NYPD Green: The True Story of an Irish Detective Working in One of the Toughest Police Departments in the World
Book
'Luke Waters had more than 20 years on the job. What he saw, what he heard and what he did will make...
In Pursuit of Privilege: A History of New York City's Upper Class and the Making of a Metropolis
Book
A history that extends from the 1750s to the present, In Pursuit of Privilege recounts upper-class...
Flashlight: clap to turn it on/off
Business and Utilities
App
Our practical and fun Flashlight app features the fastest possible on time and two cool bonus...
The Democratic Forest
Book
Following the publication of Chromes in 2011 and Los Alamos Revisited in 2012, the reassessment of...
The Martians Of Science
Book
If science has the equivalent of a Bloomsbury group, it is the five men born at the turn of the 20th...
Rent: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical
7.3
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Set on the Lower East Side of New York City, Rent is the story of young bohemians Mark, Roger,...
Lyndsey Gollogly (2893 KP) rated The More you Ignore me in Books
Feb 20, 2022
Book
The more you ignore me
By Jo Brand
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Celebrity obsession, coming of age and cow shit - an hilarious, poignant and darkly comic novel by the Queen of Comedy.
Alice is a young girl growing up in a dysfunctional family in Herefordshire in the 1980s. Her mother is suffering a mental illness - she is on medication, is put away in an institution, but constantly escapes - while her father, Keith, very sweetly, tries to keep everything together. His in-laws, the Wildgooses, are a bunch of reckless, lawless country bumpkins and can offer very little help or sensible advice, preferring instead to remain in the pub or to use a shotgun to solve life's little problems. The only thing that gives meaning and hope to Alice as she makes her way through childhood, school and teenage trauma is her obsession with the singer Morrissey of The Smiths. She is desperate to see The Smiths at a live gig, but somehow her family always manages to derail her plans. Gradually her mother begins to share her fascination with the rock god and his presence in their lives goes someway to healing her and repairing her relationship with her long-suffering daughter.
This was really good! It was funny and darkly so. It follows the life of a young girl dealing with the effects her mothers mental illness has on her and her father. It’s has a dark underlay that as someone who struggles mentally I can relate too. So much better than I was expecting.
Suswatibasu (1701 KP) rated The Nix in Books
Dec 4, 2017
It spans nearly fifty years, with flashbacks to student protests during 1968, from the present day, and the travails of an academic, struggling to engage with lazy and disaffected students, and playing ‘Elfscape’, an online role-playing game that works along the lines of World of Warcraft. The narrative perspective moves around quite a bit in the first few chapters, but a strong theme quickly emerges.
Samuel Andresen-Anderson is the principal protagonist, and is a genuinely empathetic character. Far from perfect, he is beset with irritations, ranging from the cheating and ignorance of many of his students to the family upheaval suffered during his childhood, which still troubles him more than twenty years later.
Behind all this is the story of Faye, Samuel’s mother, who walked out on her family more than twenty years earlier, and who is catapulted into the public consciousness following a sudden impulsive act. This offered Hill the opportunity for some acute observations about the motives and actions of the student rebels from the late 1960s, while also exposing the hypocrisies of the establishment and the cruelties of some of the police during those troubles. In between, the author even delves into Norwegian folklore.
The writing is fine – clear and accessible - and Hill manages the complex storylines admirably. Moving backwards and forwards between the late 1960s, late 1980s and 2011, the plot never flags. This was a long novel, but very entertaining throughout.
Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents
Book
Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents, Ellen Ullman's cult classic memoir of the...