Middlefocus

  One of my favourite "curious openings" snapped on a trip to Granada, Andalucia, Spain back in 2023.  I remember that I spotted it and returned to take the picture. I wondered then and have wondered since why such a lovely door received so much graffiti attention.  You will see the starred handle easily enough but the keyhole is tiny. It seems out of proportion with the stature of the door. I wonder who passes through the opening and what stories lie behind.  Were the inhabitants present when the "artists" went to work? Did they hear the spray can hiss and splatter?  Or did they return home to find the damage done?  Was it one night's work or spread over time?  A recurrent problem? Was the apparent sturdiness of the door the very thing that drew the antisocial behaviour?   Curious indeed.

  Where Are The Kings Donal Ryan Transworld Digital, Penguin Random House, via NetGalley Advance Reader Copy (ARC) Read on Kindle Publication date: August 2026 4* I have physical copies of all of Donal Ryan's books, so when NetGalley offered me an advance reader copy of Where Are the Kings for review, I jumped at the chance.  The title immediately intrigued me.  Was a question mark missing? A glance at the dedication page deepened the mystery.  There was an extract from WB Yeats's On Baile's Strand, depicting someone fighting "crowns" on the waves amid cries of "Where are the kings?" The passage hints at struggle, grief and perhaps even madness—elements that resonate throughout the novel. Just a few minutes into the first chapter, I read: “There doesn't have to be a reason for crying. 
Sometimes crying just starts itself up in a person, and the person has no control of it.” This is our young protagonist, 12-year-old Jack, watching his mother. What a ...

    Night Flight , Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, with an introduction by André Gide Translated by Stuart Gilbert, Penguin Books, 1940 edition. This English translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Vol de Nuit came from a late friend's bookshelves. The Penguin edition with its distinctive orange-and-white cover, denoting works of fiction, is now 86 years old and the content very much of its time.  Aviation was in its pioneering age and although the events described are tragic, the French writer, André Gide in his introduction writes "great though these risks still are, they are growing daily less, for each successive trip facilitates and improves the prospects of the next one."  Sadly those diminishing risks were not realised as is apparent by  another book from the same shelves—a book that survived an air crash. Back in 2001 my friend had ordered a title on the Geology of Ireland from a bookseller in Selkirk, Scotland. The book was on board an aircraft that crashe...

Really enjoyed this memoir from the reserved shelves of Libraries NI.  An account of three artists, George Campbell, Gerard Dillon and James MacIntyre spending the summer of 1951 on the Island of Inishlacken on the western coast of Ireland across from Roundstone, County Galway. James was the youngest of the three and the author of the memoir. Gerard died in 1971, George in 1979 and James in 2015. What I liked about this memoir was the sense of comradeship and adventure back in the early 1950s. The stories of the artistic community in Belfast of the time and the familiar (to me) places mentioned all combined to keep me turning the pages. There are delightful pen portraits of the characters and islanders. The observations on the work of artists developing their style were fascinating. I went in search of this book having heard about it through the publicity for an event in the FE McWilliam Gallery in Banbridge. Back in November 2025 the Friends of the Gallery hosted an artist talk b...

Visited this exhibition at TheMacBelfast  today. Okay the sound was off but that didn't detract from a wonderful deepdive into the sea bed.  I'll be back to experience it again.  It's on to January. Why? The dark is inviting.  The colours stand out.  I didn't touch but Oh... how I wished to roll in that seaweed texture. Wonderful! The textures, the colours, the shapes, the fabrics. The creative process.   Do yourself a favour. If you are near this immerse yourself and Let flow!

Four reads for November.  Not weighty tomes this time but already sure that there will be plenty of stimulating content. Fiction: Breaking Point by Edel COFFEY Non-fiction: Women and Power, a manifesto by Mary BEARD French literature: L'Heure Exquise by Dominique BARBÉRIS Poetry and Drama: Red Velvet by Lolita CHAKRABARTI I've set myself a new goal of reading a lot more non-fiction - a genre that will include essays, biographies and commentaries.  Add to that a work of fiction each month as well as a French text and some poetry/drama. We'll see how that develops.

Managed to squeeze-in-a-read on our trip in Turkey.  How appropriate that it should be Orhan PAMUK's The Red-Haired Woman .  I thoroughly enjoyed this story which reprised aspects of the Oedipus myth - the interplay of tensions between fathers and sons. The context of the novel is well-digging in a small town on the outskirts of Istanbul. The red-haired woman is a member of a travelling troup of actors who visit the town. She becomes the object of our narrator's attention. There is a connection with the father. A terrible accident occurs and there follows decades of repressed guilt... and an unexpected denouement.  The story definitely kept my interest and the final pages definitely caught me off guard. Reading those I simply had to go back and restart the novel. Really?  Check it out - you'll get my drift. It was fascinating to read a novel in situ - travelling through parts of Istanbul mentioned in the story. I finished it while there but I didn't take th...