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Showing results for tags 'humour'.
Found 8 results
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Hame is a satirical takedown of romanticised Scotticism with its bards, bagpipes, and tartan trews. The basic premise is that Mhairi McPhail, a Scot by birth but with a New York accent, is returning to her homeland to establish a museum on the Isle of Fascaray dedicated to the Isle's famous son, the poet Grigor McWatt. The novel is made up from interleaved sections of Mhairi's diary, her published work A Granite Ballad - The Reimagining of Grigor McWatt, various essays and writings of McWatt from published sources, and McWatt's poems. Together they make up the story of McWatt, com
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Magnus Mills writes short, quirky books about ordinary people in rule-bound situations. In this case, we have a number of blokes – all with blokey names: Dave, Peter, Kevin, Keith, Barry, Mike, etc. – who form a club in the backroom of their regular pub, The Half Moon, where they listen to each others’ records. And that’s all they do, listen. They mustn’t comment or judge. As the weeks go on, the rules get added to – a new rule every time someone tries to do anything that slightly deviates from the norm. And understandably, the rules don’t please everyone and rival record clubs are forme
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An elderly couple become foster carers in their mid-sixties. The Times Higher Education of June 2015 wrote in its column What Are You Reading? ('A look over the shoulders of our scholar reviewers') : "This is an unusual, amusing, sometimes heart-rending memoir. Learmont offers a compendium of family breakdowns and other social problems, narrated in a style that ranges from Catch-22 to Bertie Wooster. The Learmonts are now enjoying 'a second retirement' in Andorra, and after reading this book, you feel they deserve it." A non-fiction book with two intrepid oldies.
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Heaven Inc is a big company and God is its CEO. He's an ideas man who spends most of his day in his swanky office watching baseball and NASCAR. His Angels spend their time arranging miracles where they nudge small details of life to try to make humans end up with happy results. They are able to watch any episode of history from multiple angles and therefore spend their time fascinated by the love lives of Americans. Africa gets two mentions - Nigerian e-mail scammers and a Tanzanian farmer whose horse explodes (no cities and tractors in Africa), and Asia is a type of food. The Angels all speak
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Simon Rich is my discovery of the year and I shall be reading more soon based on the evidence of this collection of 29 stories - well, sketches really - in a little over 200 pages. The book is split into three sections: “Boy Meets Girl,” “Boy Gets Girl,” “Boy Loses Girl”. It opens with the story of a boy's coming of age told from the perspective of the condom he's been carrying in his wallet. This, I hope, gives you some perspective on the skewed and very funny take Simon Rich has on the world of love and relationships. It is generally the male half of these relationships that is the
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I've been following the parody of Prince Charles on Twitter for a while now, and he's hilarious! His first book is being released this Thursday, but I luckily managed to buy a copy from Waterstones over the weekend. Highly recomended. Very satirical and funny, especially if you love the British Royal Family. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prince-Char...F8&qid=1411730660&sr=8-1&keywords=charles_HRH OR you can read the official announcement on his website, available electronically too. http://charles-hrh.com/guide-to-great-britishness/ Tom
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Hello everyone, The them for the next BGO Book Group read is... Humour. I think that is a pretty open subject so please nominate a book and explain why you think it makes a good group read. -
G. K. Chesterton’s ‘The Napolean of Notting Hill’ was one of those free books that I downloaded in the first enthusiastic flush of having a Kindle. I enjoyed ‘A Man called Thursday’ a while back so decided to give this a go. For me, it didn’t measure up to ‘A Man Called Thursday’ but it has its place in time. Written in 1904, Chesterton set the book in the future, in 1984. He is reputed to have given George Orwell (Eric Blair) a break by publishing an essay in in his magazine. Most of us are familiar with Orwell’s 1984. Chesterton’s future, though, includes no major technological diffe
