Saturday, November 23, 2024

Wattle, Odette Brown

Wattle, by
Odette Brown

short story

and that is the end of that

Last year I wrote stories for the daily paper's short story "yarn" competition.
no expectation of winning, perhaps a wild hope of being noticed.

i deliberately wrote stories that *I* would enjoy reading.

Today i read a"yarn" winner. the author complains about the difficulty of a writer gaining recognition, or publication. so far so good, i can agree.
now i can also understand.

here's a comparison:

Another winning yarn is about an old woman, the author's granmother, smoking and dying and complaining in lonely misery.


there's a Jack Reacher book that begins with a teenager's mother dying of terminal something. the mother is a drunken, lonely, alcoholic drug addict.

the jack reacher book then develops as expected. with several "nice" people dying unpleasantly and fifty or more nasty people dying very ... satisfactorily.


but here's the thing:

in that one introductory death of mother, the jack reacher book packs in more ... positive affirmation... mother-child love and loyalty
... more hope... than in the yarn which dedicates itself to just one death.


truth to tell
... the yarn mother may not even have died.
the story was so "meaningful"
... so packed with "significance?"
... that I may have misunderstood.

not to worry. it's in the bin now.
and next year i shall write stories for my own enjoyment.
with no "yarns"

####

Oh, and btw:
This post will go to reviews -- and to rants

I tried to use the Google Blogger app to update the original post.
By the time I had successfully (I hope) updated -- the app had deleted, discarded, drafted, lost... the original post.
Time to uninstall that app.

And this update is done on the PC. Where what you see is, quite often, what you get.
###







Dr Nick Lethbridge / Independent Dexitroboper

you cannot back into the future
===

..: notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com


Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Lord Tedric

(#3 of ?)
by EE Doc Smith

Space opera
From the 1930s?
 Rated 4/10: bad but could be read

I've enjoyed lensmen and skylark series, never heard of Tedric before.

All the signs of Doc Smith's enormous imagination.
Too enormous.. missing the first books, this series misses too much to really enjoy. 

The hero, a very human, very intelligent, very physical barbarian, flits across universes, thanks to his work for the God-like Scientists.
Various other characters, robot and alien, prove their essential niceness by... learning to love.
No, it's not tedious... just space opera silly.
This may be one of the very few books that I can bear to bin.
Maybe... maybe tomorrow :-)





half blind. half deaf. dying of cancer.
so what?

http://notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com
dying for you to read it :-)


http://my3rs.blogspot.com/

Dr Nick Lethbridge
Consulting Dexitroboper

   

Friday, November 15, 2024

Patatas Fritas Bonilla

Bonilla a la vista

De la familia Bonilla...

It's a packet of sea salt chips
Cooked in olive oil.

Made in Spain, 
Arteixo? Or coruna?for sale in Spain but imported to Australia.
As far as I can tell :-)



And very hard to review!

The packet is all in Spanish... ingredients are easy but, is that the name of a company? Hmm... yes, third generation of... guessing...

What is even harder is... to stop google auto-correcting back to similar words in English.

Rated 8/10

I'm fairly certain that there is no bouillabaisse in the packet :-)

The chips are fine cut, light salt. No trace at all of the too strong flavour that overrides all else on smith's chips.

I suspect that any olive oil flavour is pure imagination.

Delicious, crisp, light, light flavour potato chips.









half blind. half deaf. dying of cancer.
so what?
notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com :-)

Dr Nick Lethbridge
Consulting Dexitroboper

   

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

The Selkie Scandal, Rosalie Oaks


The Selkie Scandal
Lady jewel diviner
Prequel one
by, Rosalie Oaks

Fantasy,
Copyright 2021,
Read in November 2024

Rated 6/10: read to pass the time


I'm worried, it seems to be a bit... silly.

In the series, one book is about various people being naked and or shocked by it.
Another is about people having sex and or being shocked by it.
This book seems to be about various people wanting or offering nudity and or sex, other people being shocked.

Then it reaches the essential plot and settles down.

The story is complex enough, well plotted.
, enjoyable.
With conflict settled in a pleasant, simplistic way.


This prequel explains a key point from book one.
It also provides a much wider explanation of the various sea-based characters. The "facts" behind the myths.
There's a lot to cover, it's done well. Not as a history lesson but through likeable, and less likeable characters.

Oh... and more myth-building around the plum jam:-)
Yep:-)
A silly... enjoyable... unique? Idea





half blind. half deaf. dying of cancer.
so what?
notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com :-)

Dr Nick Lethbridge
Consulting Dexitroboper