back home again

My brother came home yesterday evening after two more weeks in hospital. He looks good, he looks strong. Thank you for all the wishes and prayers, may God be with you. Greetings! Tom Brown

Never Give Up

Richard L. (Laurent) Provencher is my name; born Sept. 10, 1942 in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, Canada. Married Esther (Ogden) March 27, 1975 in Sarnia, Ontario. Three of our children live in Ontario and British Columbia - our youngest son age 52 passed away in 2021 from lung problems. My wife & I live in Truro, Nova Scotia. My brain aneurysm in 1999 retired me from the working world, three months after my job of 14 years was phased out. Years of...

Tom Wright & Bradley Hope (2019) Billion Dollar Whale.

Tom Wright & Bradley Hope (2019) Billion Dollar Whale. Few economics books top the New York Times Bestseller list. Billion Dollar Whale fits into another category of True Crime. Twenty-seven-year-old Jho Low stole around seven billion dollars—give or take tens of million—with the aid of a Malaysian investment fund. Nobody was really accounting. Low had supermodels on tap and celebrity parties included the A-list of Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie...

one week again

Our uncle and aunt were here they say Jacques is doing well, it is now a week again in hospital. They did some shopping for me got some nice goodies! I am alone again but coping well. Watching movies writing a bit (sleeping late!) keeping the house clean and tidy. We really appreciate all the prayers and wishes we did not realize how many friends we have. I printed some of his stories etc. of Abctales, he took it with to work on there. South...

James Patterson and Matt Eversmann with Chris Mooney (2023) American Cops.

We all know who James Patterson is. A reminder is on the flyleaf on the inside back cover. He’s ‘one of the best-known and biggest selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 400 million copies.’ You’re probably wondering what that’s got to do with American cops. Do a little detective work. You might not know (like me) who Matt Eversmann and Chris Mooney are, but it doesn’t really matter, their association with James Patterson...

Angus Constam (2023) The Convoy HG76: Taking the Fight to Hitler’s U-Boats

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_HG_76 We know Britain wins the war. In the same way we can’t know that Ukraine will win its war. Hindsight blinds us. Angus Constam takes the reader back to a period in winter 1941 when it was all bad news. Nazi Germany had occupied most of Europe and Channel Islands. Britain was next on the Hitler’s list. The Royal Navy had been brought home to defend British shores. Despite Germany’s mass investment in a...

A.Anotoli (Kuznetsov) (2023 [1969]) Babi Yar: The Story of Ukraine’s Holocaust, translated from the Russian by David Floyd.

Vintage Classics has republished Babi Yar. A.Anotoli (Kuznetsov) describes Babi Yar as ‘a document in the form of a novel’. What the author means by that is in the first line of the first chapter, Ashes (after the Preface): ‘This book contains nothing but the truth.’ Kuznetzov was born in 1929 in Kyiv. His mother was Ukrainian. His father a Soviet who was relocated when the Germans invaded, 21 st September 1941. As a twelve-year old, he lived in...

Tan Twan Eng (2023) The House of Doors.

I wasn’t sure I’d finish this book. I’m snobbish enough to continue reading because the author’s previous novel had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. There’s more than one way to being wrong. At the end of The House of Doors , I felt that flush of acknowledgment of being in such fine company. I’d need to look out for Tan Twan Eng’s other books. Let me explain my foolishness as the class hatred of the lies and propaganda of Downton Abbey and...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

I hope no-one's suffering too much from the heat, choking on wildfire smoke or getting too soggy from the great British rain we're having in my part of the world. Story of the Week is another installment in the life of Mark Burrow's heatbreakingly wonderful young protagonist Jason. This chapter gives him a rare moment of triumph and exhileration, along with - as usual - some killer one liners and observations on the world. One day this is going...

Debbie Fanning (2023) The Journey Home.

The Journey Home is a short book, self-published by Debbie Fanning. In subscript at the bottom of the cover is the message she wants to convey after being raped by two men on Burns Night, 25 th January 2003, when she was twenty-one: ‘Finding my voice and taking my power back after a devastating assault’. ‘ I’m OK. You’re OK .’ That’s the name of a philosophy and a way of listening and doing. It’s one of those convenient lies. Rape and brutality...

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