Michael J. Ritchie's Blog, page 44
March 1, 2018
“Not Dead Yet” by Peter James (2012)
[image error]“I am warning you, and I won’t repeat this warning.”
I’ve been working my way through Peter James’ series for a few years now, slowly but surely. If you want reviews for the previous ones in the series, then they’re here, and because they’re a continuation, there may be some spoilers here regarding the series as a whole. If you’re not interested in the underlying plot – and the books are enjoyable enough without it – then feel free to carry on, but you have been warned.
In the eighth installm...
Book Chat: Sarah Dunsworth
[image error]Sarah Dunsworth of Walnut Creek, California is something of a polymath away from her administrative day job. A talented storyteller, poet, singer, songwriter and painter, there doesn’t seem to be a creative outlet she can’t turn her attention to. I grabbed a few minutes with her to ask her about the books that mean the most to her.
What are you reading at the moment?
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. It poses, quite possibly, the most difficult question in the world for man to answer: “is...
February 26, 2018
Roald Dahl: Three Novels
So, while this year I started re-reading Douglas Adams, I also pencilled in another go over Roald Dahl’s back catalogue. I read one of his adult collections last year, and in enjoying it, it made me nostalgic for those of my childhood. I was going to wait until I’d finished Adams, but instead I decided to make a little dent in the collection this morning and powered through three before lunch. Here, therefore, are short reviews for three of the shortest in Dahl’s oeuvre.
[image error]The Magic Finger (196...
February 23, 2018
“Furiously Happy” by Jenny Lawson (2015)
[image error] “No, no. I insist you stop right now.”
I’m not going to pretend I’m qualified to talk on the subject of mental health. I’ve never had therapy or been diagnosed with anything, although if I was going to be I’m pretty sure anxiety tops the list, followed by narcissism, although I’m not sure if that’s actually a mental illness or just me failing to yet realise that I’m not the centre of the universe. Many people I know and love, however, make it through their days dealing with all manner of thin...
February 17, 2018
“The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe” by Douglas Adams (1980)
[image error] “In the beginning the Universe was created.”
Way back in my early teenage years (which feel now like a hazy memory as a milestone birthday approaches with alarming speed), I discovered Douglas Adams, quite by accident. I had borrowed one of the book’s from the school library, and it happened to be The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Yep – I didn’t even start at the beginning. I didn’t even know there was a beginning to start at. Ergo, I came to the series in the wrong order, which some...
February 11, 2018
“Nutshell” by Ian McEwan (2016)
[image error] “So here I am, upside down in a woman.”
I’m repeatedly on record on this blog saying that I’m not a particular fan of child narrators. However, when the narrator sounds enough like the age they’re supposed to be, then I have less to complain about. However, Ian McEwan has taken the premise to its logical extreme here and, oddly enough, it works. In Nutshell, the narrator is perhaps a unique voice in the literary canon: he hasn’t yet been born.
Our protagonist is still a few weeks off his birt...
February 9, 2018
“Illywhacker” by Peter Carey (1985)
[image error]“My name is Herbert Badgery.”
This week I did something that I haven’t done in years – I gave up on a book. I’m unfamiliar with Peter Carey’s work, but Illywhacker has been sat on my shelf for years, waiting for the right moment to be read. Maybe I chose the wrong moment after all, I don’t know, but I do know that when it’s taken me a week to read the first third of a book, something is wrong. Someone asked me this week, “Well, why are you continuing then?” and, frankly, I was struck by that....
February 4, 2018
“Black Vodka” by Deborah Levy (2013)
[image error] “The first time I met Lisa I knew she was going to help me become a very different sort of man.”
Some people (including Michele Roberts in her introduction to this collection) say that the short story fits our age better than longer narrative structures because we now live in a world where we have short attention spans and can’t or won’t commit to anything that takes up too much time. I think this is nonsense, given that the average length of a film these days seems to be about two and a half...
February 2, 2018
“The Twitch” by Kevin Parr (2013)
[image error] “I’m not certain whose head I can see the top of, bobbing rhythmically into view about the low brick wall by the potting shed.”
I like a bit of nature spotting, and there is something particularly endearing about watching birds. I’m not someone who’s going to be haring up to some remote coast to get a glimpse of a curlew, but I’m quite happy to sit and watch them in the garden. Our garden isn’t particularly big and we only really get collared doves, jackdaws and blackbirds popping in. My gran...
January 31, 2018
Book Chat: Anwen Kya Hayward
[image error]Cardiff-based PhD student and author Anwen Kya Hayward is my inaugural interviewee in this new blog feature. Her passion for literature and mythology has led to her penning a novella called Here, the World Entire giving an alternate interpretation to the Medusa myth, which I ranked as one of the ten best books I read last year. When not obsessing over mythological heroes or with her nose in a book, she can be found baking or, and I quote, “gently touching cats’ noses until they do the blinkin...
