Tom's treasures of fiction, poetry, literature and more...

The end of the month approaches and I am gutted that we are finishing pride month. It seems the month has raced past in a flash. Still, I have read some good stuff this month. Here are some of those things... 1: My chess... The chess learning is still going. Some of the terminology I have been getting to grips with lately is actually quite cool. Before I started practising chess on my phone, I had never heard of forks or pins for example, even if I might have used them before. 2:  ‘'A Girton Girl on a Throne': Queen Christina and Versions of Lesbianism, 1906-1933’ by Sarah Waters. With Sarah Waters being author of the month, this journal was what I decided to read and review first. You can check out my review on the blog here to see what I truly thought of it. 3:  Social media . Even social media is owned by rich, selfish and horrible men (in my opinion) it has its uses and helps to keep me updated on important stuff. There is a lot of hope that I get from using social media ...

Today I am reviewing the poetry collection Diving into the Wreck  by Adrienne Rich (1929 - 2012). Adrienne Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She also happened to be a lesbian and came out in 1976. Her collection here is from three years earlier but it was one that stood out to me. The thing I loved was how eye-opening I found the collection to be. From the joys of 'August', to the seriousness of 'Burning one's self out', her poems offer variety and a necessary meaning to each poem. There are clear feminist ideas in here and as a proud feminist, I love to see it. Feminism is something that has always been needed and despite what some people could argue, is still needed to this day. For that I find that Rich's poems provide a relevance to the modern day reader. One such poem entitled 'Rape', offers a view as to what happens when someone reports it. This is a constant reminder what people have to go through. Even now, the number of people wh...

Finally the end of June is coming. That means it is time to disclose on some of the things I have been diving into. I thought I had posted this on Friday but it obviously did not post so have it now! I will post again later for the first post of June. 1: My French... The continual French learning never ever ever stops! Reading, typing, listening and speaking tasks all help to improve my understanding of the language. I do not even spend a lot of time doing it; five or ten minutes per day is what I like to accomplish. 2: The Adoption Papers  (1991) by Jackie Kay. As Jackie Kay was author of the month for May, I read her poetry collection The Adoption Papers  (1991). You can check out my review on the blog post to see what my thoughts were on the collection. Searching for tags such as 'BIPOC' or '1990s' can help you find the post easier. 3: Bus websites and timetables. There are some bus routes which I use (when I need to) that have been given updated timetables, with som...

Hello everyone. Today I am reviewing  The Adoption Papers  (1991) by Jackie Kay. This book is in two parts: the extended poem 'The Adoption Papers' and  the collection 'Severe Gale 8'.  When I started reading this I was glad that all three people involved in the first part - the daughter, the birth mother and the adoptive mother were distinguishable with their clear distinctions made typographically. The use of three different fonts throughout the whole thing to identify the three different voices was a excellent idea. Without this the sequence would have been confusing when reading it. Speaking of these three voices, they each had their own tone. The daughter seems to be rebellious and tough, not letting racism put her down. Being with white guardians is not a problem for her as she accepts it. Other people though seem to find this an issue obviously. What I love with Jackie Kay is how she throws a spotlight on important issues such as racism. As an author of colour...

Today I am reviewing another book. This time I am reviewing Pam Ayres's 2021 collection, On Animals . The collection brings together all her poems from across her work that in some way include any animals. These animals include hedgehogs as featured in her poem 'In Defence of Hedgehogs', or 'The Seagull' and even 'My Sister's Cat Does Not Like Me'; both of which indicate the animals included within those poems. As always, Ayres's poems provide her usual and unique humour.  Aside from Pam Ayres offering up her poems that come with the humour and the seriousness or the sentiment at times, she also included descriptions to add context to some of the poems. This is really liked because it gave me insight into Pam Ayres as a person not just as an author. This as well allowed for her to provide insight into things being different because attitudes around certain things have changed since she wrote some of these poems. There are poems in there that are deca...

Hello everyone... It is my second review of some of Pam Ayres's work today. For this review, I will be looking at her 1978 poetry collection, Thoughts of a Late-Night Knitter . For the second time, I find myself laughing at what I am reading. Pam Ayres is so funny and she seems to do it with ease. The poems in this collection though do differ from the last. This time I was met with an abundance of various people from the child who wanted to stay at home with their mum in 'I don't Want to go to School Mum' or the woman needing a new settee in 'A Tale of Two Settees' and person who could not stand going to the car wash in 'The Car Wash Black and Blues'. In her poetry, Pam makes her characters come alive, filling them with a vivid personality as well as keeping them funny. Then there are the poems that offer more serious topics such as 'Building Sites Bites' which I found a little hard to comprehend, considering the meaning behind it as she explaine...

