Gradgrind indeed. Same year, plus Chips With Everything. I’m not sure if it were the books or the teacher (thank you Mrs Fairbourne) but that course made me think in way that made sense of my teenage confusion.
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oh I love Shakespeare, and I also enjoyed things like Chaucer and some of the other works I studied at A Level, it was just Hardy I found awful!
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Hardy the novelist is an acquired taste, I’ll have to admit, though I think Tess is a masterpiece. Hardy the poet is something else altogether - one of the best poets in the English language – I recommend seeking his poetry out.
“Wessex Heights”, “The Darkling Thrush”, “In Tenebris”, “I Looked Up From My Writing”, “Sheep Fair”, “The Ruined Maid” and “The Voice” are all bangers.
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I did the Mayor of Casteroil for ‘O’ level.
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Some of us read your Grauniad and the NYT to be informed of alternative perspectives of reality. That being said, the recipe sections of both are outstanding. Let em eat cake 
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Had to study Hardy’s poetry for A Level as well and I thought them trite….the one that always stuck in my mind (for all the wrong reasons) was “The Frozen Greenhouse”!
Unfortunately that’s very unlikely. Two issues.
1 - the labelling of the section in all capitals. This is a very basic accessibility fail. All capitals makes things harder to see.
2 - the same limited number of mainstream books which are available in large print tend to be available as audio books so a change of format doesn’t tend to expand the range of what available.
Large print audio books? 
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I wondered that, but didn’t like to ask…
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What I had intended, was an admittedly feeble attempt at humour, with the juxtaposition of both audio and large print books on the same sign.
steve
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Hi Steve,
I guess that the shelves hold both large print and audio books. The sign is humorous, it made me smile.
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A very unusual murder mystery. I would be interested to hear the opinions from anyone else who has read it.
steve
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Amazon reviews are a bit up and down.
Apparently very mathematical 
I’ll give it a go and let you know. I have 4 books on the go at the minute, so might be a few weeks…
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Possibly. But he had no chance. Too honest and blunt for his own good.
Made me laugh.
This was fantastic. How Percy Everett produced such a finely balanced mix of factual stuff on lynchings; brutal satire; laugh out loud funny moments and makes you, wrongly, think you’re reading something which could be super-natural or even involve zombies is magnificent.
Along with the Don Patterson book this is right up there as one of the best things I’ve read this or any other year.
Now heading off in a very different direction.
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