Tales from the Bedroom Floor

N.B. This is not my copy. Mine is in much better condition but I haven't got a decent scan of the cover. London: Secker & Warburg, 1936 (this ed. 1954) Why is this book on the bedroom floor? - I must admit this is a bit of a cheat - I’ve read this book several times already, but not since I was at university. But my wife gave me a gorgeous copy of the book on the morning of our wedding as a present, and I just had to read it again. It came from the estate of Harold Whitaker, an animator who worked on Animal Farm , When the Wind Blows and The Twelve Tasks of Asterix , all of which I adore, and also The Poddington Peas , which I merely admire. This edition originally cost 12 shillings and 6. Worth every penny. About the Author - Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name of George Orwell, is one of Britain’s most-admired literary figures. A novelist, journalist and essayist, his adventurous life took him from Imperial India, Revolutionary Spain, and many ...

London: Allen Lane, 2016 Why is this book on the bedroom floor? - It was a birthday present from my wife. About the Author - Norman Ohler is a well-known German writer and screenwriter, partly responsible for the 2008 Wim Wenders film Palermo Shooting. His literary fame is based around his City Trilogy, but Blitzed is his first work of nonfiction. Plot - Nazis on drugs! Not just a dodgy plot in a straight-to-Netflix, but apparently true. Ohler blows the lid off the National Socialist pill-pot, exposing just how off their mash the silver medal winners of the Second World War actually were. Review - It’s been estimated that the only person with more words spent on him than Adolf Hitler is Jesus Christ. In the seventy-four years since Time ’s ‘Man of the Year’ for 1938 bit the big cyanide capsule in the sky, it’s almost improbable that a year will go by without a startling new biography or study of Hitler and the National Socialist regime being published. At t...

London: Picador, 2015 Why is this book on the bedroom floor? - I first came across a review of this in Nick Hornby’s Stuff I’ve Been Reading , a collection of reviews for The New Yorker . It sounded interesting and I filed it away at the back of my mind, until coming across it in a Blue Cross shop about a year ago. About the Author - Ryan Gattis is a novelist who lives in LA and is part of a street-art crew. He’s written half a dozen books. All Involved is the product of Gattis’ two and a half years of research and interviews with eyewitnesses to the 1992 LA riots. Plot - Set over six days of the infamous LA riots of 1992, the book loosely charts the fall-out from a revenge killing on the brother of a member of Big Fate’s crew, drawing in family, deadly rivals, bystanders and the emergency services. Review - Imagine you’re sitting there, one evening (say, May Day or something), watching television. Then, without knowing why, your nice suburban street or the...