Question What are you reading?

[Tangled up in Blue]

Just finished Richard Vinen's excellent Seond City:Birmingham and the Forging of Modern Britain.As a young man back in the early 70's I was fortunate to spend 3 years in Brum as a student.The people and the place are much nicer than they're usually given credit for by people who've never lived there or stayed in the city for very long.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Charles Davis:A Tournament of Shadows.

CD is a friend who used to work in Barna but lives in Britanny these days.

This is a funny,wise and absorbing book.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Andria Zafirakou's Those Who Can ,Teach :What it Takes TO Make The Next Generation.An inspirational book for any teacher at whatever stage of their career.

Just in case anyone comes up with the line Those who Can,Do we used to have a ready made reply when I was doing my PGCE.Those who can't teach or do, teach teachers,

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Jan Morris: Allegorzings.A collectopn of whimsical ,mercifully short pieces published posthumously.

 

[Swiss Tony]

Just finished Richard Vinen's excellent Seond City:Birmingham and the Forging of Modern Britain.As a young man back in the early 70's I was fortunate to spend 3 years in Brum as a student.The people and the place are much nicer than they're usually given credit for by people who've never lived there or stayed in the city for very long.

Spent 18 months working at Midlands bank HQ in new st and the Birmingham school of music, i digged in south Yardley and found the Brummies spot on but more importantly MB and banks bitter and mild was tip top,

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Spent 18 months working at Midlands bank HQ in new st and the Birmingham school of music, i digged in south Yardley and found the Brummies spot on but more importantly MB and banks bitter and mild was tip top,

Just heard back from a Brummie mate (based in Sweden these days) who I'd sent the book onto (via France's excellent cheap rate for French Lit. )t.He really enjoyed the book too.

 

[Massimo Giovanni]

Tinfish, a fictional ww2 arctic, Russia convoy novel based on PQ17 convoy which got decimated horrifically. Absolutely hellish time for all the sailors involved.

 

[Rob Noxious]

With thanks to 'Tangled Up In Blue' for passing on his copy of 'Trespasses' by Louise Kennedy to me.

‘Trespasses’ is an absorbing story set in mid-1970s Belfast and its environs. Cushla Lavery is in her early twenties and is a teacher by day and an intermittent barmaid on some school nights. She works at her brother Eamonn’s pub following their mother Gina’s withdrawal from this role when the effects of her alcoholism have superseded her abilities to care for herself. Whilst working in the pub, she becomes attracted to one of the pub’s habitues - Michael Agnew, a Belfast-based barrister, who sticks up for her when she is harassed by some squaddies from the nearby garrison. Cushla then works at the pub more regularly in the hope that she will see Michael.

The setting and the context of this well-crafted novel is fundamental to the development of its interweaving stories. Cushla is a Catholic and Michael is a Protestant, though he is of the Church of Ireland rather than Presbyterian, and as you’ll remember, the mid-70s was when ‘The Troubles’ were in full swing. Michael is also thirty years older than Cushla and he is married. These factors add to the tensions surrounding their ensuing affair which is seen as illicit due to the combination of circumstances involved, i.e., it is trans-denominational, trans- generational and transgressive of marital fidelity.

The other stories at play revolve around Cushla’s attachment to a bullied boy in her primary school class, Davy McGeown, and her informal support of Davy’s family when Davy’s father is left for dead after a horrific beating from a Loyalist gang. The school also provides another source of tension for Cushla via the fundamentalist strictures of its priest, Father Slattery, who Cushla has personal reasons (relating to her late father’s last days) for her devout dislike of him, and his malign influence over the head teacher, Mr. Bradley. Gerry Devlin, another young teacher at the school, is both a source of support and irritation for Cushla, but he provides a useful cover story for her surreptitious liaisons with Michael.

There is also Cushla’s relationship with Gina. Cushla needs to balance her extra-curricular activities with what we’d now call a care role for Gina. Gina can sometimes rise to an occasion despite her alcohol abuse and we discover greater layers to her personality beyond the wretched self-dereliction that we (and young Davy) witness. Brother Eamonn seems to be in denial about Gina’s problems and it is Cushla who tries to keep the family together but this proves difficult when the story unravels to its dramatic denouement.

Louise Kennedy has a direct writing style and she is able to portray her characters vividly without too much detail. She’s written a fine novel in ‘Trespasses’ and it provides a gritty but tender insight into life in the dark days of ‘The Troubles’.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Just finished Martin Celmin's Peter Green :Founder of Fleetwod Mac.

Aways enjoyed PG's Blues more than any other British Blueseman.

Think the main takeaway from this has to be , Don't do drugs kids.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Just finished Tony Macaulay's Paperboy.As the blurb says It'a "An enchanting True story of a belfast Paperboy Coming to Terms with the Troubles".

It's also a very human account of the Troubles as seen from a Shankill teenager's POV.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Thanks to Rob Noxious for sending this to me.

Allan Jones.Can't Stand up for Falling Down.

