I read the first 40 pages of The Lying Life of Adults . I’ve read most of Elena Ferrante’s fiction and non-fiction. It was to me a familiar story of Neapolitan middle-class life in a fashionable apartment. A brilliant father who studies and lectures and publishes. A beautiful mother, who is also brilliant, but less so, being a woman. And an insecure daughter that needs to be both brilliant and beautiful and fears she is nearer. Imagines herself...

Legion (1983) Long before it became a tourist attraction, Dublin's Temple Bar in the 1980's was a ramshackle collection of dilapidated warehouses, earmarked for demolition. The area was hidden behind a stockade of music postered hoardings. Along the street amid the buildings was a bookshop called The Alchemist's Head (sadly gone now). It was a long, narrow shop with shelves full of fortean magaines. movie magazines and a healthy stack of sci-fi...

Great Scottish Writer—Neil M.Gunn (1941 [1989]) The Silver Darlings. The Silver Darlings , referred to in the title, are herring. Neil M.Gunn’s most popular novel was published by Faber & Faber in 1941. Think about that. T.S.Eliot was the main man at Faber & Faber. The phony war with Germany was over. Britain was in retreat and awaiting imminent invasion and possible starvation as U-boats sunk tens of thousands of tons of merchant...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p09qkrq8/daisy-maskell-insomnia-and-me I watched this last night. The programme started at 10.35pm, and I was almost falling asleep. A poor joke, which also happens to be true. My partner has problems sleeping. The woman across from us said she doesn’t sleep much. My sister goes to bed in the afternoon, and her son isn’t much better. As Henry Marsh writes in Do No Harm , exercise is supposed to help prevent...

Salem's Lot - (1975) Salem's Lot is the first book on my list of the 9 books that inspired me to write . This was my first 'grown up' book, a battered trade paperback found in a second-hand bookshop in Dublin's long-gone 'Daffodil Market', I paid £0.60p for it in 1983. The premise like JAWS, parks an unspeakable threat into a small American town and its corrosive impact on the locals. Salem's Lot was a gateway book for me to the works of John...

I am currently reading Peter Swanson's excellent 'Eight Perfect Murders' and a thought occurred to me; What 8 novels inspired me to write? I gave it some time and came up with (in this instance), 9 novels that inspired me to write. The rule of thumb for these books is that once I reached 'THE END', I flipped through the pages back to the beginning and re-read them. In several instances over 10 times. So each day (or week), depending on how lazy...

$5K - 52 Weeks - 20 Penny Stocks One Winner!! Current Status ( -$3,359.73 ) Week - 25 Current Status ( -$3,245.93 ) Week - 24 behold the bounty that is the dawn, unbound by promise, yet ripe with expectation --------------------------------- I wrote that, that’s my jam you know, I come up with a good line thinking I should do something with it and … pfft! It’s been laying around collecting dust for a few years, I stumbled across it and decided...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07xdrv3/jimmy-johnston James Connolly Johnstone was born on the 30 th September 1944. He died on 13 th March 2006. We all know who Jinky is. We voted him Celtic’s best-ever player and if you look at the footage of that night, you’ll see a young looking Martin O’Neil and a grinning number seven with dreadlocks called Henrik Larsson. A statue of Jinky is outside Parkhead, but he rests in our hearts. Because...

Greatly excited about our next online Reading Event, on 26 August! These evenings are always a lot of fun, and it's so lovely to hear people reading their work. Many thanks to Mark Burrow for doing the organising again, and you can find out more (and sign up!) here: https://tinyurl.com/9t4mr45u Our Story of the Week goes to Simon Barget's funny, brilliant and bizarre 'Me'. Narcissism isn't just about shouting your mouth off to gain attention,...

Please remember there’s an online reading event on the 26th of August, organised by Mark Burrow for us all. If you want to sign up to read or be in the audience, the link and info is here: https://tinyurl.com/9t4mr45u Poem of the Week is ‘In IKEA, he dreams about the woman he loves’ by stevepoet. It’s a fabulous love poem. https://www.abctales.com/story/stevepoet/ikea-he-dreams-about-woman-he-loves Story of the Week is The Train You Rode In On...