Recently updated blogs

The longlist for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has been announced today! Thanks to this prize, I have discovered lots of great books and authors and always look out for the longlists and shortlists; in fact, trying to read all of the shortlisted titles since the prize began in 2010 is a personal project of mine (you can see my progress here). There are twelve books on …

I usually don’t do a blog post about a restaurant, unless it is particularly remarkable. Lambert’s Cafe fits that criterion. We went there for lunch, and it was quite the experience. Their claim to fame is “throwed rolls” — they have a guy roaming around, throwing freshly baked rolls to patrons. Which sounds like a bad idea, but is actually rather fun. (And this from a guy who doesn’t do …

In this special guest blog, David Musgrove, content director for BBC History Magazine and HistoryExtra, considers the amazing life of the now-forgotten Victorian showman, athlete, and wheelbarrow pedestrian Bob Carlisle, and how his clever manipulation of newspapers marks him out as a 19th-century influencer. Did the Victorian period have influencers? Yes, but rather than using social media and camera phones, they employed letter-writing and wheelbarrows. I’ve been researching the story …

Terry Carroll Obituary and Cause Death, Who Was Terry Carroll? & Is Alive Or Not?If AI didn’t write that then I’ll be interested to know who went to heaven to hear that final performance.

I recently added (or added to) a couple of metapages about this site and myself, including a brief Charles Wade page, which points to old blog posts that feature the great man. Doing so reminded me / rubbed in the fact that a lot of my archived blog posts are b0rked, mainly in terms of image URLs and placement. This is - of course - as a result of transferring …

Lately (as in the last six months, I’d guess) I have really intense dreams every couple of nights. Not nightmares or action-packed adventures, just dreams that feel very real with people who seem like well-rounded persons. Days after these nights are always a bit weird, especially when the grey weather turns the daylight dull and reality seems less real than the dream I just had. And while some locations keep …

Michael Grasso / February 21, 2024 Near the end of Richard Nixon’s first term, the forces of conservatism and reaction were in the ascendancy in America. This public resurgence of “traditional values” was itself a counter-revolution against the turmoil unleashed by the young in their opposition to the Vietnam War and their support for the civil rights struggle, which had swept through America’s streets over the previous decade. America’s traditional …

I’m a little obsessed with web performance. I like being able to check a page’s core web vitals quickly and easily. Four years ago, I made a Lighthouse bookmarklet. Whatever web page you were on, when you clicked on the bookmarklet you’d get the Lighthouse results for that page. Handy! It doesn’t work anymore. This is probably because Google are in the loop. Four years is pretty good innings for …

For real, can we recap: Sitting members of Congress initiated IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS against a U.S. President based on information passed to them by an agent of Russian intelligence. Same members refuse to pass aid to Ukraine. Same members defend Trump.….— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) February 21, 2024 Josh Marshall calls it A Bigger Story Than You Can Possibly ImagineLet’s review recent events. First came the news that prosecutors in special counsel …

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash Today’s post is by author, book coach, and developmental editor Lidija Hilje. It’s often said that scenes are the fundamental building blocks of a story—the smallest units that propel the narrative forward. But what precisely constitutes a scene, and what types of scenes are there? Typically, when we refer to a scene, we’re talking about it in a classic, strict sense: as a story-relevant event …

Dianne Feinstein’s house is for sale, and it includes a pool, where her aides probably said she went swimming every day. Study for Blue Panel (Ground Zero), 2024, jpg Meanwhile, the ghost of Ellsworth Kelly says to expand the court.

(Source: Alex Sawyer on Unsplash) When I graduated from high school, an older and wiser woman in my life gave me a copy of the children’s book The Big Orange Splot. The plot is pretty straightforward: the central character, Mr Plumbean, lives on a “neat street” where all the houses are the same. One day, a seagull drops a bucket of paint on his roof, making a big orange splot. …

When I read that the second supermoon of 2023 would be on display on August 1st, I decided to stay up later than usual to try and catch a few glimpses of the lady. It was a little cloudy but worth it! And I have photos to show you. Before moving on, though, let me answer the following question: What is a supermoon? The supermoon owes its name to astrologer …

Ani King’s flash “Mother-Mother, Wasp-Mother” buzzes with longing, stings with nemory, and sighs with all a missing person leaves behind. Here they share just one thing about the piece:“This is one of the three stories I've ever written or published that still don't have a Spotify playlist to accompany them. Music really tends to drive and anchor me especially when it comes to stepping back into the mood, cadence, setting …