tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-194827852024-03-07T07:19:10.275+00:00TrishyB saysA blog about dogs and cats, books and television, knitting and sewing, films and music.Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.comBlogger598125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-80725074478274059712020-03-12T13:26:00.000+00:002020-03-12T13:26:04.003+00:00Fiftieth Birthday Quiz Questions
Tomorrow, I will be fifty years old.
In February, I celebrated my birthday by inviting people to a pub quiz, for which I wrote the questions. I highly recommend this as a way to celebrate your own knowledge, and see which of your friends pays attention to your interests and the places you go on holidays.
Because of the coronavirus and the fact that everyone is stuck at home now, I'm putting Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-88353640592705676542018-05-20T14:09:00.000+01:002018-05-20T14:09:04.119+01:00West Cork's Offshore Fauna
So, the whales of West Cork are putting on a remarkable show this year. This is fantastic for Irish whale-watching enthusiasts. Traditionally, we would either have to hitch a ride with a scientific or fishing vessel travelling out into the middle of the Atlantic (still technically within Irish waters, but too far out to be any use to day trippers) or take off for one of the more reliable Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-32039684435056177762018-05-02T16:37:00.001+01:002018-05-02T16:37:21.871+01:00Sugar Money by Jane Harris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a solidly good, exciting, only-as-brutal-as-it-needs-to-be adventure story set in Martinique and Grenada in the late 1700s. Based on a true story, it concerns two slaves who are sent by their master - a French friar - to steal another group of slaves from Grenada and bring the group to Martinique. The book certainly doesn't gloss Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-61615395098093572242018-01-17T19:58:00.002+00:002018-01-17T19:58:40.100+00:00Married to a Cave ManMarried to a Cave Man by Damien Owens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There you go, see? THIS is how you combine humour with real human drama and emotion. Here it is.
View all my reviews
Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-81889573697265737542018-01-14T00:17:00.002+00:002018-01-14T00:17:27.900+00:00The North WaterThe North Water by Ian McGuire
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Thanks to Paul and Alice for getting me this book for Christmas, following the unerring logic of "well, it has a whale AND a ship on the cover". Once I picked up The North Water, I couldn't put it down, and raced through it as befits a book that's all told in a kind of breathless present tense, and is full of action and incident, not to Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-21302814505768748082018-01-13T20:34:00.007+00:002018-01-13T20:34:45.072+00:00Nicole Cliffe's Favourite Horror Films of Recent YearsI'm just going to park this list here, and hope that Nicole does not think better of it and delete the whole thing.Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-77994033927618215342017-04-05T20:03:00.000+01:002017-04-05T20:03:13.882+01:00It's Novel Fair Time AgainLast year, more or less on a whim, I entered the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair. I was about halfway through writing a book I thought was properly good, and was certainly topical, and I wanted a deadline to give myself the push to finish it. So, I paid over my €50 as soon as the Novel Fair opened, then spent the period between April and October getting my first 10,000 words into as good a shape Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-32692118803033919352017-03-26T20:21:00.002+01:002017-03-26T20:21:30.329+01:00The Arrival of SpringThe biannual changing of the clock has happened again, and, as usual, it seems to be too much for people to deal with. Not only is Twitter full of people making the same Stonehenge joke, but the 6 Music news this morning carried a report from a group that wants to keep BST all year round because "it would create 38,000 jobs in the leisure industry," because apparently it's the clocks changing Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-71072356197147218672016-02-17T10:57:00.000+00:002016-02-17T10:57:02.651+00:00I don't have to outrun the lion...Because I like to be about six years behind any trend, I have recently started running. As a very large woman, this was difficult for me for many reasons. First, it's physically hard to move when you're essentially carrying a particularly lazy full-grown adult around with you everywhere you go. Second, people can be very mean. Like others, I've been sneered at because of my weight for a very longTrish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-42982731795277448222013-02-27T18:45:00.000+00:002013-02-27T18:45:21.548+00:00Crafty henSince I became a fully fledged layabout... I mean, self-employed writer and proofreader (reasonable rates! Quality work! Hardly any crying!), I have developed some terrible habits, including playing Bejeweled Blitz till I have a cramp in my arm and watching Eggheads.
In order to rid myself of at least one of these habits, I started knitting. Well, technically I restarted knitting, because Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-87624004710588493862013-02-22T20:56:00.000+00:002013-02-22T20:56:08.418+00:00History! (6: Sian Rees - The Floating Brothel & 7: Barbara W. Tuchman - A Distant Mirror)In the last week I finished reading not one, but two history books. One of these was a long, broad book taking in the whole sweep of 14th-century Europe and concentrating quite hard on the Hundred Years War, the Avignon papacy, and a lot of minor French nobles. The other was a short book about the first group of female convicts to be sent to Australia, which featured the sea, transportation,Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-79485916815976042642013-02-13T14:45:00.000+00:002013-02-13T16:09:28.462+00:005: Virginia Woolf - Orlando
I'm not sure I can add an awful lot to the millions of words that have been written about Virginia Woolf and about Orlando--about its playful, affectionate look at 300 years in the life of a colorful character who is first a man and then a woman but always someone aware of his/her place in history. It's full of lovely observations about the differences between the sexes and how many of these Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-41982678319171441602013-02-09T10:49:00.001+00:002013-02-09T10:49:41.847+00:004: Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl
It's ages since I read one of the books everyone is talking about. In fact, I don't think I've done it since I stopped working in Oxfambooks, when I read several Dan Brown books, one after the other, standing behind the counter during slack periods in the shop.
