Category Archives: Culture

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: SENIOR SERVICE

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Jane Cable gives a talk at a local retirement community and finds the learning experience is mutual

It was Liz Fenwick who put me up to it. Since moving to Cornwall I’ve been lucky enough to fall in with a fabulous group of writers who give each other a great deal of support in every conceivable way.

When Liz told our little band she’d had a wonderful afternoon giving a talk at an independent living retirement community and they were looking for more speakers, I jumped at the chance. For two reasons, really; it was just down the road and Liz used those incredibly motivational words: “They give you cake – and they buy books.”

Luckily the talk was to be an informal one. I say luckily because I was also in the middle of preparing for an appearance at Helly’s International Festival with another of our happy Cornish band, historical fiction writer Victoria Cornwall. We’re tackling the serious subject of setting in novels and that’s required thinking, research – and rehearsal.

So on a Thursday afternoon a couple of weeks ago I pottered up the road with a few notes and a rucksack of books on my back. I arrived early and was welcomed by the book club organiser and the community manager and given a Jackanory (for those old enough to remember) style armchair in front of several rows of seats in the elegant dayroom. Slowly but surely the rows started to fill and looking around the room I wondered if I would be able to keep so many elderly people awake.

I needn’t have worried. After my brief introduction and a slightly stuttering start, the questions flowed. When did I write? What was my inspiration? What about editing? There was quite a lively discussion about the use of commas at one point – lively and well informed. These people were serious readers.

But when I mentioned I was researching World War 2 the tables turned and I was the one asking the questions. Some of the residents had very clear memories and two had actually been in Lincolnshire at the time – which made me very excited because it’s where I’m setting my book. Listening to their tales of watching for returning planes from Lincoln Castle, or visiting a cousin based at RAF Scampton, brought the war alive in the way no other research could have done.

This is a generation we’re on the verge of losing. Or if not losing, writing off as too geriatric to make a contribution. How very, very wrong. They were interesting, amusing and fun to be with. Not only do they want to read, but some of them want to write as well. Rather rashly I volunteered to help them start a creative writing group and there are already ten people signed up for the autumn. To be honest I’m feeling just a little out of my depth but I know if I go in with the attitude we’ll all learn from each other then we’ll have a fabulous time.

At the end of the talk I was given tea and the promised cake. Gluten free cake, which the community manager had gone to the trouble of buying specially. I spent so long chatting and signing books that I had a text from my husband asking where I was. I sold so many I had to go back the next day to fulfil the orders.

Since then I have persuaded three more of my Cornish writer friends to book themselves in and the book club calendar’s full until Christmas. And then, I hope they have a party. And I hope I’m invited!

Principled Spying: The Ethics of Secret Intelligence | Book of The Week

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principled spying

This book is both timely and much needed. How far should a state go to protect its people? Does the ‘greater good’ argument ever give just cause? This book has lots of fascinating history on spycraft and sound arguments on ethics. A riveting read and a well deserved Book of the Week. 

The question of how far a state should authorise its agents to go in seeking and using secret intelligence is one of the big unresolved issues of public policy for democracies today. The tension between security and privacy sits at the heart of broader debates concerning the relationship between the citizen and the state. The public needs-and wants-protection from the very serious threats posed by domestic and international terrorism, from serious criminality, to be safe in using cyberspace, and to have active foreign and aid policies to help resolve outstanding international problems. Secret intelligence is widely accepted to be essential to these tasks, and to be a legitimate function of the nation state, yet the historical record is that it also can pose significant ethical risks.

Principled Spying lays out a framework for thinking about public policy in this area by clarifying the relationship between ethics and intelligence, both human and technical. In this book, intelligence expert Mark Phythian teams up with the former head of Britain’s GCHQ signals and intelligence agency to try to resolve the knotty question of secret intelligence-and how far it should be allowed to go in a democratic society.

Available here.

Criminology: A Very Short Introduction

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criminology

These Very Short Introduction books are a great way to learn about hundreds of different subjects in an in-depth way. This one on criminology is fascinating stuff. Perfectly written and endlessly fascinating. Essential reading for anyone interested in crime.

Crime is big news. From murder to theft to drug gangs, crime and criminal justice affect the lives of millions of people worldwide. Hardly surprisingly, crime has been pushed high up the public policy agenda across the world. But how can we measure crime, or evaluate the effectiveness of preventative measures? Does the threat of prison reduce someone’s likelihood of reoffending, or would rehabilitation be more constructive?

In this Very Short Introduction Tim Newburn considers how we can study trends in crime, and use them to inform preventative policy and criminal justice. Analysing the history of the subject, he reflects on our understanding of crime and responses to crime in earlier historical periods. Considering trends in crime in the developed world, Newburn discusses its causes, exploring the relationship between drugs and crime, analysing what we know about why people stop offending, and looking
at both formal and informal responses to crime. Newburn concludes by discussing what role criminology can plausibly be anticipated to have in crime control and politics, and what its limits are.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Available here.

