At the end of Four Letters of Love, his first and lovely novel, Niall Williams explains briefly how he wrote it. He and his partner had moved back from New York to the West of Ireland determined to become writers. They’d risked everything. Williams couldn’t get started, but then the first line of the novel came to him: “When I was twelve years old God spoke to my father for the first time.” He had nothing else. He continues: “It arrived and I repeated it, and said it aloud and knew this was a…
An interesting email has reached me, noticing that work seems to have resumed at Google Books: I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but Google Books has been adding new material this year from a number of university libraries that have entered their partnership program. As could be expected, the [most likely] reason is that they are desperate to get more printed material to train their LLMs, and libraries are happy if big corporations put up the money and resources to scan their collections.…
The past few weeks I'd been talking to a friend of mine about fountain pens. As an enthusiast himself, he was somewhat aghast that I didn't own a fountain pen, and hadn't even used one since I was very young. So he set about correcting that omission, by helping me look for a used one on eBay. He'd recommended the Parker 51, seemingly recognised by many as one of the best fountain pens ever made, especially for the money. He found one in "battleship grey" for $50 USD, and very kindly polished…
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Chrissy Martin’s poetry collection Whole, Holy, Hot explores chronic illness with a unique pop culture lens. Esmé Weijun Wang wrote of the book: “This collection captures the realities of…
It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes. Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free. Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the…
Finished reading Meat Eater by Steven Rinella. I enjoy a good outdoor adventure story. Even hunting stories. So often lately the story has become about the gear and the trophy… and the over-hyped energy around a kill. All the wrong reasons to be hunting in my opinion. Steve doesn’t really do that. And he started humble.
Translated from Japanese into English by Quof, with illustrations by You Shiina. This is a post about four books, the second arc in the Ascendance of a Bookworm light novel series. They're book 4-7 in the series and won't make much sense if you haven't read the first arc. At this point, the series has fully won me over and I'll probably read all volumes at some point. I mostly read these four during the recent heatwaves (plural, sadly), because they're so easy to read. Even when I'm tired or…
Colette’s The Pure and the Impure opens in an opium den in Paris sometime during what would come to be known, looking back through the veils of nostalgia, as the Belle Époque. Our narrator, also named Colette, arrives, not as a participant but as a writer intent on conducting a little research. Perhaps, it is … Continue reading "A walk on the wild side: The Pure and the Impure by Colette"
When Brian Case joined the Melody Maker in 1978, at my invitation, he dubbed himself “Junior Beret” in tribute to Max Jones, the paper’s senior jazz writer, who habitually covered his bald pate with just such a piece of jaunty headgear. Brian died oin Monday, aged 88. I hope to write more about him elsewhere, but for now I’ll just say how much I loved his work, which was as full of surprises as the music he described. It was my privilege to supply the foreword to a collection of pieces about…
I've long been a fan of Genealogical.com's "At a Glance" four-page, laminated guides to genealogy research in specific places or about specific cultures. Written by experts, they're concise, affordable, and quite convenient for reference, including detailed resources to consult.The publisher recently sent me a free review copy of Judy Nimh Muhn's informative Acadian Genealogical Research, newly published in laminated/print and in e-book format. The e-book is reasonably priced at $7.95 and the…
Read Aurochs and Auks by John Burnside ★★★★★ Finally (and this seems less fanciful with each passing day) our inner spaces are being placed in jeopardy, as the providers of social media colonise and denature what use to be called the life of the mind for advertising revenues or political gain. Science fiction not so long ago, the enclosure of experience itself – not only of our consumer tastes, but also of our root desires, our dreams, our political leanings – has become commonplace. From…
Almost two years ago exactly I was listening to T. Swift's Tortured Poets Department on repeat and it occurred to me, one line from "So High School" would be a great title for what was then just an amorphous and incomplete manuscript which included a couple of series that centered around the idea of women as property, a chattel, but also as monsters in their own way. The pretty dead things series was at the heart of it, my poems about 17th century vampire brides, but also the governess poems of…
"Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?" is a 2007, Hugo nominated, science fiction short story by Ken MacLeod. It is about a man who agrees to investigate an abandoned experimental civilization around a distant red dwarf. Non-Spoiler Summary In A Nutshell: The story begins as an unnamed protagonist is running from the law after being caught having an affair with the station's owner. He doesn't make it very far and is eventually convicted and fined an astronomical amount of money. What does he do when he…
Our Roberta wrote a book! Roberta Kwok wrote for The Last Word on Nothing for several years — and once a Person of LWON, always a Person of LWON. Her first book, Lost in Curiosity, comes out on July 21. It’s filled with stories of the ups and downs of astronomers, physicists, frog biologists, and more (read on to find out which chapter got its start as an LWON post). Indie booksellers have already been celebrating Roberta’s writing, and we want to celebrate, too! Here’s an interview with…
