Authors Electric

The right book at the right time In November we lost my brother-in-law, Nicky, quite suddenly - a stroke from which it seemed that he would never wake up. My sister-in-law, my wife’s sister Pen, said she had felt that he was ‘slipping away’. Yet he was a fit and active man, still working as a market gardener, and he had once been the proud owner of two Clydesdales, named Tommy and Morgan, draught horses that he had cared for for many years until their own deaths; so I was surprised and shocked for he was only six months older than I am. In August this year my wife and I had been with both him and Pen, choosing books at Logie Steading in Scotland, a bookstore where he had once himself worked part-time.   I had chosen a few books during that visit, although they were not books that were particularly memorable; and this would have had no consequence except that following my brother-in-law’s death, I needed something which would ground me in my understanding of what this loss might mea...

Happy New Year!  And now that Christmas is over, I’m going to try something.   Here are a few lines from some of the top famous poems of all time (according to Google):  1. Shall I compare you to a summer’s day?       You are lovelier and more temperate. ( Sonnet 18 , William Shakespeare)    Autumn foliage 2. Season of mists and yellow fruitfulness,      Close friend of the maturing sun. ( Ode to Autumn, John Keats)   3. I must go back to the seas again, to the lowly seas and the sky       And all I ask is a good ship, and a star to sail her by. ( Sea Fever , John Masefield)   4. I wandered lonely as a cloud      That sails on high over dales and hills ( Daffodils,  William Wordsworth)  Notice anything?   Lovers of literature will be foaming at the mouth long before they reach No 4 (judging by myself, naturally).  Because these lines are fu...

  Hey, it's Christmas Day! https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Buddhism_dham_jak.svg     So there were these two Buddhist monks travelling together, one much older than the other. They were on foot, slogging along. They came to a fast-flowing river, with no bridge. On the river bank, looking scared, was a beautiful young woman.  A  Buddhist monk, like most other monks, is bound by strict vows of celibacy and is forbidden to even touch a woman. As the monks near the woman, she turns to them and tells them that her mother is very sick and she needs to go to her. But her mother's village is on the other side of this river. She's tried to cross it once, but was nearly swept away. Can they help her get across? "Of course," says the older monk, a hefty sort. He picks the young woman up his arms and wades into the river. The water sways him and the woman cries out and locks her arms round his neck. But the monk is strong and soon gets his balance. Slowly, he w...

My challenge to review a random book for every month of this year ends with a suitably snowy read for the holidays.  Nevertell  by Katharine Orton   was originally published for young readers, which usually means a good read for adults too, and this book delivers a magical story for anyone aged 10+. Nevertell by Katharine Orton Lina and her mother are prisoners in a Siberian labour camp, the only home she's ever known. When a group of daring escapees recruit Lina to steal food from the greenhouse, she finds herself stranded in a snowstorm with desperate men she doesn't trust. Only her best friend Bogdan, who follows them with his smuggled maps, can help Lina find her grandmother in far-off Moscow and rescue her mother. But first they must cross snowy wastes haunted by ghostly hounds and an evil sorceress, who wants to know why she can't enchant Lina. The magical elements creep gently into this book, drawing the reader from its historical Soviet setting into an enchan...

" It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. " One can get sick of being right. Just ask Santa.  Were he alive today, Charles Dickens might be proud that  A Tale of Two Cities , published in 1859,  endures as a literary classic. But I suspect he'd be uncomfortable at how much its darkness remains relevant today.   Not to compare myself with Dickens, or to Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, I feel the same about my holiday novella, "Milagro on 34th Street," published in 2012. I'd glad it remains entertaining. But I regret that it seems to have been more prophetic each year since then .  The Santa novella mixes my 1990s experiences as a  department store Santa, with satire of my favorite holiday movie, "Miracle on ...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.   Firstly, may I wish you a happy Christmas and New Year. Secondly, may I hope you receive many wonderful books as presents.   One of the joys of the post-Christmas and pre-New Year period is having more chances to curl up on the sofa with a good book. I make the most of this. My Christmas reading consists of books I receive on the big day (these always jump up my To Be Read pile) plus I catch up on writing magazines.    In the run up to Christmas I take in a number of related stories usually via film. To my mind, the best rendering of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is The Muppet Christmas Carol. Sir Michael Caine is superb in that. After that, comes the Patrick Stewart version.  Hogfather by the much missed Sir Terry Pratchett is the Discworld’s answer to Christmas and the story is a cracking thriller. Who is trying to get rid of the Hogfather and why and can Death, assisted by h...