Blogs

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...