Showing posts with label Barter Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barter Books. Show all posts

Monday 25 March 2024

Crown Green Bowling And Pies




The Stuart Maconie book "The Pie At Night" is coming along very well covering various sports in the North of England including Speedway which, along with the TT is the only going round a track sport I can watch. Also, Speedway bikes are the only ones I can ride coz they only have an accelerator, no clutch or brakes therefore I can concentrate on keeping reasonably upright.

I also found out that Crown Green Bowling is so-called because the green is raised in the middle where the target ball is placed,

I am also reading "Carol" by Patricia Highsmith, a recommendation from my work LGBT+ book club, so I will have two on the go, and that is not a bad thing.

He is also an excellent writer and DJ and worth checking out in print or on the BBC. 


I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est La Vie.

The music is "Take The Skinheads Bowling" by Camper Van Beethoven

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer and this is her Instagram

Thursday 29 June 2023

A Near Miss (Isn't That A Hit?)


I thought that I might hit a 100K visit by midnight tomorrow, but it looks unlikely. I had over 5K visits yesterday, but today it's just 3K at the moment meaning I would need 6K tomorrow. It might happen but I can see it stalling at 99,999 but that is still an unexpectedly decent achievement.



 "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen is still on Creationism vs Darwinism argument. Essentially Creatism is for people who cannot understand scientific concepts. Science always questions itself, religion doesn't. The Bible may have started out with some moral tenets and some of them are still worth following today, but also condones horrible things like slavery, misogyny and murder.



If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music "Rings Around The World" by the Super Furry Animals

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer


Tuesday 9 May 2023

Bookmarks


Still reading Dawn of the Dumb by Charlie Brooker, and charged my bookmark from the one I got made for me for reviewing a book on Norse mythology to a freebie I picked up on my last visit to Barter Books (link below).

It is really useful because it is like an old wooden ruler with lots of measurement conversions written on it. Check it out here.


If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.


I've included "Finding My Way" by Rush which when I first heard it on John Peel I thought was Led Zeppelin, but we use bookmarks to help find our way through books.

I recently found out that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  3. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Sunday 26 April 2020

A Library ...


I've just finished "A Shadow On The Wall" by Jonathan Aycliffe which I wrote about in my last post here and like many of his books, you are just coming down from the relief of everything being resolved ... and then in the last line of the book you realise it might not be.

So I went looking for another book to read and decided on a Daniel Easterman and then noticed "Not The End of The World" by Christopher Brookmyre , which looks interesting and one that I had got from Barter Books in the old Railway Station in Alnwick. The book looks good and I can't remember reading it, again this is possibly my magpie mentality kicking in , buy or acquire and then forget about it.

A sad incident was when my mum gave two sets of impressive Encyclopedias which our family had had for years , to my younger (disowned by me) brother , saying she didn't want any books in the house because she didn't like them. My girls would have loved and used those books, but  sometimes things don't happen as you would want them to. I used them for schoolwork and research although now we generally have the internet which is brilliant if used properly.

I was then thinking , that because of my imperfect memory, I probably don't have to buy another book ever, there are some which I had forgotten about and many that I  remember which I want to revisit, I'm thinking "The Adversary" series by F Paul Wilson , six books starting with "The Keep" and finishing with "Nightworld" , plus various William Hope Hodgson , and these are all books I have.

Although there are bookcases round the house , effectively this is a small personal library, and the do look good but book are there to be read or referred to , but I often see people's books and big libraries and think "Have these books been read, or are they just there for show?" , and I know not all of mine have been read and I have slightly shifted my perspective to discover what I already know that I have.

I think everywhere should have physical books although I now put the bigger tomes on my Kindle as it's easier to read them that way , essentially five hundred pages or less , physical book , over that Kindle. There is a complete HP Lovecraft collection on Kindle for 75p here although for some reason individual books are more expensive.

Going off on a tangent I'm going to share a live take of the beautiful "Book of Love" by Stephen Merritt , but here's the Magnetic Fields take and a Peter Gabriel take from "Scratch My Back" which is stunning.


Sunday 21 July 2013

Don't Keep Calm - Go Wild!

A short ranty post this . I sick of all these idiotitic KEEP CALM posters that say KEEP CALM KILL A ZOMBIE or KEEP CALM PAY YOUR TAXES or KEEP CALM DRIVE A SPORTS CAR. All of those scenarios cause people to go wild and annoy me intensely. The original KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON motif was sensible and fine , but it doesn't mean you can add anything to KEEP CALM , it should make sense.

Incidentally the first time I saw this was at the magnificent Barter Books in the old Alnwick Railway Station.





So
I've added my poster. Feel free to copy and distribute