While I'm aware that much of the rock and roll lifestyle is said to be fuelled by exceseses in booze and drug taking can't say I want to read about it in interview after interview where the author clearly over indulges too.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Just finished Cormac McCarthy's Child of God.Third novel I've read of his (FWIW,the others were The Road & No Country For Old Men) .Doubt if this one will ever be filmed though its violent enough.

 

[Rob Noxious]

Thanks to Rob Noxious for sending this to me.

Allan Jones.Can't Stand up for Falling Down.

While I'm aware that much of the rock and roll lifestyle is said to be fuelled by exceseses in booze and drug taking can't say I want to read about it in interview after interview where the author clearly over indulges too.

I don't like to name drop ...

... but I enjoyed a good Sunday afternoon session with him in a pub in Twickenham ten years ago. Nice bloke and got his round(s) in.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

I don't like to name drop ...

... but I enjoyed a good Sunday afternoon session with him in a pub in Twickenham ten years ago. Nice bloke and got his round(s) in.

I'm sure he does but I'm not much of a fan of his music journalism (apart from a few interviews with some musical heroes).

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Just finished Raynor Winn's wonderline Landlines.Anyomne 's who's read The Salt Path & The Wild Silence (and if you haven't you really should) will be familiare with the story .This time the path leads from Scotland ,1.000 miles all the way back to Cornwall.Withouth giving too much away there's even a happy ending too! Deeply moving.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

NickThomas-Symonds:Harold Wilson:The Winner.

Worthy but dull.Much preferred Ben Pimlot's Wilson.

TBF agree with Symonds conclusion that Wislon ranks just behind Attlee as Labour's best PM.

Would also agree with HW's remark that the Labour party is either "a moral crusade or it is nothing."

Unfortunately, atm in my opinion, it's nothing.

 

[Rob Noxious]

I recently finished Dave Davies' latest autobiography - it's a good read for any Kinks fan and it sheds further light on the complex relationship between Dave and his older brother Ray.

I had seen Julien Temple's film about Dave a few years ago and I was aware of some of his spiritual, paranormal and mystical beliefs which he represents in greater detail here. They're quite fascinating in their own right, although unless you've been 'touched' by the experience of encountering the reassuring voices of other beings' presence, as Dave has, they might come across as quite personal.

I felt quite sad for Dave in the experience he had of being cut out of his pregnant girlfriend's life when they were both very young and this subject (and the daughter who he had not met) returned at various points of Dave's story, which I won't expand upon as it would be a huge 'spoiler'.

Dave writes about his long recovery from a stroke he experienced in 2004 and how he had to learn to play guitar again. It's a testament to his resilience and determination that he was able to do so and play live again nearly a decade later.

Some of the fine minutiae of The Kinks' record releases probably won't appeal to readers who are not great fans of the band but this is a minor issue as most people who read this will be. There's also some great social history in here about growing up in north London in the 1950s, the experience of coming of age in the sixties and some interesting stories about some of the big names of those days, including Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon.

It's been good to get to know Dave the person beyond the knowledge that he's one of the most exciting guitarists of the last sixty years.

 

[Napster]

I recently finished Dave Davies' latest autobiography - it's a good read for any Kinks fan and it shed further light on the complex relationship between Dave and his older brother Ray.

I had seen Julien Temple's film about Dave a few years ago and I was aware of some of his spiritual, paranormal and mystical beliefs which he represents in greater detail here. They're quite fascinating in their own right, although unless you've been 'touched' by the experience of encountering the reassuring voices of other beings' presence, as Dave has, they might come across as quite personal.

I felt quite sad for Dave in the experience he had of being cut out of his pregnant girlfriend's life when they were both very young and this subject (and the daughter who he had not met) returned at various points of Dave's story, which I won't expand upon as it would be a huge 'spoiler'.

Dave writes about his long recovery from a stroke he experienced in 2004 and how he had to learn to play guitar again. It's a testament to his resilience and determination that he was able to do so and play live again nearly a decade later.

Some of the fine minutiae of The Kinks' record releases probably won't appeal to readers who are not great fans of the band but this is a minor issue as most people who read this will be. There's also some great social history in here about growing up in north London in the 1950s, the experience of coming of age in the sixties and some interesting stories about some of the big names of those days, including Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon.

It's been good to get to know Dave the person beyond the knowledge that he's one of the most exciting guitarists of the last sixty years.

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My cousin, Ian Gibbons, was in the Kinks. I'll try and find this one.

 

[Rob Noxious]

My cousin, Ian Gibbons, was in the Kinks. I'll try and find this one.

Ah - I saw him play. At The Rainbow (Finsbury Park) in '81 and The Lyceum in '83. Both great gigs.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Ah - I saw him play. At The Rainbow (Finsbury Park) in '81 and The Lyceum in '83. Both great gigs.

I saw the Kinks around that era ie 84 In Barna.Probably with the same guy.Chief memory of the concert is the Davies brothers clearly not getting along and Ray spraying the audience at the front with whatever he was drinking.The music was great though.