Showing 31 - 40 of 42
Dirty politics abound
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 25/03/2013
» Every two, four, six years, posters fill the streets of men or women with the same message: "Vote for me for a better government." They also appear on TV saying the same thing, with the additional assertion that the others saying it are lying scoundrels, not to be trusted.
Worth your while
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 07/01/2013
» Like every youngster _ well, some at least _ I wanted to know everything there was to know. Not that I liked school that much. With all the inventions up to that time surely, I thought, there ought to be one that could be placed on my head by a scientist and, zap, my brain would be filled.
Encyclopaedic
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 26/11/2012
» Historical novels and film documentaries about wars are commonplace. But with hundreds of millions of people having died in them through the millennia, it has been necessary for authors and cinemakers to limit the scope. If the list of characters goes on and on, the reader and viewer is overwhelmed.
Smoke jumpers
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 12/11/2012
» I'd thought that James Patterson, on his own and with co-authors, penned the most novels until I came across Nora Roberts. Under her own name and also the pseudonym JD Robb she has ground out 190 works of fiction to date without a co-author. To her credit, talent-wise she gives Patterson a run for his money.
An imaginative thriller
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 01/10/2012
» When President Obama showed a select audience an ongoing closed circuit television mission that killed the most wanted man in the world enjoying sanctuary in Pakistan, he emphasized that locating and taking out the notorious Muslim terrorist by the US elite SEALs was a wholly American undertaking. It will certainly earn him votes at the next election.
A new morality
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 17/09/2012
» In the early days of Hollywood, film-makers realised that with all the brawling in Westerns, audiences tended to be confused as to who was the hero and who was the villain. Their solution was simplicity itself _ to dress the hero in white, the villain in black. This practice lasted for a half century.
Punishing the innocent
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 13/08/2012
» Looking at the name of the author of 15 Seconds, I did a double-take. I knew that I hadn't reviewed a book by Andrew Gross before, so why was he familiar to me? The thumbnail sketch of his background provided the answer. Gross is in James Patterson's stable of writers.
The real thing
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 09/07/2012
» It is one of this author's peeves that contemporary authors writing about a variety of subjects throw in Islamic terrorists in the hope that it makes stories more exciting. This ploy doesn't work. To be sure Islamic terrorism is the flavour of the 21st century, heinous and vile, but ought to be written about in context.
Torture is justified
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 21/05/2012
» It would appear that every Western novelist feels that if he doesn't pen at least one story about Muslim terrorists, he isn't being patriotic. Doesn't matter if it's plausible, it is the subject matter that counts. After all, is there any atrocity Muslim terrorists aren't capable of?
Views and reviews
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 23/04/2012
» For the most part, writers tell stories but have nothing to say. We are given the plot, character development, dialogue and a conclusion. Ideally it's done _ cover to cover _ in 350 pages. Several authors keep going for 700 pages, a number drag it out for 900.