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Posts by td Whittle

The Infinite Loop: a novella of spaceships, time warps, and free pie

td Whittle

Posted on December 26, 2015

 

Dear Readers,

 

We are excited to announce that our second book, The Infinite Loop: a novella of spaceships, time warps and free pie, is available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon.

Lenie and Rachel are two old friends sharing a road trip and a new vision of life, beyond marriage and children. Things begin to feel strange out in the West Texas desert: a buzzing, tingling kind of strange. An aircraft appears to be following them and distant lights shine from a town that doesn’t appear on their maps. What awaits them there is a tidy RV park boasting modern amenities and fresh all-you-can-eat pie.

Feeling lucky to have landed in this quiet oasis under a star-strewn desert sky, the women are reluctant to leave, even as they find themselves drawn into a series of increasingly disturbing events. Is it the town, the pie, or some kind of shared hallucination? One thing they know for sure is that they can’t leave without seeing the local attraction that has beckoned them ever since their arrival: the Infinite Loop.

This is the first book in our Pie Town series. Watch for our second, which we plan to release in February 2017.

 

Happy reading, everyone!

 

Sandra and td

Thirteen Ways Press

Book Review: Outline, by Rachel Cusk

td Whittle

Posted on August 2, 2015

Outline by Rachel Cusk My rating: 5 of 5 stars   Here is the book blurb from Goodreads, for those wondering what it’s about: “A woman writer goes to Athens in the height of summer to teach a writing course. Though her own circumstances remain indistinct, she becomes the audience to a chain of narratives, as the people she meets tell her one after another the stories of their lives … Outline is a novel about writing and talking, about self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form.”   It says something about Rachel Cusk’s extraordinary talent that despite most of her characters in Outline being, at best, tedious and…

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Book Review: The Towers of Trebizond, by Rose Macaulay

td Whittle

Posted on June 8, 2015

The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay My rating: 5 of 5 stars   “‘Take my camel, dear’, said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass’.” This wins as my favourite first line of any book I’ve read (so far, at least). The Towers of Trebizond was not what I expected — though, now I think of it, I am not quite sure what it was I expected. Let me think … Well, for one thing, when I bought it, I thought it was nonfiction, which it is not; however, those who knew her say that much of Rose Macaulay’s own life is written into it, and that seems true. For another, the little I…

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Some Days, by Billy Collins

td Whittle

Posted on February 3, 2015

Artist: Laurie Simmons, from the Disturbing Innocence group show at FLAG Art Foundation. Curated by Eric Fischl. Oct 25, 2014 - Jan 31, 2015.

 

Some days I put the people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature,
and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.

All afternoon they face one another,
the man in the brown suit,
the woman in the blue dress,
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.

But other days, I am the one
who is lifted up by the ribs, 
then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
to sit with the others at the long table.

Very funny,
but how would you like it
if you never knew from one day to the next 
if you were going to spend it

striding around like a vivid god,
your shoulders in the clouds, 
or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,
staring straight ahead with your little plastic face? 
“Some Days” from Picnic, Lightning, by Billy Collins, © 1998, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. The image above is of a work by Laurie Simmons, from the Disturbing Innocence group show at FLAG Art Foundation. Curated by Eric Fischl. Oct 25, 2014 - Jan 31, 2015.

Book Review: The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann

td Whittle

Posted on January 20, 2015

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann My rating: 5 of 5 stars   I am not going to review this book in any serious or analytical way. It’s been reviewed by many clever readers already, over several generations and sprawling continents. It hardly needs my support. I am just going to offer my entirely subjective comments about what a great and thoroughly enjoyable read it is!   The plot should be familiar to Western readers by now, as this classic is a century old and much discussed in literary circles. However, in case you missed out, here’s the synopsis from Goodreads: In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a community devoted exclusively to sickness, as a…

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Book Review: This Crowded Earth, by Robert Bloch

td Whittle

Posted on January 14, 2015

This Crowded Earth by Robert Bloch My rating: 1 of 5 stars   I don’t usually give one-star ratings, for the simple reason that I rarely finish a book that I dislike enough to rate that low. I stuck with this one, because I was interested in the premise and because this is the fellow who wrote Psycho. (I never read Psycho but, of course, it was a brilliant Hitchcock film.) For reasons I cannot explain even to myself, I kept expecting this book to get better.   The premise of this book is interesting. In each chapter of This Crowded Earth, Bloch illustrates a list of stupendous social ills caused by humans, in an effort to improve their lot. Each attempted solution creates…

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Book Review: Religion for Atheists, by Alain de Botton

td Whittle

Posted on January 7, 2015

Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton My rating: 4 of 5 stars   There are many things to like about Botton’s book, for both religious and irreligious readers. He has a beautiful way of noticing and explaining the value of religion, and why it is a great loss to humanity to toss out the wisdom and traditions of the Church, along with beliefs in the Divine. His argument is that one need not embrace the supernatural in order to benefit from what religion has offered human beings over many centuries: a life of unified purpose, a sense of community, a focus on others that distracts us from our natural egocentricity, an idea of love that…

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Book Review: The Strange Library, by Haruki Murakami

td Whittle

Posted on December 28, 2014

The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami My rating: 4 of 5 stars *** Warning: this review contains a slew of spoilers ***   The Strange Library is sure to be engagingly familiar for most Murakami fans, regarding the set, the props, and the unlikely hero. There is a solitary, inward-looking boy; an ordinary public building containing a profound mystery; a hidden labyrinth; a sinister and grotesque man looming over the boy’s life in a threatening way; a sheep man (I have to admit to a soft spot for Murakami’s recurring sheep-man character — in this story, he even makes doughnuts; what’s not to love?); and an ethereal now-you-see-her-now-you-don’t beautiful female guide and protector, who doubles as the boy’s pet starling. It is beautifully written…

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Book Review: Getting Colder, by Amanda Coe

td Whittle

Posted on November 28, 2014

Getting Colder by Amanda Coe My rating: 4 of 5 stars   “Of course it’s serious, my love, but it’s fucking hilarious!” This is one of my favourite lines from Getting Colder and it suits the whole book really, which is a black comedy.   I received an advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for a review, and I dived in with eager anticipation. Getting Colder is a fast read that kept me flipping pages as if it were a thriller. It tells the story of an emotionally remote woman — or a highly passionate but repressed one, take your pick — who leaves her husband and children to run off with the (legend has it) great love of her life, a…

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Book Review: The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell

td Whittle

Posted on September 28, 2014

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell My rating: 5 of 5 stars   *Warning: I have said things in this review which some readers may view as plot spoilers, so proceed with caution, please.*   I have read only a handful of The Bone Clocks professional and lay reviews so far because I find that if I read too many reviews before writing my own, I feel constrained by others’ opinions. But I think I can safely assume that most of the important points about this book have already been made, for better or worse.   I should say upfront that the inferences I’ve made about the author, which I find worth discussing because they are based on the book, may or may not…

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13 Ways: Illustrated Stories

13 Ways: Illustrated Stories

Click on the cover to buy 13 Ways via Amazon.

The Infinite Loop

The Infinite Loop

Click on the cover to buy The Infinite Loop via Amazon.

Stranger Places: A Pie Town Novel

Stranger Places: A Pie Town Novel

Click on the cover to buy Stranger Places via Amazon.

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