memory fades’. My memory is like a rubber that has already rubbed most of itself out. So there’s congruence there. There’s a relationship...

Cover the Bones was brought out as The Seven in Chris Hammer’s native Australia. The Seven refers to the founding fathers and elite of Yuwonderie. By founding fathers I don’t mean black folk. I mean the elite that committed genocide or paid a pittance for land belonging to the natives. I learned a new word. Squattocracy. When the seven founding fathers had been there long enough, the land they stole was legalised. Much like wealth or water...

Some of you will remember Joe Dunthorne, who used to write on here as (ahem, apologies, they were different days) "Spack": Joe's career took flight in 2008 with the publication of Submarine, (I have an image of a flying submarine in my head now ... sorry about that) which was made into a pretty good film, although Joe's book is/was better. Anyway, Joe has three novels published now and a poetry collection, but has taken a leap this year into non...

For all Archibald and Josiah fans (and I know we have many on ABCTales), I'm very pleased to announce that Dead Reckoning by Philip Whiteland is available today in paperback and can be ordered with this link: https://mybook.to/DRPrint

Reading is what I do. So what are you looking for in the library sounds like my kind of book. If, like former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, you argue there is no such thing as society then this is not for you. Existential nihilism it is not. In Michiko Aoyam’s novel everything is connected and everyone has a purpose but they might just need that little nudge to find their destiny. The beating heart of the book is Sayuri Komachi. She is...

Blessings for obedience to God were promised to Israel thousands of years ago, before the time of Jesus. It is dangerous to take promises from the Old Testament and apply them to ourselves. Israel was very much God's chosen nation. We are not God's chosen nation. The church might be the people of God but even then, it is unlikely that all the promises made to Israel would equally apply to us. Before the time of Christ also means that they are...

Kosawa is a mythical village in Africa, a kind of utopia were people lived free and easy before oil was discovered. It brings immense wealth. None of it trickles down to the villagers Instead their rivers are polluted and they can no longer fish. Their land is similarly poisoned. Young children, in particular, die. But the villagers were told by the oil company representatives, Pexton, that everything was being done that could be done. Any...