The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin (Faber and Faber 2006)

The night it happened  I was drunk, almost passed out, and I swear to God a bird came flying through my motel room window. It was maybe five degrees out and the bird, some sorta duck, was suddenly on my floor surrounded in glass. The window must have killed it. It would have scared me to death if I hadn’t been so drunk. All I could do was get up, turn on the light, and throw it back out the window. It fell three stories and landed on the sidewalk below. I turned my electric blanket up to ten, got back in bed, and fell asleep.

A few hours later I woke again to my brother standing over me, crying uncontrollably. He had a key to my room. I could barely see straight and I knew then I was going to be sick. It was snowing out and the wind would flurry snow through the broken window and into my room. The streets were empty, frozen with ice.

Anti-Fascist by Martin Lux (Phoenix Press 2006)

I guess my anti-racism was partly a reaction to my background: a background from which I'd sought escape for almost as long as I can remember. In the recesses of my fertile imagination I'd always harboured dreams of a bohemian lifestyle. For sure, I wanted nothing to do with moronic, boring football, the number one obsession of my doomed contemporaries. And anyhow, as something of a raspberry ripple, I was hardly destined for success in the beautiful game.

Bash the Rich: True Life Confessions of an Anarchist in the UK by Ian Bone (Tangent Books 2006)

In fact, most anarchists kept their private lives completely divorced from their anarchist activities and would have been horrified if their neighbours had known about their hobby!

More to the point, I thought not talking to the media was missing out on major opportunities to spread our ideas. Yes of course we'd been misrepresented . . . blah blah . . . but still, however deformed, our ideas and existence would be read about by far more people in the News of the World (circulation 5,000,000) than a piece in Class War (circulation 15,000). After all, I'd first found out about anarchism in Punch. So when Andrew Tyler contacted us about doing a piece in Time Out about Class War in May 1985, me and Martin Wright decided to brave the cries of 'sell-out!' and go for it. If we were going to be exposed anyway, we might at least get a few good quotes in.

The Time Out piece was better than we could have dreamed of. Tyler had grasped the difference between us and the stultifying torpor that was British anarchism and written a coruscating piece that gave Class War an electrifying jolt. The oxygen of publicity resulted in a packed Class War conference two weeks later. The predicted criticism of our sell-out in Time Out came early in the day. 'Yes, I am sorry we appeared in Time Out,' I grovelled, 'I'm sorry it wasn't on the front page of the News of the World'. Tumultuous applause (well so it seems 20 years later). The case for talking to the press was won and has always been vindicated in my view. I was subsequently exposed in the Sunday Mirror, Today and the News of the World ('Dangerous lunatics who want to kill the entire cast of Eastenders' - don't ask!) and despite the vilification we got, our post bag was always rammed full the following week with people who'd never heard of us before but wanted o get involved now.

In particular, the quotation from the Living Legends lyric God Bless You Queen Mum appearing in the Sunday Mirror and wishing her an early death was especially popular. The key, of course, is not to believe your own publicity and the oxygen certainly went to my head in those intoxicating months in 1985. At the conference I had argued for '500 people with sledgehammers attacking the bridge at Henley.' By the time of that year's anarchist bookfair in Conway Hall, I was well away. Having sold shit loads of Class Wars with Martin I took the stage at the end of the day. Well, actually, there was already someone on the stage so I had to push him off it first. Unfortunately, that person was Donald Rooum - a veteran comrade I have a lot of respect for going back to his framing by the police for intending to throw a brick at the queen of Greece in the 1960s. However, it wasn't really Donald I was shoving off the stage but the old anarchist movement. Drunk as fuck I declared:

'You liberals and pacifists have had our movement for too long, now it's our turn. If we haven't reduced the place to ruins in five years you can have it back!'

Quite why I wanted to reduce the venerable Conway Hall to ruins was unclear. But what the fuck. I might have paraphrased Durrutti, but the point was clear. We were on a fucking roll.

Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo (Bitter Lemon Press 2006)

The military man studies the policeman in silence, his fists tightly clenched on the desk. He lets out a sigh and reclines in his seat.

You see, Lascano, you're an estimable guy, a smart cop. But there some things you just don't seem to get. Like what? Oh never mind, I'm not going to start explaining now. Just stop messing around with this case and forget about this piece of shit Jew. You've a lot more to lose than gain from it. Really? Look, I'll make you an offer. Come and work for me. I'll improve your rank and salary. But first take a nice long holiday with that girlfriend you've got kept at home. I'd prefer to stick where I am. Not accepting what I'm offering you would be very stupid, and I don't think you're stupid. So stop messing about, Lascano, and do as you're told. It'll suit you. I'll have to think about it. You think about it . . . but not for too long. You wouldn't happen to be a lefty, would you? A lefty? No, I try to abide by rights in everything I do. That sort of sarcasm is going to be your downfall one day. I want an answer by tomorrow. Tell Jorge and I'll contact you. All right, anything else? You can go. Thanks, good day.

