Tag: writing

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Critical Thinking for problem solving

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BOOK REVIEWS – HELPFUL BUSINESS AND SELF IMPROVEMENT BOOKS.“Think Better: an innovators’ guide to productive thinking” by Tim Hurson (McGraw Hill, NY), was released in the US in October 2007and now it’s available on Amazon and of course in major bookstores everywhere. There are thousands of books on thinking, creativity or innovation, but very few books provide clear how-to information that can actually help people Think Better.Tim states “Think Better is about Productive Thinking – why it’s important, how it works, and how to use it at work, at home, and at play. Productive thinking is a simple, but powerful … Continue reading Critical Thinking for problem solving

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Social media appearance a form of “coercive control”?

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Jeanette Winterson weaves together memoir, manifesto and a feminist reimaging of One thousand and One Nights in this impassioned exploration of the power of reading. A woman is filibustering for her life. Every night she tells a story. Every morning, she lives one more day. One Aladdin Two Lamps cracks open the legendary story of Shahrazad in One Thousand and One Nights to explore new and ancient questions. Who would we trust? Is love the most important thing in the world? Does it matter whether you are honest? What makes us happy? In her guise as Aladdin- the orphan who … Continue reading Social media appearance a form of “coercive control”?

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Self taught social empathy

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Would you predict that a British aristocrat would so energize American antifascist and civil rights struggles that Time magazine would crown her “Queen of Muckrakers”? Jessica Mitford, known as Decca, was brought up by eccentric English family to marry well and reproduce her wealth and privilege, not to advocate for the rights of others. Her beautiful sisters have been subjects of books and movies dedicated to their naughty, glamorous lives. Decca ran away to America to forge a rebel’s life. As this richly researched book details, Decca broke the Mitford mould. Instead of setting for life as a professional Beauty, … Continue reading Self taught social empathy

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Captivating generational saga

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Patrick Ryan conjures a vanished America with deep insight and lyrical intelligence about war and adultery, the mysteries of sexuality and family life, and the strange paths we have to travel to forgive or at least begin to understand the people who’ve hurt us the most.  A small-town novel about two midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late twentieth century.  In Bonhomie, Ohio, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret … Continue reading Captivating generational saga

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Lonely and adrift in Manhattan

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Gish Jen is the award-winning author of The Resisters returns with an autobiographical novel tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship. Gish’s mother Agnes Jen – Loo Shu-hsin – born in 1925 to wealthy Shanghai family where the chauffeurs wore leather gloves, expensive Persian opium was served to society women via a sous chef, and girls are expected to behave and be quiet.  No domestic chores were required of her as a child, but the sudden disappearance possibly sacking of her beloved nurse-maid Nai-ma caused an open wound, potentially poisoning her future maternal facility, combine this with the Cultural Revolution, a famine, other … Continue reading Lonely and adrift in Manhattan

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Sally Evans

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“DRIVING IN THE BOOK LANE” – A MEMOIR BY DR SALLY  EVANS –  PHD IN LITERATURE – POET, House wife, Mother WIFE,  MOTHER  AND LONGTERM BOOKSHOP OWNER! Price £7 or £10 posted (UK) Fiction Direct Memoir at The Callender Press. 21 Chapters in total. @sallyevans2025 Poet, novelist, publisher, editor, bookseller and sometime librarian Dr Sally Evans uses the memoir form to consider what turned her into a “bookwoman”. From London to Newcastle, from Kirkby Lonsdale, Teesside and Edinburgh to a bookshop in the Trossachs, Sally drives around in a landscape of books and book people in search of the meaning of life. Questions, … Continue reading Sally Evans

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Meaning of Life: ride to infinity

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Ferries have a spooky association with death, Charon, an ugly demon employed by Hades as the underworld’s ferryman, picking up the souls of recently perished human beings in his skiff and depositing them in the afterlife, in Greek mythology. In The Ferryman and His Wife by 64-year-old bestselling Norwegian author and winner of the prestigious Brage Prize, Frode Grytten takes readers on an epic journey: Ferry Driver Nils Vik’s last route along the fjord instead of the River Styx, which he must cross to get there “it rumbles and rustles, it whispers and rushes, even on days with no wind”, … Continue reading Meaning of Life: ride to infinity

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How water instilled a dream city

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Back in Nineteen Thirteen, William Mulholland completed the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a 233-mile engineering masterwork transporting water from the Owens Valley, a dry lake on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada across the desert to a barren south-western corner of California that would become the home of filmmaking, and transformed the land’s fertility. In Aqua, award winning, Italian filmmaker and writer Chiara Barzini gives insight into the founding of Hollywood, the building of great water systems. Her hometown Rome, abound with empty aqueducts and pipes, representing someone’s dream of turning dry soil into a fertile lucrative and fertile agricultural … Continue reading How water instilled a dream city

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Restoration or Erasure: Old ways are erased by the new

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The Palace of the Republic, that once housed the East German Parliament, is demolished. A grandmother’s laughter passes from life into memory and the furniture that once made a home is taken to the tip. A friendship drops into silence. Old ways are erased by the new  In this fascinating collection of essays, most of them written for her column in the Frankfurter  Allgemeine Zeitung, Winner of the International Booker Prize Jenny Erpenbeck meditates, with a sense of both deep melancholy and wry humour, on the disappearance and impermanence of things. Recalling the shop that used to darn tights in the … Continue reading Restoration or Erasure: Old ways are erased by the new

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Good writing evokes sensations

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Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, an English literature professor at the University of Oxford, reveals his love of reading with his students, and collating twenty years of teaching, his book Look Closer explores the iconic works of literature that have formed, sustained and entertained him, from timesless classics like Wuthering Heights and Dracula to modern masterpieces like Normal People and The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as children’s books, poetry, plays, short stories, and even comics. Douglas-Fairhurst explains how to slow down, take note and bring a text to life, Look Closer makes clear how literature works and why in these turbulent times, reading … Continue reading Good writing evokes sensations