22 Dreams

March 26th 2011 Beating the Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action by Sean Birchall

March 28th 2012 Children of the Sun by Max Schaefer

April 9th 2013 Bitter Blue by Cath Staincliffe


I'm slacking. Must up the ante.

eta: Just noticed that both the Birchall and the Schaefer books concern themselves with fascism.

Do I Even Know How To Read? Do You Even Know Me?

Nothing like a broadsheet reading poll to show one up to be the poorly read dolt that you've always suspected yourself to be.

It's not enough that I don't 'get' the subtle nuances of the handful of books that I have read, it now transpires that there are 48 must-read lost classics out there that I've not even heard of, never mind read.

Snappy Kat can probably guess the one book out of the fifty from that Observer's Forgotten Fifty that I've actually read, and I will put my hand up to having actually heard of 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin' by David Nobbs, but I fall into the category of people who thought that the book was a novelisation of the sitcom, and not the other way round.

The fact that none of the fifty "celebrated"* writers feel fit to mention Gordon Legge's 'The Shoe' or Edward Gaitens' 'The Dance of the Apprentices' seems to confirm my long held suspicion that both books are lost classics only within the realm of my ever-diminishing brain.

*Of course they are 'celebrated'. Any time I see Will Self's name in the paper, I do a Mexican Wave in his honour. I'm sure you're the same.