Peter Dann
@peterdannauthor.com
Author of coming-of-age novel “1961”. Former screenwriter, technical writer. Reads for Librivox (inc. Stendhal, Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Mansfield). Location: Australia.
https://peterdannauthor.com
https://peterdannauthor.com
Couldn’t say yes. Couldn’t say sorry. So appropriate Senator Prince is now spokesperson for absolutely nothing.
September 10, 2025 at 9:04 AM
Couldn’t say yes. Couldn’t say sorry. So appropriate Senator Prince is now spokesperson for absolutely nothing.
Noddle-head decides he is a knight-errant, and asks local farm labourer to accompany him. Cervantes milks his premise with great skill, creating much warm-hearted silliness and slapstick. My free reading is now at librivox.org/don-quixote-...
September 2, 2025 at 12:48 AM
Noddle-head decides he is a knight-errant, and asks local farm labourer to accompany him. Cervantes milks his premise with great skill, creating much warm-hearted silliness and slapstick. My free reading is now at librivox.org/don-quixote-...
And while you’re at it:
🪝Dangle your modifiers like a Tyburn executioner
🪝Dangle your modifiers like a Tyburn executioner
July 1, 2025 at 8:18 AM
And while you’re at it:
🪝Dangle your modifiers like a Tyburn executioner
🪝Dangle your modifiers like a Tyburn executioner
Just realised “unclear” is only a single (accidental?) letter transposition away from “nuclear”. Hope there’s been no smartarse spell-checker at work in some of those “top secret” Signal groups we’ve heard about lately.
June 24, 2025 at 8:51 AM
Just realised “unclear” is only a single (accidental?) letter transposition away from “nuclear”. Hope there’s been no smartarse spell-checker at work in some of those “top secret” Signal groups we’ve heard about lately.
Peetotaller: one who has sworn off drinking in the evening in order to reduce night visits to the bathroom.
June 18, 2025 at 3:09 AM
Peetotaller: one who has sworn off drinking in the evening in order to reduce night visits to the bathroom.
Did Nicholas John Turner anticipate publishers might turn down his marvellous yet challenging Let The Boys Play? It so happens his working title THY SONS MAKE PILLAGE (from Titus Andronicus) is an anagram of NO SHALT LIKE MY PAGES.
June 9, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Did Nicholas John Turner anticipate publishers might turn down his marvellous yet challenging Let The Boys Play? It so happens his working title THY SONS MAKE PILLAGE (from Titus Andronicus) is an anagram of NO SHALT LIKE MY PAGES.
If there is any justice in the cosmos, Donald Trump will be required to spend eternity bound to a card table playing poker with Volodymyr Zelensky. Let's see then who's better at counting cards.
June 2, 2025 at 7:53 AM
If there is any justice in the cosmos, Donald Trump will be required to spend eternity bound to a card table playing poker with Volodymyr Zelensky. Let's see then who's better at counting cards.
Silly me. Whether or not THY SONS MAKE PILLAGE (the original title of Nicholas Turner's "Let the Boys Play") is a decipherable anagram, it is certainly from Act 2 Scene 3 of Shakespeare's gore-fest Titus Andronicus. Philomel's tongue turns up in LTBP on p. 84. @thebookdesk.bsky.social
May 24, 2025 at 8:52 AM
Silly me. Whether or not THY SONS MAKE PILLAGE (the original title of Nicholas Turner's "Let the Boys Play") is a decipherable anagram, it is certainly from Act 2 Scene 3 of Shakespeare's gore-fest Titus Andronicus. Philomel's tongue turns up in LTBP on p. 84. @thebookdesk.bsky.social
If LET THY SONS MAKE PILLAGE (original title of Nicholas John Turner’s “Let the Boys Play”) is in fact an anagram, solution GAS KILLS NEOPHYTE MA would at least fit content of last chapter. (This might-or-might-not-be puzzle is driving me nuts!) @thebookdesk.bsky.social
May 23, 2025 at 11:59 PM
If LET THY SONS MAKE PILLAGE (original title of Nicholas John Turner’s “Let the Boys Play”) is in fact an anagram, solution GAS KILLS NEOPHYTE MA would at least fit content of last chapter. (This might-or-might-not-be puzzle is driving me nuts!) @thebookdesk.bsky.social
Question 1, children: The gap under a bridge is 4 metres. You are driving a van which is 5 metres tall…
May 21, 2025 at 11:05 PM
Question 1, children: The gap under a bridge is 4 metres. You are driving a van which is 5 metres tall…
From "Let the Boys Play", by John Nicholas Turner (p. 41). I now think we may have an anagram here. LAST GAME KILLS NEOPHYTE? LAST NEOPHYTE GAME SKILL? Are there any other "solvers" out there working on this intriguing novelistic escape room? @thebookdesk.bsky.social
May 20, 2025 at 12:44 AM
From "Let the Boys Play", by John Nicholas Turner (p. 41). I now think we may have an anagram here. LAST GAME KILLS NEOPHYTE? LAST NEOPHYTE GAME SKILL? Are there any other "solvers" out there working on this intriguing novelistic escape room? @thebookdesk.bsky.social
Nicholas John Turner's "Let the Boys Play" is a certainly a stunning display of literary pyrotechnics. It is also, though, an intricately wrought masterpiece of defamiliarisation just crying out to be decoded. Thank you, @thebookdesk.bsky.social www.peterdannauthor.com/let-the-boys...
