For many readers the term The Body Keeps the Score has become a truism. Something that sounds kinda true, but you don’t really know why or who said it. It’s routinely rolled out in debates and conversations about mental health and in particular PTSD. But really it applies to those lives that have been struck by tragedy and trauma. Unfortunately this includes a large group of children. Those hundreds of thousands of children in Palestine, for...

TG Reid Blood Water Falls setting is the Highlands. The cover describes it as ‘A DCI Bone Scottish Crime Thriller’. I’ve not read other of Reid’s series of books featuring DCI Bone. But as a standalone book—‘You can’t drown the dead’—that should be unnecessary. But Reid and DCI Bone didn’t work for me. I read around the first 30 pages. Over a million copies of this book sold? Perhaps I should add an exclamation mark! Richard Jones, a geography...

In ponders past, the coveted title of ‘Second Best Biscuit in the World’ was once held by a powerful Hebridean wizard who made a chocolate biscuit bake of much renown. However, this winning biscuit became not only elusive as a haggis in June, but very expensive if found. With deep regret and heavy hearts, the simple truth became unavoidable, a new contender for ‘Second Best Biscuit in the World’ was required. As the fates and gods of biscuitry*...

Given that we’re soon to be zapped like bugs under a magnifying glass from the 50,000 very-bad-idea mirrored satellites (although I do wonder if some are already up there causing fires destroying the French wine industry, English agriculture), it’s time to sell the self-help books. If I can dip into conspiracy theories at the drop of a sentence, then it’s likely I’ve self-helped as much as it’s possible for any self to help. It didn’t help that...

Lin Anderson’s Whispers of the Dead is sold as Rhona MacLeod Thriller. Ah, you might say. An established series. That’s good, in a way. Anderson is one of the top ten percent of writers that can afford to write and produce around a book a year. Front cover: The Daily Record labelled it (or her) The Best Scottish Crime Series Since Rebus . I know who Rebus is. I’ve even got a couple of his books lying around unread somewhere (I keep meaning to...

Being in an ‘escape mindset’, fancied an overnight trip to Edinburgh. Maybe get a senior railcard, travel first class for a treat. See the movie costumes at Dovecot, raid the art gallery shops. Check out medieval magical items at the Scottish National Gallery before the Oxford course starts. (What a swot). Go positively mad in Blackwell’s. However, an overnight tourist tax recently started, of 5% per night, so have changed my mind. Even with...

I’ve read J. Oliver Padgett’s work on ABCtales. I’d be able to pick out his writing from others by his measured style and a quirk that stands out like a thumbprint. I didn’t pay much attention to the title page or the title. But it made sense in the end. This is a short book. Just over 200 pages. It can be read in one sitting, which I could easily have done. But I left the last 20 or 30 pages until my concentration was better. And to give it the...

The pathway into the ‘Experimental Mindset’ is to make a pact with yourself. One at a time, no multi-pacting. A pact is not a generic or goal-based statement like, ‘I will write a book by Christmas’. Rather, ‘I will write 300 words each weekday for 100 days’, just to see what happens. Taking notes, recording observations of what happens along the way, not self-negating criticism, just data. In this way, everyday life becomes experimental and...

Camilla Läckberg & Henrik Fexeus’s Cult (2023) has sold more than 30 million copies. I like to say I’d read it, but I haven’t. I read around a fifth. The first 100 pages. For the record. My combined book sales lie about 3 copies, or more, maybe 4. Nordic noir is the new ABBA. Ossian is the kidnapped five year old boy whose disappearance drives the central plot. Frederik & Josefin, Ossian’s parents, are devastated by the abductor being a...

Was reading that people who complain a lot, say about other people’s fabulous movies not sticking verbatim to the book/poem, are responding from a cynical mindset. Of course, reading something nowadays doesn’t make it any truer than watching it on YouTube, doubly so if you read it via AI, but the notion of cynicism as blocked creativity chimed. I spend too much time complaining about complainers. Ergo ; it’s me who is stuck in a cynical mindset...