Fuleco
Player Valuation: £35m
Sounds good. Where should I start?
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The GOT Book Club
- Thread starter chicoazul
- Start date
Sounds good. Where should I start?
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
He wrote mainly short stories. I bought a Penguin anthology.A taste of his style here :
http://americanliterature.com/author/hh-munro-saki/bio-books-stories
The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng. Exquisitely written novel which touches upon themes of post-colonialism, WWII in modern-day Malaysia. Really enjoyed his other novel, Garden of Earthly Mists, as well
Black Belt Jones
Player Valuation: £25m
Remember reading 'The lumber room' at school - one of the few memorably good stories from English class.
Used to find the books at school quite tedious for some reason. Loved reading from an early age, but something about having it prescribed in a classroom really took the joy out of it.
The reason being mate, is that the choice of what to read wasn't yours.
In my secondary school we had a brilliant English teacher who gave us a list of one hundred books and we had to pick twelve to read over the year. All of the books were on the syllabus and the made us believe that by doing this he'd given us our own choice. Simple management but brilliant at the same time.
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
H.E.Bates wrote many fine novels, including a few set in The Far East ; he served there during the War and The Jacaranda Tree is a fine example of his work.
Appreciate the heads-up. Going to see if they have that one at my library.
ToffeeDoug
Player Valuation: £35m
I try and mix my reading up mate - something factual ( usually war ), something light ( novel ), something dark ( McCarthy etc ), something classic. I find that if you read the same genre all the time you become a bit bored by it .
Works for me
Defo the same for me, goes something like WW1/2, novel, rock band/artist history/biography, general history, novel, current affairs/politics, humorous travel/adventure, novel, cricket and repeat....
The Esk
Player Valuation: £70m
Andy Beckett has just published what appears to be a fascinating book on the Toxteth Riots of 1981, looking from the perspective of Patrick Minford and a young participant in the riots, Jimi Jagne.
"I asked Minford whether the riots had given him any second thoughts, at the time, about monetarism and the Thatcher government. Only weeks before the disorder, in his pamphlet The Problem of Unemployment, he had written, “Unemployment is ... unlikely to cause major social unrest.” Yet, while racism and unjust policing had clearly been the riots’ long-term causes, it was hard to argue that the new and staggering level of joblessness in Toxteth under Thatcher played no part; after all, there had been no riots there under her immediate predecessors.
For once, Minford lost his fluency. “Well ... I think that, you know ... the riot was pretty alarming.” But then his bulldozing certainty returned: “The thing is, I think the behaviour in Liverpool really pointed up the sanity of Margaret Thatcher’s policies. All she had to say was, ‘Look, the policies are working, and there’s nowhere more in need of them than Liverpool.’”
“An Austin Allegro started crawling alongside me. There were two police officers in it, and it was a marked [police] vehicle. One of them wound down the window and asked me where I was going. I explained that I’d just come from school ... The car stopped. One of the officers got out ... He put his hand on my shoulder, and touched my bag ... He said, ‘I’m going to look inside it.’
“I was too small, too young and too naive to argue. I just let him take it. He opened it, and there were some exercise books, my PE kit, and a towel. And he said, ‘Have you robbed any of this?’ I said, ‘No.’ Some of the books had my name on the front. ‘I’ve got to ask you some questions,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to get in the car.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to. I want to see my mum. I live round the corner.’ He said, ‘I’m not interested in all that. Get into the car, you black swine!’
“So I got into the car. I knew that on [nearby] Admiral Street there was a police station ... We drove past it, and carried on. And carried on. Then we were along Aigburth Road [south of Toxteth] and I didn’t know the area at all. We drove through Aigburth, then Garston, and into Speke, which was the very south of the city. It was just a wasteland then, mainly mud ... By that point of time it was dark.
“In the car, one of the policemen had been turning round to me, making threatening faces and saying things – I can’t remember what now, because my mind had gone blank. I was scared absolutely shitless. On the wasteland, he pulled me out of the car and … emptied my bag into a huge puddle. Then they pushed me into the puddle, and started laughing, and said, ‘That’s what you get, you daft little black expletive!’ And just got into the car and drove off.”
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2...r-liverpool-burned-patrick-minford-jimi-jagne
"I asked Minford whether the riots had given him any second thoughts, at the time, about monetarism and the Thatcher government. Only weeks before the disorder, in his pamphlet The Problem of Unemployment, he had written, “Unemployment is ... unlikely to cause major social unrest.” Yet, while racism and unjust policing had clearly been the riots’ long-term causes, it was hard to argue that the new and staggering level of joblessness in Toxteth under Thatcher played no part; after all, there had been no riots there under her immediate predecessors.
For once, Minford lost his fluency. “Well ... I think that, you know ... the riot was pretty alarming.” But then his bulldozing certainty returned: “The thing is, I think the behaviour in Liverpool really pointed up the sanity of Margaret Thatcher’s policies. All she had to say was, ‘Look, the policies are working, and there’s nowhere more in need of them than Liverpool.’”
“An Austin Allegro started crawling alongside me. There were two police officers in it, and it was a marked [police] vehicle. One of them wound down the window and asked me where I was going. I explained that I’d just come from school ... The car stopped. One of the officers got out ... He put his hand on my shoulder, and touched my bag ... He said, ‘I’m going to look inside it.’
“I was too small, too young and too naive to argue. I just let him take it. He opened it, and there were some exercise books, my PE kit, and a towel. And he said, ‘Have you robbed any of this?’ I said, ‘No.’ Some of the books had my name on the front. ‘I’ve got to ask you some questions,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to get in the car.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to. I want to see my mum. I live round the corner.’ He said, ‘I’m not interested in all that. Get into the car, you black swine!’
“So I got into the car. I knew that on [nearby] Admiral Street there was a police station ... We drove past it, and carried on. And carried on. Then we were along Aigburth Road [south of Toxteth] and I didn’t know the area at all. We drove through Aigburth, then Garston, and into Speke, which was the very south of the city. It was just a wasteland then, mainly mud ... By that point of time it was dark.
“In the car, one of the policemen had been turning round to me, making threatening faces and saying things – I can’t remember what now, because my mind had gone blank. I was scared absolutely shitless. On the wasteland, he pulled me out of the car and … emptied my bag into a huge puddle. Then they pushed me into the puddle, and started laughing, and said, ‘That’s what you get, you daft little black expletive!’ And just got into the car and drove off.”
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2...r-liverpool-burned-patrick-minford-jimi-jagne
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
Just finished a short story by Truman Capote. A ghostly tale called Miriam. Wouldn't like to meet that little 'girl'.
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
Need some recommendations for novels about the Victorian poor - excluding Dickens, and worthy wordy writers.
Although technically Edwardian as it was written c1906
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a must.
Oops ! I meant to quote your post from above @summerisle
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a must.
Oops ! I meant to quote your post from above @summerisle
Gwladysstreetlad
Player Valuation: £50m
Just started reading the new Bernard Cornwell book called 'Warriors of the Storm'. Only about 50 pages in but very good so far. Fantastic series by a fantastic author.
It's not often I read four books by the same author back to back, but these books are outstanding .
The author, Lars Kelper is the pen name of husband and wife Swedish writing team, Alexander and Alexandra Coelho. Both authors in their own right but came together to write these books.
Scandinavian noir at its best, incredibly dark subject matter and as good as the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo imo.
I started reading the first one - The Hypnotist and half way through went out and bought the other three.
Ten out of ten if you like your books dark.
( If I'm going to be picky the Hypnotist is the best, but also the darkest. )