Authors Electric

Sometimes you come across a great book by chance, in this instance I found it when scrolling on the Borrowbox library app. Sometimes you read a book and you have to share it with everyone because it is so well written and the theme of the novel is so topical. The book in question is The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez. I listened to it and the narration is excellent, with distinctive accents for each character. Although as with “listening” to any book I did struggle to work out who was who at the beginning, without the benefit of flicking back a few pages to clarify, but it was well worth persevering. According to Wikipedia “the most common meaning [of The Great Divide] is the Continental Divide of the Americas, which separates the watersheds of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans”. The novel is set in Panama in 1907 at the time when the Panama Canal was built, a construction which crosses the Great Divide and divides a country in the process. Panama has often been in the news...

The only real regret I have about growing so old is the fact that I shan't live long enough to read the scathing dismemberment of the clowns who presently infest our public life by a historian who has access to all the evidence and can expose every lie, reveal the source of every pay-off and back-hander, can trace the cause and effect of every stupid blunder. But then, if I could last long enough to read the book, the rage induced by it would certainly finish me off. I've been taking refuge in historical novels. I enjoy them. I enjoy trying to imagine myself in a world different to mine in almost every way, and understanding that world from a different mind-set. Tom Holt is best known for writing comic fantasies -- a Rhine Maiden twisting modern men around her little finger, a modern international company being managed by a dwarf from the Nibelungenlied. If you want to read a darkly comic satire on office politics and how they're merely a pale reflection of the true p...

Like many writers, I have a cat living with me. At least, she lives with me when she feels like it... which means when it's feeding time, or when she's had enough of being wet and cold and fancies a warmer place to sleep. Her name is Jasmine, by the way, and I saved her from having to move out of her territory when my neighbours got a new puppy and needed to re-home their cat and her unexpected kittens. They, in turn, had found Jasmine as a skinny stray hiding under a parked car and had no idea she was pregnant until the night she gave birth under their son's bed... so she's been 'saved' at least twice in her life so far. Seven more lives to go, then. And you're still reading this! Which proves that saving cats must be deeply buried somewhere in our psyche as a Decent Thing To Do, and brings me to my book recommendation for this month. Save the Cat! is a book about screenwriting by Blake Snyder, who has written successfully for Hollywood so ...