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...

London: Victor Gollancz, 1994 Why is this book on the bedroom floor?  - I spotted in in a charity shop, and paid an extortionate price for it because I've wanted to read it for years. So given the slimness of the volume and its relative value, I waited for a couple of years before pulling it out and giving it floor space. About the Author - Don Watson wrote extensively for the NME during the 1980s, becoming a section editor and departing in 1989. After continuing to write across various publications, he now works in marketing for the British Council, the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations. No, me neither. Plot - ex-music editor goes to World Cup, meets people, describes. Review - First of all, I should declare a prior interest. Some thirteen years ago, at the start of my own professional writing career, I decided my first book-length project would be to go to a World Cup finals and experience fan culture, trying to find the single answer...

London: Flamingo, 1993 Why is this book on the bedroom floor? - I first saw the film adaptation of this novel in about 2003, a couple of years after its release. I hadn’t heard of it at the time, which I’ve since discovered is because it was released slap-bang in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, and given its robust criticisms of the US Army and the dark underlying themes therein, it sank more or less without trace. As far as I know it’s not yet a cult hit, which is a shame because it’s a solid and fairly faithful representation of the novel. Nevertheless, it was the film which pointed me in the direction of the book, but I’m also a bit of a Cold War enthusiast, so because the film is set ostensibly in the months just before the Berlin Wall fell, I thought I’d get hold of a copy and then ignore it for about a year, as is my custom. About the Author - Robert O’Connor is a man of mystery. Although Buffalo Soldiers was seen as a promising debut fashione...

We’re all guilty of hoarding, of keeping things for longer than we should. It’s human nature to think we can find a use for the odd little knick-knack which came with the vacuum cleaner we chucked out a decade and a half ago. Why wouldn’t we? It’s got a nice shape which looks like it might fit under the thing, if the thing ever jams, and if we can work out which thing we’re referring to. It’s pure Darwinism – just as finches shaped their beaks adapted for their specific habitat, so the third drawer down from the top adapts to that household’s misplaced optimism. I myself am from a family of hoarders. In an ideal world the Stanleys would extend property indefinitely, upsize forever, if it meant keeping every series of Red Dwarf , including Smeg Ups and Smeg Outs , on VHS cassette. Though as a unit we’re on the right side of being crushed by four years’ worth of local newspapers (just about), those ingrained habits are tough to break. Even now, years after flying the coop, my ...