Blog Archive

1 January 2024

A New Year and a brand new Great Writer

It’s the New Year and the beginning of the Reading Project’s eighth year on Neocities. It’s hard to believe that one New Year’s resolution could stick so long!

Last night we published two new reviews before the New Year’s klaxons sounded. I reviewed George Orwell’s novel, Coming Up for Air, which was the book he published before writing his two most famous works, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. And Toriaz posted her review for Rest You Merry, a seventies crime mystery which has all the hallmarks of the Golden Age of Crime Fiction.

And with the beginning of this year we have the fifth instalment of Michael Duffy’s series of faux interviews with famous writers. This time he is speaking to British-American poet W.H. Auden about his poetry, his love of mines and mine machinery. Check out the project page, or read the interview and learn about Auden’s connection to Detective Fiction.

Hope you all have a good year!

- bikerbuddy

3 January 2024

In praise of short stories

I’m not normally one for New Year’s resolutions. Back at the beginning of 2017 my New Year’s resolution was to start a website. I wonder how that went.

As 2023 drew to a close I reflected on the fact that I read very few short stories, and I know there are so many out there to be enjoyed. I decided that my resolution this year would be to continuously read short stories in conjunction with novels and other reading I was doing. To that end I decided to start the Father Brown stories by G.K. Chesterton, and yesterday I started Anton Chekhov’s collection, Ward No. 6 and Other Stories as well. The first story, ‘The Cook’s Wedding’ is about a young servant who is pressured into marrying a cabman. She gets virtually nothing out of the match. He won’t even be hanging around. Except now, her wages are to be garnished to help prop up his unprofitable business. The story was short, yet there was so much to it, it was impressive.

I have other collections in mind to read as the year progresses. I guess more about that later.

- bikerbuddy

12 January 2024

Ear Rat Magazine No.7 Out Now!

Back at the beginning of the pandemic Mike, the webmaster of No Happy Nonsense on Neocities, began Ear Rat Magazine. I’ve been contributing to each of the issues, never sure which might be the last. Today Mike has released the latest (and possibly the last, he says) edition of Ear Rat. The theme this time around is ‘Love and Connection in Strange and Cursed Places’.

I’ve enjoyed each of the opportunities to write for something other than this website and hopefully be a bit creative. The fun has been coming up with something that fits a theme someone else has chosen. My efforts have been patchy, but I’m happy enough with the two contributions I made this time around.

Ear Rat Magazine is entirely non-profit and FREE!!! It’s put together with love and enthusiasm by people on the Neocities platform. To check it out and even download your own PDF version, click here or on the cover image.

Thank you to Mike who thought to do this and has stuck with it for nearly four years now!

- bikerbuddy

29 January 2024

A new ‘Great Writers’ due out Thursday (kangaroo time)

I've been getting a page together for Michael Duffy’s next instalment of The Great Writers Series. It’s due out the 1 February. Next month’s ‘interview’ profiles two writers of the early 19^th century, Stendhal and William Hazlitt. I’ve never read either author before, so I was learning a few things as I was getting Michael’s text ready. Both writers met in 1824, knew each other’s work and were both products of the Romantic Movement. Hazlitt was primarily an essayist while Stendhal wrote both non-fiction and fiction. His most famous novels were The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma.

Michael Duffy’s latest piece also chronicles aspects of these men’s lives, their attitudes to love, as well as a particularly embarrassing sex scandal that embroiled Hazlitt’s life.

We went into Penrith today to have lunch with our sons and while we were there we visited Harry Hartog, the new bookshop that opened last year. I found a second hand copy of The Red and the Black for only $8.50, so it followed me home. As I was putting Michael’s page together the other day I thought that the story sounded interesting. And if the title reminds you of a song from the Les Miserables musical, there is probably no connection. Stendhal’s novel is set during the 1830 July Revolution in which King Charles, the French Bourbon monarch, was deposed, and Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans, was installed on the throne. The June uprising in Les Miserables happens in 1832, and was an ill-fated anti-monarchist uprising, hoping to overthrow Louis Philippe after the death of a popular republican leader, General Lamarque.

I hope to read the book soon. Unfortunately, I won’t have it read and reviewed to coincide with Michael’s latest instalment on Thursday.

- bikerbuddy