celticman's blog

For many readers the term The Body Keeps the Score has become a truism. Something that sounds kinda true, but you don’t really know why or who said it. It’s routinely rolled out in debates and conversations about mental health and in particular PTSD. But really it applies to those lives that have been struck by tragedy and trauma. Unfortunately this includes a large group of children. Those hundreds of thousands of children in Palestine, for...

TG Reid Blood Water Falls setting is the Highlands. The cover describes it as ‘A DCI Bone Scottish Crime Thriller’. I’ve not read other of Reid’s series of books featuring DCI Bone. But as a standalone book—‘You can’t drown the dead’—that should be unnecessary. But Reid and DCI Bone didn’t work for me. I read around the first 30 pages. Over a million copies of this book sold? Perhaps I should add an exclamation mark! Richard Jones, a geography...

Lin Anderson’s Whispers of the Dead is sold as Rhona MacLeod Thriller. Ah, you might say. An established series. That’s good, in a way. Anderson is one of the top ten percent of writers that can afford to write and produce around a book a year. Front cover: The Daily Record labelled it (or her) The Best Scottish Crime Series Since Rebus . I know who Rebus is. I’ve even got a couple of his books lying around unread somewhere (I keep meaning to...

I’ve read J. Oliver Padgett’s work on ABCtales. I’d be able to pick out his writing from others by his measured style and a quirk that stands out like a thumbprint. I didn’t pay much attention to the title page or the title. But it made sense in the end. This is a short book. Just over 200 pages. It can be read in one sitting, which I could easily have done. But I left the last 20 or 30 pages until my concentration was better. And to give it the...

Camilla Läckberg & Henrik Fexeus’s Cult (2023) has sold more than 30 million copies. I like to say I’d read it, but I haven’t. I read around a fifth. The first 100 pages. For the record. My combined book sales lie about 3 copies, or more, maybe 4. Nordic noir is the new ABBA. Ossian is the kidnapped five year old boy whose disappearance drives the central plot. Frederik & Josefin, Ossian’s parents, are devastated by the abductor being a...

Patricia Wolf’s Outback is a DS Walker Thriller. This is her debut novel. Less than a handful of readers would know (or care) who DS Walker is. But it’s presented as part of a series of books such as Rebus or Laidlaw that has a pedigree. This is market-speak for look at me. Outback is readable. I’ve left unfinished around four novels recently. Simple setup—with the ticking clock. Unless they’re found they’ll die. The Australian sun is a killer...

Cathy Rentzenbrink is described on the cover as a Sunday Times bestselling author. True. It reminds me of a phrase Carl Macdougal copy and pasted onto all of his books. Something from Billy Connolly that described him as a great writer. It you’ve got it, flaunt it. Often now, authors aren’t selling books but brands. Her memoir The Last Act of Love was a breakout hit. In Rentzenbrink’s memoir she described the devastation of her elder teenage...

What does your summer reading tell about you? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd69glgl2jzo I’m grumpy. I had to search for the translator’s name. It wasn’t included on the cover or listed in the first few cover pages of the English paperback of Mariana Leky’s international bestseller released in 2021. It was translated from the German for Bloomsbury by Tess Lewis. Translation is an art. Her name should have been on the front cover, not the...

It’s over 20 years since Francine Prose published her guide for Reading Like a Writer , which I try to. It’s for people that love books, which is me too, and for those that want to write them. Yes, exactly. Prose is an antonym. Re-reading Reading Like a Writer reminds me of so much that I’ve already forgotten, but I’ve already forgotten it, again. Reading is mostly what I do. But Prose as a bibliophile is at genius check-mate level. Slow down...

I’m not young. Many, or most, wouldn’t consider me a writer. Certainly John Gardner wouldn’t. For Gardner good writing, ‘creates a vivid and continuous dream’. Everything else follows. Look, for example, at the brouhaha involving Sir Christopher Nolan's latest film, The Odyssey . As most of us would expect, rave reviews followed the money. But I loved the dissenting voice of Emily Wilson. Her 2017 translation of Homer's Odyssey was cited by the...