Check Yo Shelf

Reading date - April 2020 I bought this from Any Amount of Books on Charing Cross Road on a very wet Saturday sometime last year..it was the time of year when they get rid of their old books for a quid each. I was in the shop for ages because I love an old bookshop.  This was one of the four books I bought, the second is a Mailer one but I can’t remember what the other two are...because I’ve got too many books. This book was kept in a place where it was in my face every single day so I decided to read it. The thing about John Grisham books is that he is very good at scene setting. I was instantly transported to a super glossy building in the 80s.  The first few chapters are a whirlwind but after that it settles down.  The basic premise is an old man screwing his estranged family out of the money they think they are going to receive.  He basically gets them in a room, reads a will to them, waits for them to leave, shows his lawyers his proper will then jumps to hi...

Reading date - March 2020 I got this as a gift and I’ve had it for ages..I just never got around to reading it, thought this was as good a time as any. I don’t usually go in for self help, motivation book because I think they’re a load of old shite and I know that nothing will motivate me. If I don’t want to do something, I won’t do it. Anyway, this book was odd. It was a mixture of telling you not to get angry cos it doesn’t really matter and the author’s biography of how he grew up with parents who got divorced and how he’s as awful to his girlfriends until he realised he was being an arsehole. I didn’t really see why this book had to be written at all and what he should have really done is either go through he lessons he learnt through his own behaviours or how truly to not give a fcuk (yeah, I was a teenager in the early 00s) but this jumpy mishmash of ideas ain’t it. I didn’t finish it and am putting it on depop. The end.

Reading date - March 2020 This was suggested to me by a journalist I know. I shall say no more because this person works on very shady matters (totally on the right side of the law). Anyway, they told me this was the best book they had ever read and me being easily led, decided I would buy it for myself.  I wanted the first edition because, why not? I headed off to eBay, where I buy a lot of my books from and I found it for about £3. eBay is great for old books, or any books for that matter. You get to support a small business (for the most part), recycle and you save some pennies. The book arrives and I set to reading it, going on the glowing reference it got and despite the fact I had other books before it. The book is an autobiography. It tells the story of John Healy growing up in inner London in around the 1940s and 50s. His dad was handy with his fists but also very religious. I always question how you can be both but hey, a lot of people were..and still are. Having had the s...

Because I do. I used to work around the corner from the flagship Waterstones in Piccadilly..a little walk down from Hatchards. You know you can’t go in a book shop and not buy anything, those are kind of the rules. I’d like to say that this is where my habit of buying loads of books began but that would be a lie. Being a geeky child, I read a lot. I’ve been buying too many books ever since I got my first job. Anyway, I’ve got too many books which I haven’t read before buying new ones so now as we’re not really allowed out of the house, I have a good enough reason to read through my backlog and to stop treating my shelves just because I’ve got a passing interest in a book...