-
Continue reading →: The Invisible Hotel by Yeji Y. Ham
This debut novel from Canadian / Korean author Ham, is strong on visual imagery. Narrated by University student Yewon, the opening paragraphs concern her mother washing their ancestors’ bones in the family bathtub. These images, which Ham describes periodically, along with certain motifs of gothic and horror fiction, give the…
-
Continue reading →: Swag by Elmore Leonard
Leonard’s writing is all about the dialogue and this is a good example of him at his best. An unlikely couple team up as business partners, car salesman Frank Ryan and Ernest Stickley, Junior, (‘Stick’), an unemployed cement-truck driver who had the temerity to rip him off right on his…
-
Continue reading →: The Island of SannaThere is a fast foot-passenger ferry over to the Island of Sanna, one ferry that serves the local inhabited islands of the archipelago. At this time of year it goes from Træna to Sanna four times a day. The summer season hasn’t started yet, so there isn’t very much demand.…
-
Continue reading →: The Island of HusøyaThe hiatus in this course was just about bearable, and would have been more so if it wasn’t the ideal conditions in this Swedish spring for the mosquitoes emerging from their slumber. When one thinks of Swedish cities the picturesque Stockholm comes to mind, but most cities I have been…
-
Continue reading →: IntermissionOn my third day on the Island of Jøa I found another trail up above the treeline to a couple of summits, Dunjafjellet above the island’s main village of Dun, population just 47. It was a misty morning with drizzle, another sea Hárr, giving way, just as we finished, to…
-
Continue reading →: The Screaming Mimi by Fredric Brown
American PulpFiction 1949 Bill Sweeney, under suspension from the Chicago Blade newspaper, sobers up from a three week alcohol binge, to join a small crowd of people staring at the front door of an apartment a beautiful blonde who has a stab wound in the abdomen and is being guarded…
-
Continue reading →: SkakkjerringaThe storms overnight were merely a trickle of rain compared to what farmers had hoped for. They amounted to ten or twenty minutes of rain, with some decent rumbles of thunder and lightning flashes. This morning dawned cloudless but cooler and fresher, the temperature had dropped to 14C overnight, but…
-
Continue reading →: In Praise of Dumplings..There are more reasons for hills Than being steep and reaching only high. The small hills around Vingsand were a delight, though much harder going than I had thought. There are steep little ups and downs, big steps, chains to help ascent on slippery rock, the occasional ladder, and treacherous…
-
Continue reading →: A morning with the hárrThis morning a sea mist rolled in with the tide, described here by the 17th century Norse word, a hárr. A Norse word, but it’s used in the northeast of England and eastern Scotland also, with the spelling ‘haar’. This was a more moist hárr than I have experienced before…
-
Continue reading →: In Concrete by Ann Garréta
translated from the French by Emma Ramadan This is a splendidly strange fable of a working family’s life as told through the eyes of a child.The style Garréta’s writing is the highlight, a sort of mix of poetry, wordplay, puns and tricks with grammar. To provide the opportunity she needs…
To live more widely
supera superiora sequi
SafeReturnDoubtful is my alias. Rua is my fox red labrador pup, born 14 Feb 2026 and learning fast..
Where is Rua?
I was so much older then…
Quote of the Week
Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, ‘What road do I take?’ The cat asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it really doesn’t matter, does it?’
Lewis Carroll
Safe Return Doubtful 