A Place To Call Home By Evie Grace | Recommended Reads

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a place to call homeA perfect conclusion to this riveting saga. Get a cup of tea and dig in. The book equivalent to a great Sunday night drama.

THE THIRD AND FINAL SAGA IN EVIE GRACE’S MAIDS OF KENT TRILOGY.

East Kent, 1876

With doting parents and siblings she adores, sixteen-year-old Rose Cheevers leads a contented life at Willow Place in Canterbury. A bright future ahead of her, she dreams of following in her mother’s footsteps and becoming a teacher.

Then one traumatic day turns the Cheevers’ household upside-down. What was once a safe haven has become a place of peril, and Rose is forced to flee with the younger children. Desperate, she seeks refuge in a remote village with a long lost grandmother who did not know she existed.

But safety comes at a price, and the arrival of a young stranger with connections to her past raises uncomfortable questions about what the future holds. Somehow, Rose must find the strength to keep her family together. Above all else, though, she needs a place to call home.

Available here.

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: FIRST, LAST, EVERYTHING – MAGAZINE FICTION WRITER WENDY CLARKE

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My very first piece of writing advice wasn’t from a writer or about writing but it was advice that would one day help me in my writing career. I was twenty-two and had just taken up my first teaching position at a junior school with open-plan classrooms divided only by bookcases. Being very new to teaching, and still finding my feet (or my voice, if you like), I was always looking for ways to make my teaching more effective. In the classroom area next to mine was a more experienced teacher who, because of the way the classrooms were laid out, could easily be heard. I was impressed with her control of the class and the attention the children gave her. Realising it was something in her voice (her tone, her inflection, her choice of words) I decided that if I copied her style of teaching, I too would achieve success. How naïve! Of course, it was a disaster – a bit like being on stage and being cast in the wrong role.

Back in the staffroom at break time, the teacher I’d been trying to copy could tell something was wrong. When I told her what had happened, she was very kind, sitting me down and making me a coffee before telling me that no two teachers taught in the same way and the children wouldn’t expect them to. In time I would find my own voice. One that I felt comfortable with. One that would be true to me. When I started writing for magazines, I remembered this advice. I didn’t try to copy the style of any other authors, I just wrote stories I loved – in my own way. My first sale came quickly and I have that teacher to thank!

The most recent piece of writing advice I received was from the writing community on social media. It was during a period when I had become disillusioned with the long and tortuous road you needed to travel in order to get your novel published. With magazine writing, you write a story, sub it, forget about it and start on another. There is no middle man (the agent) and, because I have several stories being considered at one time, it feels as though things are always happening. With a novel, you submit to agents and then wait, sometimes many months, for the inevitable rejection. Even if an agent requests the full manuscript (which happened to me six times) it can be months before hearing anything… if at all. In fact, I am still waiting. The readers of my Facebook post heard my sorry tale. Their advice was to submit directly to the publishers who accept manuscripts without the need of an agent. I did and it’s the best advice I could have been given.

Finally, the piece of advice I’d like to pass on is easy. Be kind to yourself. Set reasonable goals (if that’s the type of writer you are) and don’t beat yourself up if you don’t manage to achieve them. Also have breaks from your writing. If I go on holiday, I leave my writing equipment behind. The rest recharges my battery and helps me put my writing into perspective. This doesn’t mean that my brain isn’t still working behind the scenes though. Often, when I switch off from writing, an idea for a story, or the answer to a difficult plot problem, will float into my head as if from nowhere. Writing isn’t something to be forced but to be enjoyed and, if it isn’t, maybe it’s time to ask ourselves why we’re doing it.

 

Wendy Clarke has had over two hundred short stories, and two serials, published in national women’s magazines such as The People’s Friend, Take a Break Fiction Feast and Woman’s Weekly. She lives with her husband in Sussex and has just finished writing her debut novel.

 

https://wendyswritingnow.blogspot.com/

Believe Me By J P Delaney | Book of The Week

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believe me JP Delaney

I found it impossible to book this book down. I do not even read much crime thrillers as I get upset about the high female body count, but this book is so well done and does not feel gratuitous. Despite the horror of the crimes. If your love Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins you will love this. A pitch perfect psychological thriller.

A British drama student, in New York without a green card, Claire takes the only job she can get: working for a firm of divorce lawyers, posing as an easy pick-up in hotel bars to entrap straying husbands.

When one of her targets becomes the subject of a murder investigation, the police ask Claire to use her acting skills to help lure their suspect into a confession. But right from the start, she has doubts about the part she’s being asked to play. Is Patrick Fogler really a killer . . . Or the only decent husband she’s ever met? And is there more to this set-up than she’s being told?

