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Continue reading →: River of Darkness by Buddy Levy
Francisco Orellana and the Deadly First Voyage through the Amazon Levy’s books are exciting and informative to read. They read like fiction. If I compare him to someone like Harry Thompson (who sadly died so young) in his book This Thing of Darknes (concerning Fitzroy’s voyages including with Charles Darwin),…
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Continue reading →: Cricket at SkutvikThe rain arrived later than predicted on Saturday, just after 11 am, but it set in and would have made outdoor activity challenging. From our spot on the quayside I could see the cloud gathering, so had 90 minutes out just after breakfast. There’s a sculpture trail in Tranøy which…
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Continue reading →: And So To Death by William Irish
Cornell Woolrich writing under the name of William Irish This novella was first published in the Argosy magazine in March 1941 with the title And So to Death, and two years later it was re-printed under the title Nightmare. To confuse matters further it has on occasion appeared under both…
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Continue reading →: Bad Habit by Alana S. Portero
translated from the Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem Set in the working-class neighbourhood of San Blas in Madrid during the 1980s and 1990s this debut novel from Portero wonderfully captures the tribulations and complexity of adolescence of a trans teenager. The protagonist is unnamed, and though she is quite sure…
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Continue reading →: Journeyman by Erskine Caldwell
This fits one of my favourite micro-genres, that of dodgy preachers. Back to that later.. It is also probably Caldwell’s most controversial novel. His publisher, in 1935, was forced to initially issue a very limited number of copies, and to include with it a disclaimer.. Frankly, we feel that we…
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Continue reading →: On Tranøy quaysideToday was set to be a hot day, a bit cooler here on the northern extremity of the island with a breeze, but still the sun is high early, so 20C by midday, to rise to 27 later on. I moved a few kilometres from the lighthouse to the quayside…
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Continue reading →: To Tranøy LighthouseThe farmer I met yesterday moved her cows as she had told me, to the area we needed to walk through this morning, and they were adolescent bulls, so a problem with Roja. They were more curious than aggressive but at the size when even their curiosity is a threat.…
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Continue reading →: Washday at BøThe peninsula at Bø was the site of a Nazi coastal battery from the Second World War. Following the British attacks on Narvik in 1940 and on the Lofoten Islands the following year, the Germans were determined to prevent further raids in this vulnerable region. The fort here guarded the…
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Continue reading →: Sitting out a StormWe had an hour or so out at Styrkesnes before moving on. It will be one of the memorable places I have stayed over the years. On a flat beach when the tide is out there’s a good fifty metres to explore. Over the last weeks there has been no…





