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Senior / Student still / Sits up and pays attention / Shares some learnings here /// A 70-something reflecting on Books, Places and Curious Openings.

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Showing posts from August, 2020

27 seconds of calm

By Chris Tracey - August 09, 2020

Where does this take you? What does it take from you? What's left?

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Popular posts from this blog

Pay whatever you like

By Chris Tracey - August 13, 2013

When travelling, it's a custom in our family to pick up a souvenir or two of the places we visit and usually these take the form of prints, drawings or ceramics. Nothing too expensive mind but we do aim to go for the highest quality at the best price. Stopping at the stall of a local artist on a recent trip we were surprised to see a notice stating, "Pay whatever you like". An interesting and unusual concept. Engaging him in conversation, he explained that he wasn't alone in taking this approach. He pointed out that some musicians, restaurants and even hotels were offering similar "payment" arrangements. This seemed a long way from the story I once heard about an event where the price of the cold, soft drink rose in line with the temperature in the stadium. It is also quite commonplace for the price of hotel rooms to rise in relation to the importance of events going on in their area. The inevitable law of supply and demand. The artist...

October 2025 Reads

By Chris Tracey - October 01, 2025

I am planning to read these four books this month. My Name Is Red. Orhan PAMUK The heftiest by far is Orhan PAMUK's My Name Is Red published in 2001 by Faber&Faber. We are holidaying in Turkey soon and as I like to read literature from the country I am visiting I thought this would hit the spot. Mind you, I'll have to be mindful of baggage allowances and so perhaps an e-version or audiobook might be more practical for carrying around. Here's some info on the book from Faber&Faber This train is for. Bernie McGill It's Book Week NI later this month and local writer Bernie McGill will be sharing some readings and reflections at Suffolk Library where I attend a monthly reading group. I've already started this one having picked it up at the library last week. The book, a collection of short stories, was published by No Alibis Press in 2022. Here's some details from the publisher and information from the author herself here. There are plenty of eve...

Three men on an island - James MacIntyre

By Chris Tracey - December 18, 2025

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...

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