Dog Eats Dog by Iain Levison (Bitter Lemon Press 2006)

In the next room, which Elias clearly used as a study, there was a computer, a desk and papers scattered everywhere. On top of a pile of bills was a manuscript, perhaps sixty pages, entitled Was Hitler Right? An Analysis of Personal Records From the Second World War. Was Hitler right? What the fuck was this? This was the type of shit the Aryan Brotherhood fuckers would read in the joint, only there'd be bigger print and more pictures.

Then he noticed the words "by Elias White." So Elias was a Nazi. He didn't seem like a Nazi - all the Nazis Dixon had known had shaved heads, muscles and tattoos - but you could never tell. What the hell was a college professor doing writing shit like this? Dixon pulled up the office chair next to the computer, sat down, and began to read the great works of Professor Elias White.

Colin Bell - Reluctant Hero: The Autobiography of a Manchester City and England Legend by Ian Cheeseman and Colin Bell (Mainstream Publishing 2006)

I would like to have played on the perfect playing surface and been involved in the modern game - I'm sure I would still have held my own - but I have many concerns about the way the game has developed.

During the era in which I played, most teams had the potential to win the League Championship and the major cup competitions. These days money has become the dominant factor, with the emergence of Chelsea providing the perfect example of the way things have moved on.

Every club had three or four great players in the '60s and '70s. These days, if a great player emerges, like Steve Gerrard at Liverpool or Shaun Wright-Phillips at City, it is seen as only a matter of time before they move to one of the biggest three or four clubs, the only ones who are seen to be capable of winning the major honours.

I think it is a sad state of affairs that those types of players don't think that they can fulfil their dreams at the clubs who encouraged them to meet their potential. It never occurred to me that I would have to move away from City. I was a City player for life and my ambitions were to win trophies with my club. I expected to work for success and not simply move on to a club that had already achieved it. It never crossed my mind that I would reach a certain stage and then feel that it was inevitable I move on.

I hope things will change soon and that Manchester City will be able to compete for the top honours again with a group of players who are loyal and care about the club they play for. I wonder if the days when football was more sport than industry will ever return. I've been blessed with such wonderful memories of my days playing for City and having been part of such a great family. We're very close and I spend a lot of time talking to Jon about my favourite subject, football, and in particular Manchester City.

East Fifth Bliss by Douglas Light (Behler Publications 2006)

There are two theories.

The first:

After brothing up a world with water and soil and fish and plants and beasts that stand on two feet and talk and would eventually want credit cards and cell phones and satellite TV, God dipped his finger in the wetness between New Jersey and Long Island and summoned forth the rock called Manhattan. By doing so, He set in motion His austere plan: one day, there'd be an island replete with towering steel buildings and shabby brick tenements, dying trees, and co-ops with monthly maintenances more than most Americans' mortgage payments. It'd be a paradise filled with hundreds of concrete parks littered with losing lotto tickets and fried chicken bones. Rats would frolic on doorsteps. Dogs would defecate on the sidewalks. Squirrels would charge at the passing people, having no fear.

His plan called for a place where bulimic make-up salesclerks, who hide their cold sores with dark lipstick, would fit in. Myopic Midwesterners who swear they've read Ulysses when they haven't, would have a home. The Hasidim would feel comfortable hanging their beaver fur hats there. It'd be a place for all, even Italian restauranteurs who claim that stale toast with a little tomato and a spot of olive oil is bruschetta and charge twelve dollars a plate. Even obese Hispanics in tight stretch pants who wave their nation's flag while screaming that they're being stereotyped. All would be welcomed with open arms. All would be embraced. His plan called for an island of everything. An island the world turned to.

The second theory has to do with strange gray and green and purple gases, tiny jumping particles, a spark, and then a Big Bang. Presto! Earth's formed: Manhattan's made. Then some slimy being flopped from the waters onto the land, gasped for air, and has since raged for millions of years to become mankind today.

Following either school of thought, this fact stands: Morris Bliss is thirty-five years old. He's lived his entire life in Apartment 8 in a weathered, red brick tenement on East Fifth Street near the corner of First Avenue. Has lived his entire life with his father.

But Morris has plans, big plans. Life altering plans. He's starting them today, or this week. This month. He's starting them very soon.

Morris Bliss has never left home.

Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang (Soho Press 2006)

Manhattan was twenty-two square miles and if he took his time, he'd cover it in two hours. He needed the air, needed to clear the alcohol from his head. The perspective from the driver's seat was a bittersweet pleasure to him.

He continued east.

The Greater Chinatown Dream, the Nationalists had called it: an all-yellow district in lower Manhattan running from the Battery to Fourteenth street, river to river, east to west, by the year 2000.

Then he turned the car north and made all the green lights through loisaida, the Lower East Side, past the Welfare Projects - the Wagner, Rutgers, Baruch, Gouverneur - federally subsidized highrises, which ran along the East River, blocs of buildings that stood out like racial fortresses. Blacks in the Smith Houses, Latinos in the Towers.

That's how the Lower East Side really was, not a melting pot but a patchwork quilt of different communities of people coexisting, sometimes with great difficulty.

Manhattan was symbolic of the rest of Gotham, the Big City, where the best walked the streets alongside the worst.

When the red light caught him, he was already past Alphabet City, in that part of the East Village where the druggie nation came to score: smoke, crack, rocks, pharmaceuticals, and a brand of Mott Street H tagged China Cat, so potent and poisonous it had sent twelve of the hardcore straight to junkie heaven in August, keeping the Ninth Precinct narcs tossing.

Matters of Life & Death & Other Stories by Bernard MacLaverty (W. W. Norton & Company 2006)

'It was a shame about the Orrs having to leave,' said Bill.

'Yeah.'

'But it wouldn't have been wise for him to stay.'

'Why?'

'After the threat.'

'But all cops get threatened.'

'Not on pirate radio, they don't.' Ben stared at him. 'They gave out his address on Radio Free Whatever.'

'Fuck.'

'And the powers that be said it was a serious threat. A bomb threat. That's why he came round us all. He was very apologetic.'

'What do you mean - came round us all?'

'Didn't he come and tell you to put the girls in the back bedroom?'

'No.'

Bill looked confused.

'He said he went round everybody. Warned them.'

'Not me, he didn't.' Ben sipped at his drink and stared at Bill. 'Maybe he said something to Maureen.'

Ben went off in search of his wife. He took her from a conversation with three other women sitting on the floor and beckoned her out of the noise into a coat recess in the hall.

'Did Dawson tell you someone was itching to bomb him? Did he tell you to put the kids in the back bedroom?'

'No.'

Ben bit his lip.

'Why?' said Maureen.

'That's what I want to know. Why did he not warn us? He warned everybody else.'

'Jesus.'

'We're Catholics.' He threw back his head and whooped in disbelief. 'Fuckin Fenian bastards. That's what we are.'

You don't mean it was deliberate?'

'What other way is there of looking at it?'

'Not only did he not warn us,' Ben's eyes widened with realisation, 'he tried to set us up. That's what the bad parking of the car was all about. He wasn't drunk. He didn't miss. He parked his fucking car in front of my house so's we'd get it . . .'

'Jesus. And he's got kids of his own.'

(From the short story, 'A Trusted Neighbour')

Too Much, Too Late by Marc Spitz (Three Rivers Press 2006)

Do you know the song "Talk of the Town" by the Pretenders? I always loved that song. I consider it probably one of the ten best singles ever released. Over the years, when intoxicated a certain way, I'd insist it's the best ever, but then I've also insisted that about "Bad Case of Loving You" by Robert Palmer, which just isn't true. Still, "Talk of the Town" is perfect every time I hear it. Maybe it's because I know the band's leader, Chrissie Hynde, is an Ohioan. Maybe because it's beautiful. I was hearing "Talk of the Town" in my head as we began our flight to John F. Kennedy International. "Oh, but it's hard to live by the rules. I never could and still never do," Chrissie sang.

I forced myself onto a bit of a high, and my walk had become a strut. I'm signed to Diphthong Records, I repeated to myself. My little band is worth one million dollars to someone. We've been played in Topeka and Athens and Istanbul. We were banned in Iran. Big in Japan. Very famous in places I would probably never visit. I am now middle-aged. But I'm a professional musician, and I will never have to work at anything else again. All you people who warned me to grow up? Fuck you. All you people who tried to grab me and take me down with them? You couldn't catch me, suckers. I am going to stay 18 for all time like Mr. Mick Jagger, and if you have a problem with that, you can kiss my arrested ass.

Harry . . . he had no strut and a much different interpretation of "Talk of the Town." He saw Chrissie Hynde's confession as a lament, whereas I was sure it was a boast.

