celticman's blog

What do you think about when you hear: The Faithful Couple ? I think of an old couple being physically separated as they entered The Poor House. That was a last century thing, but we’re bringing it back step by step. Faithful Couple isn’t to me a guy thing. That old joke that your mates are whoever your wife’s pal’s husbands or partners is too near the bone. A.D. Miller twists this idea as he takes the reader through the lives of a faithful...

The writing on the cover is a bit funny. Then I realised it was meant to be that way. White writing on black background. A san-serif trick for the short-sighted drunk. A black dog appears with a red collar. Declan’s dog, Horace. But there is also an allusion to the Churchill version of the Black Dog. Declan is the narrator. He’s the wee guy that wants to be a writer. We’ve all been there. Writers write stuff. But there is another narrator. James...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p077ysvd/ptsd-the-war-in-my-head Who are you? What are you? A simple way of telling a story involves both elements. To be identified as a soldier tells who you are. Lt. General Harold G. Moore, for example, proudly claims in his New York Times Bestseller, We Were Soldiers Once…And Young . But it doesn’t tell what you are. The moron’s moron and Chief Commanding Officer of the United States Army, for example,...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001d6yr https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001ddg1 I listened and was intrigued by The Battersea Poltergeist . Danny Robbins has assembled the same team to tackle another caseload, he terms ‘the most haunted house in Britain’. He’s repeating himself. But I wouldn’t want to stay within spitting distance. Or to put it another way, no way would I stay anywhere near that place. I’m not sure if I believe in ghosts...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001c1mt/deepfake-porn-could-you-b... Mariam-Webster [online] dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deepfake deepfake noun plural deepfakes Definition of deepfake : an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said Two artists and an advertising company created a deepfake of...

A remarkable debut novel. Often we conflate the narrator with the writer. Starr is sixteen. A black girl that goes to a school outside her district and ghetto. A coming-of-age drama. A love story. Inside and outside. Stories told in black and white. Class and entitlement, the embodiment of The American Dream and its flipside in the hood. The Hate U Give seemed familiar. Biblical. The Hate You Give is the Hate You Get. Eye for an eye. Old...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001ckxy/harriet There’s an old trick for a director to add a few lines of text and also claim credit as a writer. Harriet is about slavery. Black people were bought and sold like slaves (and still are). You’ve probably had a mental blip, because it’s clichéd. From Prince claiming he was a slave and changing his name to a squiggle during a contractual dispute with his record company. In contrast, Liz Truss...

The formless nought. That was my thinking when I heard Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng mentioning ‘the people,’ ‘the people’ he talked to, ‘the people’ he listened to, ‘the people’— Not my people. Not me. Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, friend of Queen Victoria, leader of the Conservative Party and twice Prime Minister but also a writer. Sybil (1845), for example, brought the two nations argument into dining rooms. The...

The title struck me. I was glad my mum died too, but for different reasons. She had Alzheimer’s and her life wasn’t a life. The front cover has two quotes from famous people saying nice things about Jennette McCurdy’s autobiography. Jerrod Carmichael ‘Impressively funny’. I didn’t think so and I don’t know who that is. But before reading this book, which I did mostly in one sitting, leaving the last few chapters until the next day, I didn’t know...

The cover is a give-away: ‘A Father Behind Bars/A Daughter Determined to Free Him.’ Obviously I hadn’t been paying attention. I thought the narrator was a young black man. In the Author’s Note, Dick Lehr tells the reader the facts. ‘Nothing But the Truth has its origins in one of Boston’s most notorious murders—the shooting of twelve-year-old Tiffany Moore on a hot summer night in 1988. Tiffany was seated on a blue mailbox in Roxbury, swinging...