And that’s when Claire realises she’s playing the deadliest role of her life . . .

Available here.

Book Review: Pimple, by Ryan Weeks

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Ryan Weeks’ debut novel paints a disturbing picture of the sex industry fuelled not by drugs and organised crime but by download speed.
By Lucy Bryson for Frost Magazine
With shades of Black Mirror, the hit Netflix series, Pimple is a brave debut novel by the tech journalist, Ryan Weeks. In it, he transports us – hopefully for the first time – to London’s underworld where pimps, prostitutes and criminals abound. It explores what would happen if this shady cast of characters were thrust in the neon glare of the internet and the impact of ‘disruptive technology on society.

Pimple sees tech insiders take on the sex industry by creating an app that puts sex workers and clients directly in touch with one another, Uber-style.
With an insider knowledge drawn from his years as a mover and shaker within the world of ‘FinTech’ (or financial technology), Weeks casts a sideways glance at the buzz terms and behaviour of those involved in game-changing tech but isn’t afraid to confront tough questions about accountability.

The sex industry is a controversial subject to cover, and it’s very much to the author’s credit that Pimple doesn’t descend into tawdry imaginings of sexual encounters. Rather, it’s a thoughtful and stylishly-written novel that looks at the lives of four very different people – Annie, the tech-savvy young woman who creates the app; Elena the sex worker that signs up for what she hopes will be a safer and more profitable way of doing; Emerson, a disgusting pimp who violently object to the loss of income; and the police officers enforcing the laws that ban prostitutes and pimps from plying their trade.

Annie, the book’s main character, is a techy-savvy millennial looking for a new challenge after her financial start-up is bought out by a High Street bank. Looking for something morally rewarding, she begins to imagine ways in which she could use technology to stem a rise in violent crime against female sex workers in the city. With the help of close friend Veronica, she develops a revolutionary new app that is to throw an already dangerous situation into chaos.


The first chapters of the book outline the women’s attempts to launch the app on the street worker scene, and before long prostitutes begin to sign up in their droves – accustomed as they are to the abusive pimps, these vulnerable women find themselves suddenly in a more powerful position. Able to pick and choose her clients (rated on a 1-5 scale, as are the prostitutes) and her rates, Annie feels a cautious sense of liberation and independence. But neither the pimps nor the police are happy, and events spiral dangerously out of control, as several fraught chapters lead to a violent conclusion.

This is not a book that will appeal to all tastes. The stylised language sounds a little forced at times – particularly in the dialogue between Annie and Veronica – and some readers will baulk at the idea of a book about Millennials and their ‘tech-talk’. But Weeks is unafraid to poke fun at his own generation and its presumed pretentiousness, making this a more humorous read than the subject matter may suggest.

Weeks succeeds in conveying a sense of impending doom, and fans of the thriller genre will find a lot to enjoy here; the book crams a lot of tension, twists and turns into little over 200 pages.

But Weeks also poses some challenging questions about sexual exploitation and the impact of technology on society – questions which readers are likely to be pondering long after they’ve put the book down.

Ryan Weeks is the editor of AltFi.com, one of the leading news and intelligence resources for ‘fintech’ (financial technology) in the UK. Pimple, explores the dramatic consequences of technological disruption. It is out now through Amazon UK priced £10.99 in paperback and 99p in ebook.

Decadence: A Very Short Introduction By David Weir

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A great short read on decadence. A real eye opener which makes you think. We loved it.

The history of decadent culture runs from ancient Rome to nineteenth-century Paris, Victorian London, fin de siècle Vienna, Weimar Berlin, and beyond. The decline of Rome provides the pattern for both aesthetic and social decadence, a pattern that artists and writers in the nineteenth century imitated, emulated, parodied, and otherwise manipulated for aesthetic gain. What begins as the moral condemnation of modernity in mid-nineteenth century France on the part of decadent authors such as Charles Baudelaire ends up as the perverse celebration of the pessimism that accompanies imperial decline. This delight in decline informs the rich canon of decadence that runs from Joris-Karl Huysmans’s À Rebours to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings, Gustav Klimt’s paintings, and numerous other works.

In this Very Short Introduction, David Weir explores the conflicting attitudes towards modernity present in decadent culture by examining the difference between aesthetic decadence–the excess of artifice–and social decadence, which involves excess in a variety of forms, whether perversely pleasurable or gratuitously cruel. Such contrariness between aesthetic and social decadence led some of its practitioners to substitute art for life and to stress the importance of taste over morality, a maneuver with far-reaching consequences, especially as decadence enters the realm of popular culture today.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Decadence: A Very Short Introduction is available here.