Looking for the Best Word? Tip #65

A series of posts for lovers of words. Offering help for writers and language learners, these posts look at different aspects of the world of words to stimulate curiosity and enhance creativity. This week’s words: Pace, Metaphor, Merge together, Know the ropes, Opia. Pace - Roget’s thesaurus lists the following headers: synchronise (vb), long measure …

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Non-Invasive Health Benefits: Hema-Ties Reviewed.

Do you suffer headaches, migraines? Feeling stressed, anxious, or just worn down by modern life? I don’t know about you, but I prefer not to take medication for such situations. I seek something less invasive to put me back in a relaxed and creative state. For the past few weeks, I’ve been wearing a device …

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Sink: Old Man’s Tale, by Perrin Briar: #BookReview.

This book, listed as science fiction/fantasy, is an odd mix of parable, analogy, political comment and adventure. The style of writing falls mostly under the ‘tell’ rather than ‘show’ label, which makes for a strangely disconnected read for much of the time. There’s a transition from the beginning, set on terra ferma in Australia, and …

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Labor Day, by Joseph Farley: #BookReview.

From the start, this science fiction novel, located on a future Earth, sets the scene for the society in which the action takes place. And it isn’t a society many of us would wish to inhabit. Fortunately, the characters are drawn with such a fine pen that the reader can quickly empathise with the main …

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Looking for the Best Word? Tip #61

    A day late: sorry, my Mac was undergoing repairs. Now fixed! A series of posts for all word lovers. Offering help for writers and language learners, these posts look at many different aspects of the world of words in the hope of stimulating your curiosity and enhancing your creativity. This week’s words: Fight …

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I Am Malala, by Malala Yousafzai: #BookReview.

A truly remarkable piece of work by a truly remarkable young woman. Malala Yousafzai has produced a memoir that’s so much more than mere autobiography. Anyone ignorant of this brave girl has clearly been living in a shelter on Mars, so I won’t insult readers of this review with an overview. There’s great optimism in …

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Fires, by Tom Ward: #BookReview.

This thriller, set in a steel city in the UK, treats fire almost as one of its characters. After the opening, in which we meet the main protagonist, a fireman, we are plunged into a world of burning, where the fire officer arrives at his next conflagration only to discover it’s his own home. He …

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Inside Moves, by Walter Danley: #BookReview.

Inside Moves is a thriller with elements that occasionally lift it above the usual formulaic presentation of such books. Starting with a climatic event, the book moves back into the period prior to this to set the scene and explain how the climax came about. The general background to the story, its locations, mood and …

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Shadeward: Exoneration, by Drew Wagar: #BookReview.

Shadeward: Exoneration, by imaginative science fiction writer, Drew Wagar, is a continuation of the story begun in ‘Shadeward: Emanation’. If you haven’t read that book, I advise you to do so first, as it sets the scene and introduces the characters and the location whilst telling an engaging and compelling story. Continuing the saga, set …

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Sons of the Crystal Mind, by Andrew Wallace: #BookReview.

Set on an almost unrecognisable Earth in a distant future, this novel deals with the perils of unregulated capitalism as it is allowed run rampant through a society in which consumers are entirely secondary to profit (ring any bells?). Peopled by charismatic, strong, female characters and complex antagonists, the tale quickly engages the reader. Written …

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Storm of Attraction, by Lily Black: #BookReview.

Storm of Attraction is a romantic thriller with an understandable bias in favour of female readers. After all, most romance readers are women. As a mature man, and the author of a romantic thriller, I’m able to enjoy the genre in a way a lot of men can’t imagine. Told very much from the woman’s …

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The Darwin Awards, by Wendy Northcutt: #BookReview.

Subtitled ‘180 Bizarre True Stories of How Dumb Humans Have Met Their Maker’, The Darwin Awards is not a book to read in one sitting, unless you wish to join award nominees by dying from laughing too loud and too long. There are some wonderful tales here; a few are apocryphal but most have been …

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Long Time Walk on Water, by Joan Barbara Simon: #BookReview.

Joan Barbara Simon’s ‘Long Time Walk on Water’, is a phenomenon. There’s nothing ordinary, pedestrian, or conventional in this story of love, lust, prejudice, violence and parental brutality. An adherent of secular, as opposed to faith-based, philosophy, I’m already biased against the cruel, arbitrary, and unjust interpretation of so-called sacred myths that spread brutality and …

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An American Cage, by Ted Galdi: #BookReview.

This thriller is much more than that. Generally, thrillers are notorious for their concentration on story at the expense of character. In An American Cage, however, Galdi has broken that mould. He’s devised a tale that threads character throughout the story without adversely affecting pace and engagement. Written in present tense, and from an omniscient …

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The Purple Bowtie, by Lisabeth Reynolds: #BookReview.

[A review is a personal opinion. No reviewer can represent the view of anyone else. The best we can provide is an honest reaction to any given book.]   This book is listed as ‘lesbian romance’. So, what attracted an agnostic, heterosexual man to delve into its pages? The description intrigued me to begin with. …

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