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Continue reading →: Book Review: How to Be Your Own Therapist by Owen O’Kane
I’m not a great fan of ‘self-help’ books when it comes to medical or mental health. Often they fit in the same category of new-age books by self-styled gurus who spout, at best, pseudo-science and, at worst, complete bullshit. But this book caught my eye. Firstly, it is written by…
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Continue reading →: Book Review: Never Good with Horses by Simon Armitage
Having just attended a reading by Simon Armitage in Grasmere, I immediately bought the main book from which he was reading – Never Good with Horses. I’ve liked his poetry for a long while and, as an English teacher, I’ve been grateful for his work many a time. His poems…
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Continue reading →: An Audience with Simon Armitage, Ambleside
22nd August, Daffodil Hotel The UK’s Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage has, apparently, been giving readings hosted by Wordsworth, Grasmere for at least two decades and the occasions are always a sell-out. As the man himself said to the audience, “I think some of you have been coming to my readings…
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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…
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) 