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson (Anchor Canada 2006)

He was lost. He wasn't used to being lost. He was the kind of man who drew up plans and then executed them efficiently, but now everything was conspiring against him in ways he decided he couldn't have foreseen. He had been stuck in a jam on the A1 for two mind-numbing hours so that it was already past the middle of the morning when he arrived in Edinburgh. Then he'd gone adrift on a one-way system and been thwarted by a road closed because of a burst water main. It had been raining, steadily and unforgivingly, on the drive north and had only begun to ease off as he hit the outskirts of town. The rain had in no way deterred the crowds - it had never occurred to him that Edinburgh was in the middle of 'the Festival' and that there would be carnival hordes of people milling around as the end of war had just been declared. The closest he had previously got to the Edinburgh Festival was accidentally turning on Late Night Review and seeing a bunch of middle-class wankers discussing some pretentious piece of fringe theatre.

Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile by Ramor Ryan (AK Press 2006)

The modern history of Mayday in Berlin follows this model. Mayday is a ritualistic confrontation between rebels and authority. As West Berlin became a haven for those avoiding the military draft, so an oasis of civil defiance, a pirate utopia, a quilombo of sorts was created by the dispossessed youth and the resident bohemian artists. The theatre of confrontation became Kreuzberg, traditionally a workers’ and migrants’ neighborhood now colonized by a multitude of politicized squatters. Anarchists, autonomes, punks, Turkish, and Kurdish youth fought pitched battles with armies of riot police. Burning barricades, tear-gas-filled streets, fierce combat, mass arrests, and police brutality became standard fare for Mayday in West Berlin.

So this day in East Berlin, the conflict has kicked off early. As the convoys of police vans descend on the park to witness the smoldering ruins of the burnt-out carcass of this dead beast, we have all already taken off. Now is the hour of the Black Bloc, the insurrectionary anarchists, the Maoists, the Trotskyites, the political hooligans, the casares (a reference to French rioters) and the drunken punks.

Mayday and I, aligning ourselves with one of the above categories (not sure which), cycle down to Oranienstrasse, the heart of historical Kreuzberg. There is a full-scale riot in progress and we arrive on the wrong side, behind the police lines. The sky is filled with flying objects raining down upon the besieged police lines. lt is a truly astonishing sight as paving stones, bottles, cans or whatever beat down like a medieval barrage. The lines and lines of riot cops are under intense pressure and occasionally one cop or another is carried behind, nursing an injury. "A handful of skilled stone-throwers can fend off a whole battalion of cops” explained Ringrose my elder sister’s boyfriend, years before when I was still a kid. He was of the earlier generation of Berlin Anarchists, who had raised the stakes in the early 1980's by taking to the street with combative resolve. And today, years later, his words resound as we witness maybe 50 stone-throwing militants holding off this street-full of riot cops. The tight street is a chaotic boiling pot of bedlam and as usual, the press is out in force, cameras everywhere, vultures stealing images to sell.

Weekend by William McIlvanney (Sceptre Paperbacks 2006)

She paused the tape and started to spool forward. She was looking for a moment during the question time that followed Harry Beck's lecture. Mickey Deans had asked a question in a tone of such aggression it had stirred the room from somnolence into tension. Eventually she found it.
'You mentioned in class once that you still regard yourself as a socialist. How is that possible when you have such a jaundiced view of humanity?'
She thought she could almost hear Harry Beck's sad smile.
'First thing is, I don't think it's jaundiced. I think any kind of hope begins in honestly trying to confront what you see as the truth. That's all I've been trying to do. It's the darkness of that truth as I see it that makes me a socialist. After all, the dark is where the dawn comes from. I don't believe in Utopia. You won't find it on any map we can ever make. And if it did exist, we couldn't breathe the air there. It would be too pure for us. But I believe in our ability to drift endlessly towards dystopia. We seem to be programmed for it. As if we were saying to ourselves: if we can't beat the dark, let's celebrate it. I'm against that. I'm a dystopian socialist. Socialism is an attempt to share as justly as we can with one another the terms of human experience. Don't do the dark's work for it. If it's only void out there, let's write our own defiant meaning on it. And make it a shared meaning. I think believing in good is the good. Against all the odds. Even if I'm part of the odds against us. I think it's what makes us what we are.'

The Damned Utd by David Peace (Faber and Faber 2006)

I get on the coach last and make Allan Clarke shift so I can sit next to Billy Bremner again. I try and make chit-chat. To break the ice. But Billy Bremner doesn't give a fuck about President Nixon or George Best. He's not interested in Frank Sinatra or Muhammad Ali. He doesn't want to talk about the World Cup, about playing against Brazil. Doesn't want to talk about his holidays. His family full stop. Bremner just looks out of the window and smokes the whole way down to Birmingham. Then, as the coach pulls into Villa Park, he turns to me and he says, 'If you're looking for a pal, Mr Clough, you can count me out.'