This is far, far better than any Dan Brown book, but it did have a couple of similarities. I ate it up over the course of a weekend, Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-6924453336802946532013-02-02T22:49:00.000+00:002013-02-02T22:49:21.201+00:00Wow, brilliant, amazing, wow!This morning, Mary Anne Hobbs played "Windowlicker" on her 6 Music show and I decided that it was time to not listen to Mary Anne Hobbs anymore. Not because she played "Windowlicker", but because she introduced it by saying that the great thing about 6 Music is that it's so brilliant because you can play "Windowlicker" at ten to nine on a Saturday morning, and where else could you do Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-35257575818412291172013-01-19T14:54:00.002+00:002013-01-19T15:04:17.284+00:003: Harriet Steel - Becoming Lola
Lola Montez was a 19th-century dancer, courtesan, free spirit, and, if Harriet Steel's novelised version of her early life is to be believed, not remotely afraid to fight her corner. Her real name wasn't Lola Montez. She wasn't Spanish. She wasn't even much of a dancer, it seems. But she had a determination to live a certain kind of life and the beauty, charisma, and slapdash attitude to Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-26836459671450643852013-01-14T10:49:00.000+00:002013-01-14T10:50:03.107+00:002: Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamora
In one of those worlds where everything is made of obsidian* and everything is slightly magical, a conman, thief, and gang member in good standing called Locke Lamora* hatches a plan to relieve some wealthy people of their money, while at the same time, unbeknownst to him, he has become a key component of someone else's plan to do Very Bad Things to a great many people within the city state of Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-84146502587668664442013-01-04T10:44:00.002+00:002013-01-04T10:44:58.086+00:001: Patrick O'Brian - Treason's Harbour (or, the one with the diving bell)
Sometimes people ask me what would be a good starter Aubrey/Maturin novel, so that a person could just see if they liked them without having to commit to anything very serious. (I think people really only do this to shut me up, to be honest, but sometimes it's just nice to chat.)
If you don't mind jumping in almost exactly at the middle of a series, thereby spoiling some earlier storylines for Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-36459357522264294332013-01-02T17:16:00.000+00:002013-01-02T17:16:05.831+00:00New Year's Resolutions: quitting a thing, reading some things
For 2013, I decided to quit the third worst habit I've ever had.
To celebrate this decision, I gorged myself on my third worst habit for hours last night. In fact, I stayed up doing it till two in the morning, and then woke up with a sore arm because of it. I'd like to tell you this had never happened to me before, that it was a goodbye binge, but that would be a lie. I've often given myself aTrish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-48809870528008206212012-07-16T09:53:00.000+01:002012-07-16T09:53:10.100+01:00Modern Book Club: Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Here's what I wrote about this on Goodreads (where you can be my friend and look at whole lists of things I will never read and nor will you):
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is the least sexy famous-for-being-sexy book I've ever read. The sense of place and time it conveys is beautiful, and Miller almost manages to make being a semi-destitute layabout in 1920s Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-55702277031465537862012-06-21T11:05:00.001+01:002012-06-21T11:05:29.044+01:00Classic Book Club: The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope
A quick look at the bibliography on Anthony Trollope's Wikipedia page is enough to give anyone an instant case of sympathetic writer's cramp. The man was prolific. And yet I don't know anyone who reads him anymore (although obviously someone does), and his books, when they turned up in the bookshop where I used to work, always went unsold. This made him a perfect choice for me for CBC, Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-28154722819298788662012-05-15T23:02:00.000+01:002012-05-15T23:02:55.489+01:00Goodbye to a good dog
So, while we were away in Berlin and Paris (aka the holiday I now wish I'd never gone on), Trixie got very sick. Her minder, Catherine, a retired nurse, was able to keep her alive till we got home, mainly through round-the-clock injections and some incredibly expensive magic cream. Catherine fully expected that we would arrive home and see how appallingly sick Trixie was, and that we would Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-3471133975920929762012-04-29T11:52:00.001+01:002012-04-29T11:52:51.268+01:00Smashy smashyWhen I eventually get around to rewriting my zombie apocalypse novel and somebody eventually makes a film or four-part telly series out of it, there's one bit I'm particularly looking forward to. It's the bit where our heroes (that's the people who are still alive, btw, I don't hold with any of this new-fangled pro-zombie nonsense) go out foraging for food, find a store selling these items:
andTrish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-76072569367067971182012-04-24T11:24:00.002+01:002012-04-24T11:24:26.087+01:00Boats, trains, and riding horses in the living room. Or, books I read recently
Classic Book Club continues apace. Recently we read weighty Russian funfest Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, about which enough has probably already been said in the world. All I'll add is that it had the feel of a biography rather than a novel, in that Tolstoy played everything out to its inevitable, unromantic, and bitter conclusion as if he had no means of stopping it (as if it was some Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-46574495135482450102012-04-22T11:54:00.000+01:002012-04-22T11:59:22.382+01:00Why do I bother? or, crap films I saw this weekOne of the reasons I find it hard to finish writing anything is that my own standards keep getting in the way. Every time I think of some way to move the story forward, I think of ten reasons why he wouldn't do that, or she wouldn't say that, or it would be better if they went here and did this instead, but then I'd have to go back and change that other thing, and so on. I can't just lash Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19482785.post-68850084174127255272012-04-13T09:23:00.002+01:002012-04-14T11:38:34.487+01:00Bastard dog (it's all about quality of life)
Photo courtesy of Meath Coast Dog Walking
When Trixie was diagnosed with her heart condition two years ago, it was suggested to us that she might not have very long left. She now takes ten tablets a day and has to be minded by a special minder or she'll have another heart attack the next time I go on holidays (she's had two heart attacks now). She's also kind of incontinent and if you don't Trish Byrnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13829647858169418092noreply@blogger.com2