From full lockdown here in South Africa, wishing you all well. Hope the time of quiet, and option for stillness, brings great meaning, purpose, creativity and understanding that is filled with peace in your hearts. Take care of yourselves awesome ABC community. You rock. Cyber hugs, Shannan

Author Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere was published in 2017 to critical acclaim and is still a number one bestseller in Amazon in 2020. It terms of book sales, the author has produced the literary equivalent of Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell . Being a writer that never writes much now, I thought I’d take a look. It’s a page turner were the end begins at the beginning. I liked it. The review should end here with recognition of that neat trick...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000gx8n/jawbone Writer Johnny Harris takes the central role of Jimmy McCabe in this smashing film with a boxing background. We’re all familiar with the Rocky theme tune playing in the background and the stereotypical rags to riches story. We know there’ll be a fight and our hero will win. Johnny Harris gives it a bit of twist, his fight is with the booze. He can still shift, but his better days are gone. He...

Boris Pahor (2020) Necroplis. Translated by Michael Biggins, introduction by Alan Yentob. With most of the world in lockdown now is perhaps a good time to spend reading about Boris Pahor in the land of the crematoria. Spare a thought for those in refugee camps and prisons. Necropolis is a story not about them, but about us, common humanity. Pahor writes about his life not in the past, but in the present and also the future, when he’ll be like so...

https://www.facebook.com/mary.boyle.9/videos/10159825153012228/?t=0 Piety, as we all know, is a quality of being reverent. We usually associate it with religion. Etymologically, it comes from Latin and is related to dutifulness. It’s not often I’ve seen ideology in action. People coming to their front doors and clapping their hands and supporting the NHS. Our NHS and the support workers. Care workers and what we used to call auxiliaries. Only to...

What a wonderful island ABCtales is. Many of us have found respite here this week - thank you so much for posting your writing, it really helps in difficult times. T he standard of writing has been incredibly high so do look back across the week for many brilliant pieces. The lives of others are intrinsically interesting - or perhaps I'm just nosey. Either way Ice Rivers has given us some fabulous snippets, in a sort of Mass Observation style...

"A selection of darkly humorous tales about two hapless undertakers, Josiah Oakshott and Archibald Thurble, and the troubles that befall them and their clients. Also, some stories about two precocious children you really wouldn't want to tangle with - Peregrine and Prudence. If you want to know who blew up the crematorium, why Mrs Anderby had an unfortunate encounter with some potting compost and how an Anti-Santa found himself in captivity, you...

A guy told me that a guy he knew said the coronavirus has been engineered. It has, of course, left-wing, radical badgers in their labs far below the earth when they were mixing a batch of bovine TB in the 1970s also created the coronavirus and passed the secret onto their friends the right-wing bats. Because bats knew they’d be ate by some human in the Huanan seafood market in January 2020. Revenge of the bats – COVID-19 is the name of the...

Monday 23rd March Todays plan Choose breakfast Do stretches , choose exercise modality and do it. I suspect I will have to have several bursts of it. Tidy another cupboard Clean dogs ears Hopefully keyboard will arrive and I will have a go with it. Supper is gnocchi with walnuts and blue cheese followed by the oranges which wont last long.

Once again, loads of thanks to all you wonderful ABCTalers for so many splendid contributions to the site. We know from feedback how much pleasure, inspiration and support our members get from each other, and it feels especially important right now. Also delighted to see that two of our writers, Penny4athought and Laurie Avadis, have new books out: https://www.abctales.com/blog/insertponceyfrenchnamehere/perfect-second-... https://www.abctales...