Let the Boys Play: Nicholas John Turner’s vision through a glory hole is a masterpiece of defamiliarisation - Peter Dann
After first reading Let the Boys Play, I felt besmirched and defiled. Now I can see the book is a masterpiece. What changed my mind?
www.peterdannauthor.com
May 17, 2025 at 12:52 AM
Nicholas John Turner's "Let the Boys Play" is a certainly a stunning display of literary pyrotechnics. It is also, though, an intricately wrought masterpiece of defamiliarisation just crying out to be decoded. Thank you, @thebookdesk.bsky.social www.peterdannauthor.com/let-the-boys...
So, should I, or should I not…
… celery sacrifice?
… celery sacrifice?
April 18, 2025 at 2:11 AM
So, should I, or should I not…
… celery sacrifice?
… celery sacrifice?
My day is now officially “made”.
April 9, 2025 at 5:16 AM
My day is now officially “made”.
If there was one thing Jonathan Swift loved more dearly than a good poop or a kind horse, it was skewering the foibles and pride of his fellow man. My free reading of Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” is now available at librivox.org/gullivers-tr...
April 7, 2025 at 1:08 AM
If there was one thing Jonathan Swift loved more dearly than a good poop or a kind horse, it was skewering the foibles and pride of his fellow man. My free reading of Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” is now available at librivox.org/gullivers-tr...
This guy’s already fabricated one Golden Dome. Now he wants another??
March 23, 2025 at 12:23 AM
This guy’s already fabricated one Golden Dome. Now he wants another??
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver views a means by which "the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study." Sound familiar?
March 14, 2025 at 6:38 AM
Jonathan Swift's Gulliver views a means by which "the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labour, might write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, laws, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study." Sound familiar?
George Borrow's "The Romany Rye" (1857) continues "Lavengro" to form a highly readable work whose mingling of fiction, travelogue, autobiography and invective now sounds strangely contemporary. My new (free) reading is at librivox.org/the-romany-r...
March 4, 2025 at 11:04 PM
George Borrow's "The Romany Rye" (1857) continues "Lavengro" to form a highly readable work whose mingling of fiction, travelogue, autobiography and invective now sounds strangely contemporary. My new (free) reading is at librivox.org/the-romany-r...
Simile, like you’re on Candid Camera.
March 3, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Simile, like you’re on Candid Camera.
The term “politically correct” did not exist when George Borrow published “The Romany Rye” in 1857, but he certainly suspected that contemporary authors might be drawn to promote certain positions on account of their modish popularity.
February 22, 2025 at 3:59 AM
The term “politically correct” did not exist when George Borrow published “The Romany Rye” in 1857, but he certainly suspected that contemporary authors might be drawn to promote certain positions on account of their modish popularity.
Can't say I've ever mastered the German language, but I should be able to get this much straight, at least. Is the whole point of a bildungsroman, then, that Rome wasn't built in a day?
February 19, 2025 at 3:42 AM
Can't say I've ever mastered the German language, but I should be able to get this much straight, at least. Is the whole point of a bildungsroman, then, that Rome wasn't built in a day?
Hungarian equerry addressing narrator of "The Romany Rye", by George Borrow, who prose Gerald Murnane so admires. As it happens, I've actually seen the cribs bearing English on one side, Hungarian on the other, in a certain filing cabinet in Goroke. Just coincidence?
February 6, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Hungarian equerry addressing narrator of "The Romany Rye", by George Borrow, who prose Gerald Murnane so admires. As it happens, I've actually seen the cribs bearing English on one side, Hungarian on the other, in a certain filing cabinet in Goroke. Just coincidence?
Caligula's horse had more gravitas between its hind legs than the great statesmen named in the first line of this bizarre headline today.
February 6, 2025 at 7:38 AM
Caligula's horse had more gravitas between its hind legs than the great statesmen named in the first line of this bizarre headline today.
Around when Gerald Murnane turned 10, his father's gambling debts caused great upheaval in his family. Here, in George Borrow's "The Romany Rye", "the jockey" describes a similar situation. Murnane admired Borrow's prose style — but may have had other grounds for sympathy too?
February 4, 2025 at 10:14 PM
Around when Gerald Murnane turned 10, his father's gambling debts caused great upheaval in his family. Here, in George Borrow's "The Romany Rye", "the jockey" describes a similar situation. Murnane admired Borrow's prose style — but may have had other grounds for sympathy too?