It is time for another book review... For this review, I am looking at Don Paterson's poetry collection 40 Sonnets  (2015). This is a fun collection that shifts tone from the somewhat serious mellow tone of his last collection I reviewed - Rain  (2009). This collection offers something different. Obviously it offers 40 different sonnets but they are not just 'sonnets'. The sonnets here are also unique and varied from one another. First of all, they are structurally different from one another. A lot of you probably have a certain view of how a sonnet should look and be structured, which could well be based from having some of Shakespeare's sonnets. But sonnets can be so much more and unexpected at times. Paterson's collection also allows his thoughts and his queries to be highlighted. I like how his poem 'An Incarnation' is his side of a phone call conversation in which he seems to be asked he is who he is meant to be. I found the whole poem rather comical. I...

Here is a collection of poetry by Scottish authors from the 1970s. It is a interesting mix of poets with poetry in English and in Scottish. Now I do love that there was poetry in Scottish because it is full of Scottish authors however I found reading some bits a little challenging. Some poems had English as well as Scottish but I was reading one poem towards the end which I struggled to read. Nevertheless I was not deterred from reading this book which I liked. It had a great diversity of different Scottish poets from that time period including Robin Fulton, Liz Lochhead, Alexander Scott and Anne Stevenson. For me this is a celebration of Scottish poets and I love that. From a 'Fisherman's Pub' (Norman MacCraig) to 'Durham Market' (Derek Bowman), this collection offers a lot. Because the poems and their poets were so different, it kept the book enganging which meant I wanted to finish it. Sometimes I have read collections or even just books that you just want to put...

Today I am reviewing the poetry collection Rain  (2009) by author of the month, Don Paterson. Rain  is a beautiful collection that I found a joy to read. I love how different genres of poetry sit within this collection and how they all fit perfectly with what Paterson is trying to tell. We have ' Renku : My Last Thirty-Five Deaths' which as it states, is a Renku. For anyone wandering a Renku is often a thirty-six stanza Japanese collective poem made up of linked stanzas that are usually fourteen or seventeen syllables within the stanza. Each stanza alternates the number of lines, often being two or three lines. Don Paterson's Renku works in this genre whereas other poems would not necessarily work in that genre.  Take another poem such as 'Phantom' on the other hand. This is an elegy in memory to Michael Donaghy, a poet and Don Paterson's friend. The whole collection was in fact a dedication in memory to him. The tone and style of the poem 'Phantom' allo...

Apologies for not posting last Friday (31st October). I had no internet connection; I believe something to do with it being Halloween is the reason why... Superstitious, maybe... Moving on! This post here is the one from Friday; there will be another one published for today (Monday 3rd November) so keep a look out for it. I am now going to delve into what I read during October. 1: Zom-B  (2012) by Darren Shan.  Last month, when the theme of the month was horror, I picked Darren Shan as author of the month. When I was a teenager my hands somehow grabbed hold of my book, not sure how exactly but I read it. I decided to read again last month to remind myself what gory details happened. Also I wanted to be able to follow when I read more of the novels in the series, which I did. Read my review if you want to know what I really thought of it. 2: Hotel websites. I am going away and am needing to book somewhere to stay when I travel. Though this is not the easiest thing to do when ot...

Hello all! Do you ever feel you want something sweet? Do you ever want something you know you should not have? That is exactly what happens in Christina Rossetti's gothic poem "Goblin Market" (1862)… In today's review I am going to give my thoughts on Rossetti's poem of sinful desires and greeds. Here we have two sisters: Laura and Lizzie. When the goblin men tempt them with their fruits, Laura is interested. Lizzie however, insists that her sister should ignore them. This could be seen as allusion to Adam and Eve with Nachash the snake in the garden of Eden. This wanting of the bad fruit that a woman knows she should not have. Unlike Eve though, Lizzie does not get an apples on offer. Instead there are many other fruits for her to bite into. She tells her sister as such - ‘I'll bring you plums to-morrow Fresh on their mother twigs, Cherries worth getting; You cannot think what figs My teeth have met in, What melons icy-cold Piled on a dish of gold Too huge fo...

For my first official post I wanted to give a review of Hastings-born poet Daisy Lafarge's Life Without Air  collection. This was an interesting read for me from the moment I opened the book. Even the contents page drew me. You might ask why but whenever I pick up a new poetry pamphlet or collection for the first time, I like to examine the titles of the poems as it gives me intrigue. Life Without Air  for instance includes a poem entitled 'Axiology' and as I had never come across that word before, I was intrigued into what the poem was about. Then there is a poem entitled 'Jennifer'. I wondered who Jennifer could be - her sister? Her friend? Her lover? Also, what is her story? These I discovered when I read the poem, but don't worry I won't spoil it for you! Now 'Axiology' and 'Jennifer' are only two poems out of many. But they stand out from the others in many ways, as do they all. What Lafarge does with her poetry is she is able to careful...