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Breaking the Rules of Watercolour by Shirley Trevena

I'm hoping it will chime with the fact I can't follow rules, but shhhhhhh, don't tell John Drake I said that!

2 warning points:kolobok_dirol:  Non-Political

 

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just read this in Berkmann's Cricketing Miscellany:

"In 1976 Ted Dexter published, with Clifford Makins, a novel called Testkill, a murder mystery set against the drama of an Ashes Test at Lord’s. I read somewhere that it’s one of the worst novels ever written, so of course I had to read it. 
It’s actually quite efficiently done. The sex is appalling, the women are unlike any women who have ever walked the earth, the sexual politics are not so much dated as carbon-dated, everybody drinks constantly (champagne for breakfast, pink gins for lunch), the murders make no sense at all, and the murderer is someone you’d barely noticed, who turns out to be as mad as a March Pietersen. 
The hero, Jack Stenton, is a former public schoolboy with a short temper (and an even shorter attention span), who used to bat with some style for England but now, aged forty-five, is plying his trade as a journalist. Hmm, wonder where that character came from? But the story does rattle along, and the dramatis personae include characters not unlike Gubby Allen and E.W.Swanton. As it happens, both of them are horribly murdered. 
Wishful thinking, maybe?

I have ordered a copy, and will report back soon. Maybe a murder mystery to file alongside the oeuvre of Steve Bruce, if his books ever became affordable.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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After approximately 10 months, 20 novels, 200 chapters, about 6,000 pages and a truly breathtaking and life changing journey through the ins and outs of Napoleonic naval warfare, I have finished the Aubrey and Maturin series. Thank you Patrick O'Brien for writing what have become my all time favourite novels. I salute you! 😊⚓❤️

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21 hours ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

After approximately 10 months, 20 novels, 200 chapters, about 6,000 pages and a truly breathtaking and life changing journey through the ins and outs of Napoleonic naval warfare, I have finished the Aubrey and Maturin series. Thank you Patrick O'Brien for writing what have become my all time favourite novels. I salute you! 😊⚓❤️

And I salute you sir. Well done.

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1 minute ago, marklaspalmas said:

And I salute you sir. Well done.

Thank you good sir! A truly mind-blowing and absolutely perfect series of novels.

I must say when I first started back in July I wasn't confident that I would ever reach the end, not because of the stories but simply because I aren't the best at seeing out long projects, but after just a couple of novels I couldn't stop thinking about them, longing to know what was going to happen next and just watching the clock until I could do my hour of reading each day.

As I was getting towards the end I was getting concerned that they would finish on a massive cliffhanger like each novel tends to with how they so seemlessly flow into each other because it would have basically killed me inside longing to know what was going to happen next, but I felt the 20th novel ended with a decent enough conclusion, no cliffhanger particularly though it was easy enough for it to continue straight into the next but also a decent conclusion so that it was good enough to be the end of the entire series. Certainly satisfied my need for a proper ending. 

I could have kept reading them for the rest of my life.... Sigh.... 

....still onwards and upwards, tonight I start the 22 (soon to be 23) novels of the Sharpe series! Number 1, Sharpe's Tiger! 🐯😁👍

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This morning i have just finished reading The Garden of Evening mists by Tan Twan Eng about a women reflecting on her life from the Japanese invasion of Malaya as it was then until the defeat of the communist insurgency into Malaya and her time in a Japanese POW camp with her sister.

Tan Twan Eng put a lot of research into the book and it was shortlisted for "The Man Booker Prize" and he deserves all the plaudits he gets for writing the book

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On 30/04/2022 at 00:24, Futtocks said:

I just read this in Berkmann's Cricketing Miscellany:

"In 1976 Ted Dexter published, with Clifford Makins, a novel called Testkill, a murder mystery set against the drama of an Ashes Test at Lord’s. I read somewhere that it’s one of the worst novels ever written, so of course I had to read it. 
It’s actually quite efficiently done. The sex is appalling, the women are unlike any women who have ever walked the earth, the sexual politics are not so much dated as carbon-dated, everybody drinks constantly (champagne for breakfast, pink gins for lunch), the murders make no sense at all, and the murderer is someone you’d barely noticed, who turns out to be as mad as a March Pietersen. 
The hero, Jack Stenton, is a former public schoolboy with a short temper (and an even shorter attention span), who used to bat with some style for England but now, aged forty-five, is plying his trade as a journalist. Hmm, wonder where that character came from? But the story does rattle along, and the dramatis personae include characters not unlike Gubby Allen and E.W.Swanton. As it happens, both of them are horribly murdered. 
Wishful thinking, maybe?

I have ordered a copy, and will report back soon. Maybe a murder mystery to file alongside the oeuvre of Steve Bruce, if his books ever became affordable.

This is enjoyably dreadful.

On Kindle, I am also reading Harlan Ellison's short story collection, The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. One of the stories is A Boy and his Dog, which was made into a pretty good movie... which Harlan absolutely hated!

Edited by Futtocks
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Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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  • 4 weeks later...

Right, I've read the first 3 Sharpe novels (reading chronologically) and am a chapter into the 4th, Sharpe's Trafalgar so Sharpe has finished fighting in India and is on his way back to Britain, and is about to get caught up in that most famous of sea battles. Very exciting start to the series, almost too exciting and I have found myself getting almost fatigued by the amount of action that does not seem to slow down at all. Don't get me wrong though, I am very much enjoying them and have just taken a little time to adjust to the pace. I've still got 20 more to go so long journey ahead with Sheffield's sexiest man! 

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1 hour ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Right, I've read the first 3 Sharpe novels (reading chronologically) and am a chapter into the 4th, Sharpe's Trafalgar so Sharpe has finished fighting in India and is on his way back to Britain, and is about to get caught up in that most famous of sea battles. Very exciting start to the series, almost too exciting and I have found myself getting almost fatigued by the amount of action that does not seem to slow down at all. Don't get me wrong though, I am very much enjoying them and have just taken a little time to adjust to the pace. I've still got 20 more to go so long journey ahead with Sheffield's sexiest man! 

Ive never read the books but theyre some of the best tv shows ever

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 13/07/2022 at 11:56, Futtocks said:

Perhaps THE Holy Grail of rotten autobiographies: https://archive.org/details/sing-lofty-thoughts-of-a-gemini-don-estelle 

Wow, that was terrible. Definitely worth a re-read, too.

I am currently reading 365 Stories by James Robertson. In 2014, he published a short story on a website every day of the year, and every story is 365 words long. So even if you're not enjoying one particular story, it'll be over in a page or two and the next one will be different.

I am currently as far as the 29th of March, and enjoying it a lot. Some stories have conclusions, some have links to other stories and some leave the reader hanging and intrigued.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am onto the 10th Sharpe novel now which means I will have read 30 novels in a row, over a period of approximately 18 months, all about the Napoleonic Wars. As a result of this I had a dream last night that I was demonstrating to a crowd of people in Bridlington how to load of Napoleonic Era pistol. I know so much about these wars now it seems that I can load a pistol in my sleep! Bit worrying! 🔫😂

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Evelyn Waugh - Put out more Flags. Wonderful. Not long enough.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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