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Metaphor, Imagery… But Where’s the Story? Asks Griselda Heppel.

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Recently a headline in the Spectator caught my eye: The Real Reason Children no Longer Enjoy Reading by Mary Wakefield. Given that Received Opinion blames the lure of the mobile phone, computer games, social media etc for the sad decline in young people picking up books, I was intrigued. The lure of computer games.  Photo by Boris Hamer: https://www.pexels.com/photo /young-child-engaged-with-laptop-indoors- 29545224 / The article title implied something else was afoot. And indeed, according to Wakefield, it is. The author describes a train journey whiled away (if you can call it that) by coaching her son for his 11 plus exam. The boy’s increasingly stubborn refusal to answer a simple question about an image in an English comprehension paper drives her dotty, until she realises there’s something else going on here. It’s not that her son can’t understand. He’s fighting back. Against a curriculum that has airily dispensed with any need to introduce children to the delights of liter...
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Come Into the Garden -- Susan Price

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  Susan Price's website can be found here... She does use words occasionally... 
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A Year of Horse Books: Xenophon On Horsemanship - reviewed by Katherine Roberts

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Xenophon grew up in Athens and served in the Greek cavalry a few years before the birth of Alexander the Great. In his retirement, he wrote what is considered to be the first book on horsemanship, which I found useful when I was writing "I am the Great Horse", although I don't claim to have read it in the original ancient Greek! Fortunately translations exist, and I chose 'The Art of Horsemanship' translated by M H Morgan for its layman's approach to the text rather than being aimed exclusively at scholars of the period. The Art of Horsemanship This neat little book includes Xenophon's original Treatise on Horsemanship,  together with an essay on the Greek Riding Horse, closing with a chapter describing the characteristics of a good horse according to 10 prominent Greek and Roman writers of the time. A series of notes at the end provide fascinating detail to the equestrian, such as the type of bit used in the horse's mouth for everyday riding (smooth) ...
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Celebrating Books by Allison Symes

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Image Credits:- Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. AI images avoided. One photo from my book event at Salisbury URC was taken by me, Allison Symes. Many thanks to Gemma Owen-Kendall for taking the image of me at The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick.  There is never a time when books shouldn’t be celebrated but, as authors, we have even more motive to do so. But the challenge is to get across to those who don’t read for pleasure the joys of books and stories and there is something out there for them. There is far more of a range for the reluctant reader now than there was when I was growing up. There is more awareness of need here, I think, and that can only be a good thing.  I admit it is my great hope for flash fiction and short story collections, such as mine, that these could be used to draw in the reluctant reader. I’m not asking someone to commit to too much in one go.   The hope is, of course, having picked up the reading bug, people would then ...
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Wildlife Writing, by Elizabeth Kay

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  Martial eagle I’ve written about travel writing here before, and there’s a bit of a crossover as most of the wildlife that has excited me has been abroad. It’s the spectacular stuff that grabs the attention, and it’s incidents rather than the stamp-collecting of many trips which are the most interesting. I’ve recently got back from South Africa, but these days due to arthritis I have had to limit what I can do. I went with Titan, a sister company to Saga, and it includes a pick-up and a drop-off to your door and an all-inclusive package at a single centre base, with two safaris a day. Ground floor accommodation, no stressful walks, and special assistance at airports. Very tame compared with what I’ve done before. The holiday was primarily aimed at seeing the Big Five which I’ve seen many times before. It’s nearly always the Big Four, of course, as leopards are notoriously elusive. But this time I was interested in the birds, and clocked up 42 new species, which you can do painles...
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DEATH BY ALAN RICKMAN--by Reb MacRath Here's something different for my September blog: a sampling from my new Substack thread called Muggability Blues. The thread's unifying theme is not only mugging but other threats of  our time, energy, confidence, joy, etc. And each month has four entries: one discussing Danger, one a personal Disclosure related to the first post, a third post detailing Defenses, and a fourth sharing Resources. This second September entry should be of interest to my British friends. And next month I'll write about my Substack lessons and challenges so far. Without further ado, this is for anyone who's been killed  by Alan Rickman.  MUGGABILITY BLUES September DISCLOSURE: Alan Rickman Kills Me When He Loves My Suit D. F. Cotter Sep 08, 2026 In Die Hard , CEO Joseph Takagi lives a while longer after Hans Gruber admires his suit…but I’ve always been a sucker for a plummy British accent. And if Hans had said ‘Nice suit’ to me, even while holding a gun,...
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Which Author Do You Most Want to Get With?

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 Mine was Tom Robbins. The sticker of Tom Robbins stuck on my computer stand. This was not because I thought Tom Robbins had a hot bod or face. I don't remember ever giving much thought to whether he was physically attractive at all. His  writing  was hot. And funny. Funny has always been dangerous for me. I have been "in love" with many funny men who have not much to recommend them in the looks department. Make me laugh, though, and apparently my standards become extremely negotiable. I wanted to live inside the strange, funny, sexy world of Robbins' books. More specifically, I wanted to be a character in one. And eventually, somewhere between the sentences and the weirdness and the sheer pleasure of encountering a mind that did not seem to travel by any of the usual roads, I developed a crush on the man who was making all of it up. “Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice.” Learning mo...
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