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Continue reading →: Book Review: I, Claudius by Robert Graves
I, Claudius is another of those classic books that appears on every ‘Must Read’ list. Regular readers of my reviews might guess this would immediately make me suspicious regarding the quality. ‘Classics’ are very much a hit and miss affair. Initially, I was not much impressed. Almost the entire book…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Notes from the North by Suji Kwock Kim
This collection of poems, solely focusing on life, and the people ‘existing’, in North Korea is, to say the least, dark and depressing. The poet has not pulled any punches with this her second collection. We get the bleak picture of life in the communist dictatorship. It is hard to…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Histories of Nations edited by Peter Furtado
I’ll come straight to it: this book is utterly pointless. It’s a pity because it need not have been. The idea – of presenting a brief history of twenty-eight of the major nations of the world – was a good one. There is, of course, an immediate issue with deciding…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: The Spittle of Zimolax by Kirk Parsons
Sometimes, books can take you by surprise. ‘The Spittle of Zimolax’ is one such novel. It is a very underrated work which has as much to do with the author’s lack of confidence as anything, I suspect. Criticisms first – and they are mostly cosmetic. This is a self-published novel…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: How Britain Ends by Gavin Esler
This is a fascinating book written by a well-respected and established journalist who has his own roots in three out of the four nations that make up the so-called ‘United’ Kingdom. That the kingdom is anything but united is the very point of Esler’s book. He sees the end of…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
On the face of it, this series of books is a really good idea. Inverting the whole white/black supremacy dynamic so that white people can really get a sense of what black people have gone through. I’ve thought of doing something similar. I have considered writing a novel based around…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: The Lost Spells by Robert Macfarlane
I had been introduced to Macfarlane’s writing just recently, via ‘my other job’ – writing theatre reviews for Northern Arts Review – when I was commissioned to review the theatrical production, at Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake, based on this book and ‘The Lost Words’. I was really touched by…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: The Angry Chef: Bad Science and the Truth About Healthy Eating by Anthony Warner
Regular readers of my reviews will know well that I’m not keen on the ‘secret’ methods for gaining wealth, health or happiness that become successful and, more or less always very quickly, fade away back into the nothingness whence they came. In short, I have no time or energy for…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Love Marriage by Monica Ali
I do enjoy Monica Ali’s books. Brick Lane was superbly written and I read it at a very poignant time in my life when I was leaving Bangladesh after many years of living there, so it is close to my heart. Ali had been criticised by many for effectively being…
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Continue reading →: Thoughts About the London Book Fair
In April I had the joy of being invited by my publishers (Histria Books) to come to the London Book Fair. I thought it would be helpful to put my thoughts down about the experience. Firstly I should say, as a Cumbrian author, it is always rather nice to find…
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.
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Write Out Loud (Reviews and Writing) 