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ClareR (5879 KP) rated A Bit Of A Stretch in Books

Feb 21, 2020

A Bit Of A Stretch

Chris Atkins | 2020 | Biography, Crime, Humor & Comedy

9.0

(2 Ratings)

Book Rating

A UK prison diary

All hail The Pigeonhole! The app that makes me read - and enjoy - books that I would never normally even pick up. I loved this book!

Chris Atkins was sent to prison for 5 years after being involved in a dodgy tax scheme that was used to finance his films. Wandsworth was to be his home for a large part of his sentence, and this is where the book is set. Chris wrote a diary whilst he was there, and he certainly had enough to write about: drug dealers, self-harmer’s, prison officers, of the helpful, clueless and vindictive varieties, and senior officials trying to instigate some sort of reform (which ends badly, if I’m honest).

It’s a funny, and at times frustrating read. It illustrates everything that’s wrong with our prison system, which seems to be stuck in the Victorian era. We need to decide what we want our prison system to do: to simply incarcerate, or to rehabilitate. The number of people who reoffend is phenomenal - isn’t this a total waste of money? Is this really a reflection of time well served?

Anyway, I suggest everyone reads this and makes up their own minds.

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole for serialising this book, and to the author, Chris Atkins, for reading along.

Kudos

Eleanor (1463 KP) rated The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper in Books

Feb 26, 2020 (Updated Apr 18, 2021)

An Different Angle to View True Crime

So many of us that are into True Crime get caught up in the killers and this book, thankfully, gives us a kick in the butt to wake up and remember the tragic victims of the horrific crimes we pour-over. Taking a very in-depth look at the lives of the victims of Jack the Ripper we get a vivid picture of the lives of these women before they were so brutally ended.

This book gives us a window into the lives of women in the 19th Century that is fascinating.

I listened to audiobook read by Louise Brealey and I think mainly because it was an audiobook (and people had like a million children each!!!) it got a bit name heavy at points as well as other details being hard to take in. This though reflects on what is clearly a very thoroughly researched book. It's conclusion that not all the victims were necessarily prostitutes I think was slightly off the mark in that it doesn't matter even if they were there was more than that to sum up their lives.

There is always more to the victims of horrendous acts than we often look at while we are busy giving in-depth looks into the lives of killers. This book does a great job of refocusing the True Crime narrative.