Blogs

Carlo Revelli (2022) Heligoland. The Strange and Beautiful Story of Quantum Physics. Translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell.

Posted by celticman on Wed, 13 Nov 2024

I’d always hoped to use a sentence telling folk that Einstein and yours truly struggled with quantum physics. I’m reminded of Richard Feynman's remark -he had great comic timing, but was also a Nobel winning theoretical physicist - ‘nobody understands quanta’. I’m pretty good at writing books with no beginning, no middle and no end. Not so good at the actual maths. I’ve leaned on Carlo Revelli for this. Heligoland seems a good place to start...

Elif Shafak (2024) There are Rivers in the Sky.

Posted by celticman on Tue, 12 Nov 2024

Ruth Ozeki, on the book’s cover, describes, There are Rivers in the Sky as ‘A Masterpiece’. Elif Shafak’s novel was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. She is a wonderful writer who imparts words of wisdom, and I’ll be reading more of her work. Shafak plays on words. She tells the reader ‘this is the work of a junior scribe’. Her theme is the interconnectedness of being. Water remembers. Water has consciousness. It is involved in the life...

Wolfhall: The Mirror and the Light (Wreckage), BBC 1, BBC iPlayer, screenplay by Peter Straughan, director Peter Kosminsky, based on Hillary Mantel’s novels of the same name.

Posted by celticman on Mon, 11 Nov 2024

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0024z1n/wolf-hall-the-mirror-and-the-light-1-wreckage Reading is what I do. Strange as it seems, I couldn’t get into Hilary Mantel’s trilogies about the Tudor dynasty. No surprise there. I’m no royalist. Henry VIII is distant to me as the current monarch, King Charles. I can’t bear to watch programmes such as Downton Abbey , which I refer to as ‘the parasites’. Yet, I binge-watched all six episodes of Wolf...

Chpt 4 Social Effects of Being Single

Posted by Shannan on Sun, 10 Nov 2024

Chapter Four – If you don’t have children, how has your single status affected you socially? Respondent 1: Donna, Except for the mentioned “episode”, I have not really been affected as I have single friends. (Response to Q3 was: Yes, I had a hysterectomy at 36, and got a bit emotional at a church camp when I saw all the kids with their families.) Respondent 2: Alyss, I find myself in the social circles of friends and their children’s birthday...

Compiled by Alice Riley & Emma Robdale (2024) Atypical Love.

Posted by celticman on Sat, 09 Nov 2024

Atypical Love is an anthology. Nine writers. Nine stories from Alice Riley, Echo Darling, Carole Kenrick, Miriam Lohr, Kevin Marman, Zara Relphman, Elinor Rowlands, Lennie Varvarides, Emma Robdale. What makes it different or atypical is the nine writers identify as neurodivergent. I’m not sure what that means. ‘We use the term neurodivergent + (ND+) to encompass neurodvelopemental variations such autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, but add the...

Jenni Fagin (2022) Hex.

Posted by celticman on Fri, 08 Nov 2024

Hex is a novella. To be read comfortably in one sitting. The premise is history that resonates. Jenni Fagin chose the North Berwick Witch trials. She has twin narrators in different centuries meeting in a cell three levels below the current city of Edinburgh on the 4 th December 1591. Gellis Duncan, a fifteen-year-old girl, is to be executed that morning for being a witch. Iris, via a séance, comes to offer comfort. Iris: ‘I was out in the Null...

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

Posted by insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 08 Nov 2024

Posted by airyfairy. Thank you to everyone for the lovely contributions to ABC this week! Story of the Week is Ewan's 'Message: Post Scriptum'. It's very funny, surreal, and of course totally unrelated to events in the real world. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Message : Post Scriptum | ABCtales Poem of the Week is Angus Folklore's stunning 'East Coast Scotland (Reflection). It combines history, myth, and wonderful observation of 'the sea...

House Anthems by Ralph Dartford, a Review by Ewan Lawrie

Posted by insertponceyfrenchnamehere on Fri, 08 Nov 2024

House Anthems Ralph Dartford Published by Valley Press I know some of Ralph’s work from what he has shared on ABCTales.com. Always thoughtful, with significant depth of feeling and honesty, his poems are sculpted from blocks of language until what is left is poetry that is both striking and meaningful. I am particularly impressed with ‘House Anthems’, the final collection in his ‘Recovery Trilogy’. The playlist Ralph has curated to accompany...

Confederacy of drunkards

Posted by Caldwell on Fri, 08 Nov 2024

I wore my drinking like a badge of honour. Somehow, the fact that I could keep it together—without my wife or kids ever really knowing—felt like an achievement. This was mine. My secret. I hid bottles everywhere: in coat pockets, hanging shopping bags, the tops of kitchen cabinets, under the car seat, even in the bushes by our gate. I was an adult, yet I treated this like some kind of game. Could I make it through a conversation without slurring...

(Snod) Raymond McHard. 1963—2024

Posted by celticman on Thu, 07 Nov 2024

Notes on nostalgia. Adolescence, when neurons exploded and rearranged themselves into them or us. Your senses discombobulated by girls. Everything tasted better. We scattered ourselves on a sea of faces. Some familiar. Some not familiar enough. Our voices thin as scratch-marks. Snod’s hair, flame-red as the hottest summer of 1976, but soon to be eclipsed and forgotten. We knew we were indestructible. All answers copied from the back of an old...

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