Comfort Women by Nora Okja Keller began as a short story. Keller turned it into an acclaimed debut novel. Comfort Women sounds kind of nice. A pseudonym for mass rape, torture and mass murder by Japanese soldiers who invaded Korea in the same way England invaded Ireland. Japanese Imperialism, claiming to be ‘for the good of Koreans’, failed when atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The roots of genocide remain because some...

I don’t usually read books twice. But I was browsing and picked Władysław Szpilman’s autobiography again. He was born in 1911. He had two sisters and a brother. They were taken with his mother and father, East, for resettlement. They were killed by the Nazis. Wladyslaw survived the Warsaw ghetto. The Warsaw uprising. He was almost killed by his Russian saviours. He was one of the few Jews to survive. He needed not just one miracle but many...

Henry Marsh was once part of an elite group of around 200 neurosurgeons in England. Not only that, he’s a Sunday Times Bestseller. His focus here is letting go. With the help of an editor, this is his diary written over a year from the Covid-19 epidemic. His fears and doubts as he moved from being part of the establishment to just another NHS patient. A fearful old man with cancer of the prostrate. ‘Although I was to come to terms fairly quickly...

In the introduction, Bill Bryson explains to the editor of the Mail on Sunday , who is an old friend, the reasons he can’t write a weekly column for the magazine Night & Day . Notes from a Big Country are a collection of these columns published in the Mail on Sunday , 1996-1998. It would be the equivalent of me publishing my blog column. The Big Country Bryson refers to is America. He is a returning citizen taking with him an English wife,...

Crossing the River was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It’s not one book, but many stories linked to what it means to be human, to be black and bought and sold, to be despised because of your skin colour. I wasn’t paying much attention to the story’s through-line or theme. ‘A desperate foolishness. The crops failed. I sold my children. I remember. I led them (two boys and a girl)…My Nash. My Martha. My Travis. Their lives fractured.’ ‘The...

‘Good morning! Let me introduce myself. My name is Dora Chance. Welcome to the wrong side of the tracks.’ Carter specialises in the wrong side of the track. If it’s not circuses, it’s showbiz, which is just a different kind of circus. Dora has taken on the task of writing her autobiography. Well, not just hers, but her twin sister, Nora. It’s their seventy-fifth birthday. Same birthday as William Shakespeare (assuming we know who that is). Same...

https://wwwbbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001zqvz/close https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_(2022_film) Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. This is a tearjerker. It reminded me of C.Day Lewis’s poem Walking Away . The poet laurate is transfixed and transfigured the sight of his son (Oscar-winning actor, Daniel Day Lewis) Walking Away. Behind a scatter of boys, I can see You walking away from me towards the school With the...

Bill Bryson offers an idiosyncratic snapshot of America as the workshop of the world, the most powerful nation on earth that had a good 1 st World War—with most other countries, debtor nation—that produced tax surpluses that largely benefited President Warden G. Harding and his wealthy cronies with shades of the moron’s moron Trump. Bryson wasn’t to know this having written the book before the rise of bankrupt rapist, serial liar, tax dodger,...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Snowman-Michael-Fassbender/dp/B076B8B7WV/ref=sr_1_1?crid=F1X4A7U9WGE3&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.WJNn2zh9V6W1SdedKlH3zw.4bmtaqlSLVGsIzX7tcNDdo8_MX0AYgumz_qblIA8oZQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+snowman+michael+fassbender&qid=1716581776&s=instant-video&sprefix=the+snowman%2Cinstant-video%2C81&sr=1-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snowman_(2017_film) I was a big fan of Wallander on BBC4. I watched every...

Firstly some rather sombre news. Yesterday we had to cancel the account of someone who continued to post AI assisted writing despite numerous warnings. We rarely ban users and it’s always a sad moment for us so if you’re thinking of trying AI please remember that this is an AI free site and it will result in you losing your account. We do check things very carefully and all the editors are consulted before such a decision is made. On a brighter...