The Odyssey (2026) • View trailerFive stars (out of five); rated R, for violence, gore, dramatic intensity and profanityAvailable via: Movie theatersBy Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.19.26Not many screenwriters get to share a credit with Homer. And Christopher Nolan is one of very few directors up to the challenge of the ancient Greek poet’s classic work. Warriors three: Odysseus (Matt Damon, center), Cepheus (Jimmy Gonzales, left) andEurylochus (Himesh Patel) survey what's…
For love, men would kill men. For love, men would let men die. For love, men would kneel before their enemies. Yet, The world runs with the fuel of hatred. The world rots with the taste of power. The world kills men for the love they possess. For, Love for their partners. Love for their family. Love for their peers. Yes, Love, is nothing, but a spell, that binds lovers to battle, for those who are thirsty for power. You might be wondering how I know that you're awesome! Because I know you read…
July is a month with a lovely event, hosted by Emma at Words and Peace: “Paris in July“, where we read books about all things pertaining to France and its capital. Now I have all manner of possibilities to choose from (so many French books!) and I thought I had two titles lined up and ready to go. However, for some reason they didn’t quite grab me recently, and I got distracted by mention somewhere online of Jean Cocteau (one of my favourite French authors). This sent me off rummaging in the…
Okay, I just wanted to say “Clear and presenter danger.” Let’s you and I see if there’s any chance I’ve got something to back that up. I think I have. Earlier this week, a friend did me the favour of alerting me to how a show called “The Piano” was about to start on Channel 4. She didn’t then do me the favour of admitting that she soon gave up on it. I’m not going to say that I only watched because of her, because she might hear me. Instead, I’ll tell you I watched because of her, and because…
This review may contain spoilers. Tap or click to view.That was actually pretty funny. But where did all the "zombies" go at the end??? I think this had more potential, especially the ending. But I also wish they had more utilised "Ivan and the Terribles". Nonetheless, this was worth a watch. Next event: The Haunted on July 24, 2026, 20:00 at Turock, Essen.
This month’s theme for the Read Christie 2026 challenge is ‘Best-Kept Secret’ and we’re focusing on the six novels Christie wrote under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. I have already read three of them – Giant’s Bread, Unfinished Portrait and A Daughter’s a Daughter – so I decided to read The Rose and the Yew Tree next as it’s also on my lists for both the Classics Club and the 20 Books of Summer challenge. The Rose and the Yew Tree is narrated by Hugh Norreys, who breaks off his engagement to…
I have wanted to see something like this for a long time. It is amazing how much language drifts.
All the other sci-fi/fantasy stuff tends toward the realm of TV and the moving pictures, to which cartoon characters and fairy tales add a few other harder to classify items, and that material is the direction of this post! A lovely 54mm Barbie, who could have gone in the previous post, as an obvious astronaut, but she's better employed kicking this post off. Credited to Mattel Canada, she
Almost half a century ago, in a small town in Northwestern Ohio, I knew a man who read Joseph Conrad the way some people read their Bible – out of love, not obligation. He was not otherwise a literary man. He was about seventy, a lifelong bachelor who retired from a big insurance company a few years earlier. He had lived in a succession of small Ohio towns, surrounded by vast fields of corn, soybeans and sugar beets. I was editor of the town's weekly newspaper and visited him at home to…
I'm still waiting on the delivery of my second proof for THE SHRINKER, but I know it's on its way and hopefully will be here on Monday, which means that, if it's OK, I'll launch the pre-orders next week. Fingers crossed.In the meantime, I'm deep into the next pair of books that Bear Alley will be publishing in the next couple of months. I'm thinking it might be best to have a little gap
There was a Man, and still there is, Who more than man became; I learned his name -- I-AM -- and since I’ve never been the same.
weather: ☀️ have mercy critters: cats this is the last part of a series (part 1, part 2) of words the british think i don't know. it's brief because i have now run out of words spliff. intelligible, but i've never heard anyone under 50 say it. our englishes seem to be on different timelines in different directions suss out. fully didn't know this was british bespoke. am i the only one who remembers the broke/woke/bespoke meme? i'm pretty sure black twitter invented that twee. the word…
Dear Constant Reader, This book is only tangentially related to burlesque — in a couple of ways you might expect and one you probably don’t. Michelle L’amour told me about this book, probably not long after it came out, and I’m grateful. Peep Show Pinups: The Golden Era by Jo and Paul Richardson, 2009. The book is primarily a survey of erotic photographs from the mid-19th century to about the 1920s. There are less than two dozen pages of the history of photography, with many photos included and…
My purpose, and my belief, is that the bombs that killed and maimed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki shall one day open the skies to man. —Freeman Dyson, A Space Traveler’s Manifesto, 1958The nuclear pulse rocket is what you’d get if you hired a 12 year old to get you to Jupiter. It works by farting a continuous string of nuclear bombs (at the rate of about one per second) out its back end and riding the ensuing blast waves on a giant shock absorber, like a pogo stick. A series of hundreds or…
When I try to describe this film, I keep fleeing from the word strange toward poetic — because there isn't much strange about it. If you accept its conceit at face value, everything that follows is fairly naturalistic and straightforward, especially given what else I've seen from Wenders. And the conceit is simple enough: angels, in a spiritual but perhaps not biblical sense, are all around us, invisible to everyone except children, tasked with guarding and observing a given patch of the world.…
