📖 Book Review ~ Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry

 

Faber and Faber
2 March 2023

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return, of his family, his beloved wife June and their two children.

But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.

📖 My Review..

Newly retired from the Irish police force Tom Kettle lives with a certain truth which he has kept carefully hidden. Alone and isolated in his small apartment annexed on the edge of an Irish castle, Tom looks across at the grey Irish sea and remembers snippets of his life, memories which are as painful to forget as they are to remember.

The story is beautifully written with a starkness to the narrative which belies its strength and although painful to read it is eerily compulsive, especially as Tom Kettle's stream of consciousness brings to the fore everything he has tried so hard to forget. I read it quickly, immersed in Tom's story and its dreadful reminder of  Ireland's painful Catholic past, with the sins of the religious fathers lying heavily on those who were the victims of abuse and shame.

Old God's Time is a haunting and rather melancholic story and Tom Kettle is a character who will stay with me for quite a while.

About the Author

Sebastian Barry is an Irish playwright, novelist and poet. He is noted for his dense literary writing style and is considered one of Ireland's finest writers.

#SebastianBarry #OldGodsTime

@FaberBooks

Review ~ 1,423 QI Facts To Bowl You Over

Faber and Faber
October 2017

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

The eye-popping, gob-smacking, rib-tickling phenomenon that is QI serves up a brand new selection of 1,423 facts to bowl you over.

Christmas isn't complete without one of these intelligent and immaculately researched little books. I love the downright obscure, the amazingly factual, and the mind boggling stupendousness of the variety of facts which never fail to entertain.

It's a great book to have on stand by for that lull in the Christmas proceedings, you know the one, it's after the main course, and before the pudding, when guests are girding their loins for the next onslaught of calories. So stop and digest a while and keep everyone entertained with 1,423 facts that you never knew you needed to know.

Here's a little appetiser:

No centipede has ever been found with exactly 100 legs...

The most misspelled word in the English language is seperate .....oops, Separate...

Dragonflies can see directly behind themselves...

And after that little snippet you can go off and discover the other 1420 QI facts for yourselves...go on, treat yourself, it's a perfect gift for Christmas.

Easy to read in just a couple of hours, with the added inclusion of a source finder so that all the facts can be verified, make this an ideal resource for anyone who has an interest in discovering just a little bit more about any of the facts contained in the book.

Go to qi.com/1423

Website

Follow on Twitter at Quite Interesting @qikipedia 

1,423 QI Facts To Bowl You Over is complied by John Lloyd, James Harkin and Anne Miller

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Blog Tour ~ 1342 QI Facts To Leave You Flabbergasted

As  a huge fan of the QI programme

I am delighted to be hosting a stop on the amazing 1342 QI Facts Blog Tour

I'm really excited to share with you this Factifying Guest Post by John Mitchinson, QI’s head researcher and co-author, 1342 QI Facts to Leave you Flabbergasted

Factifying

In the early days of QI, when John Lloyd and I were asked, ‘where do you get your facts?, we used to refer people to a small shop in Cullercoats, a village on the Northumbrian coast. We were kidding, of course (at least, that’s what we tell people…)

A more direct answer is that we get our facts by asking questions. Given the co-author of this blog is feline, what kind of questions would we ask a cat? We have a shelf of books on cats in QI HQ, exploring physiology, behaviour, history and symbolic function. The internet, even the bits not filled with cute GIFS of kittens, is brimming with research and debate about their virtues and vices. Despite this, we are no closer to solving the ineffable mystery of cats than we were when we started. We know they sleep for 85% or their lives. We know only a quarter of cat ‘owners’ say they deliberately went out to acquire a cat: in 75 per cent of cases, it was the cat that acquired them. And studies have shown that many more people claim to own a cat than there are cats. The closer we look; the deeper the mystery. And are cats any help? Jaffa?

But the long process of sifting books, magazines, blogs and academic research does pay off occasionally. Here’s one cat-related question we think we’ve nailed. That unpleasant slimy thing they leave on the stairs after they’ve killed and consumed a mouse? It’s the mouse’s caecum, the enlarged section of the large intestine which is full of fermenting seeds. No one know why cat’s leave it – but the best guess is that it's a way of avoiding toxins the mouse has ingested. Knowing cats, it might just be because they don't like the taste .

A small but interesting question answered. A tiny drop of truth in an ocean of speculation. We once worked out that a minute of QI the TV show, usually has half a day of research behind it. That may seem wasteful, but the gathering of facts is its own reward. Galileo understood this: ‘Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.’

Faber and Faber
2016

1342 QI Facts To Leave You Flabbergasted is researched and complied by:

 John Lloyd

John Mitchinson

James Harking

Anne Miller

Follow the QI Elves on Twitter @qikipedia

Here are my thoughts..

There's nothing I like better than a good list and to have an amazing 1342 facts listed in such a really easy to read format is something that really appeals to my sense of order.

Of course, this is one of those books that you can pick up and open at whim and yet, I guarantee that within a few minutes, you will be avidly scanning the pages for another interesting fact that you never knew you needed to know. I love how they all blend seamlessly and very cleverly together.

Some of the facts, it must be said  made me laugh out loud especially the word that Robert Browning inadvertently used in his poem 'Pippa Passes'...

Some of the words I intend to make good use of, particularly, Plother which it seems to do nonstop here in the North West and also Subrident which is something Jaffa makes me do every day...

But, by a cat's whisker, the favourite fact found by the orange one is this little gem....' In 2015, America’s ‘National Hero Dog Award’ was won....by a cat’


Amazon UK

Huge thanks to John for his Factifying guest post and also to Ruth and Diana at Ruth Killick Publicity for  their invitation to be part of the #qifacts Blog Tour and for all their support and help.

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Review ~ Viral by Helen Fitzgerald..

Faber and Faber Ltd
2016

When twenty-three thousand and ninety six people have seen you in a compromising situation which makes you slither and crawl with humiliation, there really is nothing that you can do to feel remotely better about yourself.  Teenager, Su Oliphant-Brotheridge is about to find out just how bad her life can get when a compromising video clip of herself in a Magaluf nightclub goes viral.

What then follows is a very modern story about the pitfalls of social media, particularly when mobile uploads can make or break people in milliseconds. The author does a commendable job of weaving the story away from its rather shocking opening sentence and delivers a salutary tale about the quirks of modern family life and of the petty jealousies which so often simmer below the surface. I think it also highlighted the insecurity of someone living in an environment not of their own choosing, of the heart-breaking search for lost identity and the complicated enigma of sibling rivalry.

The story sets off a cracking pace and never falters in what it sets out to deliver which is a moralistic story about what happens when private goes public. There is no doubt that many readers will pick up the book just to read the six words which make up its opening line, but the book is about so much more than that. It’s not all about shabby voyeurism, it’s also about calculated revenge and the search for identity, it’s about family and a feeling of belonging and it’s also about hope for a future which at first glance seems damaged beyond repair.

Perhaps if more people were to read of the unimaginable horror of what ‘could’ happen when a mobile phone gets into the hands of someone with no moral scruples, maybe, just maybe… it might make them think twice about what they share with the world.

Best read with…a strong cup of tea and a plate of your favourite biscuits…

About the Author

Find on Twitter @FitzHelen

My thanks to Faber and Faber and NetGalley for my copy of  Viral. 

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