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Continue reading →: Book Review: Calling on Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
My rating: 4 of 5 stars If children’s/YA fiction isn’t your thing, bear with me a little longer. One more review to go after this and then I’m done with this wonderful series of books. A meatier classic will come soon! For everyone else who has an inner child like…
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Continue reading →: Review: The Rise and Fall of the British Empire by Patrick N. Allitt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Patrick N. Allitt comes across, in this series of audio lectures, as a very pleasant, easy-going and genial academic. His voice absolutely sounds like it belongs to a British comedian though I can’t, for the life of me, think who he makes me think…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Searching for Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
My rating: 5 of 5 stars Continuing on from enjoying the ‘Enchanted Forest Chronicles’ which began with ‘Dealing with Dragons‘, returning to the series thirteen years after first reading them to my young children, I was delighted to find that the second book was every bit as entertaining as the…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Empireland – How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A long-time lover of Global history, I’m very aware just how too much of what I’ve read has been written by white British historians (Peter Frankopan is just about the best of them). I recently started a run of reading non-white historians to get…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Dodger by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Ahhh, Terry Pratchett is one of my most beloved authors and I do love his Discworld books which, I must confess, I thought this was going to be. Having borrowed a selection of Pratchett books from a village friend, I had assumed they were…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
My rating: 5 of 5 stars I will confess a considerable bias in writing this review. Let me tell you a story… Once upon a time there was a young(ish) man who took his family off to a strange and bizarre land, where they settled – for a few months…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: The Assault on Truth – Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism by Peter Oborne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars I’ve not heard of Peter Oborne before this book and, having listened to the audio version with the author himself narrating, I’ll be quite happy if I never hear of (or from) him again. Oborne is immediately odious, cranky, defensive and belligerent. He’s the…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Failures of State – The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars In general, in the news world at least, there is – at least in pretence – an abhorrence of bias. Reporters and journalists are supposed to be neutral, impartial observers. Of course, in reality, true objectivity is impossible; every writer has a direction from…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Moby-Dick or, the Whale by Herman Melville
My rating: 1 of 5 stars What an utter waste of time ‘Moby Dick’ proved to be. There are times when you wonder just the state of publishing was in the 1850s when Melville’s ‘classic’ was written. I get it that you have an iconic image – crazed sea captain…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars My Foundation books have sat on my shelves since I was young, read long ago, but awaiting a re-read along with many other classics. A discussion with my daughter’s boyfriend a couple of years ago who was a big sci-fi fan (and Asimov in…
Hello, I’m Ken.
Welcome to Write Out Loud, my blog dedicated to all sorts of things to do with writing.
This page will be updated constantly every week with book reviews and writing-related stuff.
The blog is the baby sister of my personal blog kenthinksaloud where I write ‘Monday Murmurings’—insights into life and philosophy. Get a clever take on politics with ‘Wednesday Banker,’ and ‘Future Friday’ for the latest in psychology, environment, and tech.
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Write Out Loud (Reviews and Writing) 