Q7328202 Recommended Books

This classic humour novel chronicles the momentous journey of Steeple Sinderby (an unremarkable Fenland village) from the mire of obscurity to national heroics. This unbelievable feat is contrived by the serendipitous meeting of three great Mr Fangfoss (who cares nothing for football), Dr Kossuth - a Hungarian academic and headmaster of the village school, and the Wanderers captain Alex Slingsby, a mighty warrior biding his time in quiet Sinderby for the chance to rise once more. The story takes an affectionate look at small-minded Middle England, and the glories of God's own game while taking in love and death, bigotry, bigamy and good old-fashioned English snobbery.

“Brilliant.”— GQ "Hilarious.”— The Times (London) “A novel about golf that is not only hilarious, but gripping, sexy, violent, and outrageous. . . . Niven combines his increasingly bizarre plots, and some shocking behavior, with considerable skill and, of course, large helpings of humor.”— The Mirror From Kill Your Friends author John Niven, The Amateurs is a side-splitting and whip-smart examination of golf, infidelity, and how little white balls make some men insane.

Based on classified documents and first-person interviews, a startling history of the American war on Vietnamese civiliansAmericans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by just a few "bad apples." But as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."Drawing on more than a decade of research into secret Pentagon archives and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time the workings of a military machine that resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded-what one soldier called "a My Lai a month." Devastating and definitive, Kill Anything That Moves finally brings us face-to-face with the truth of a war that haunts America to this day.

In 1986, the NME released a cassette that would shape music for years to come. A collection of twenty-two independently signed guitar-based bands, C86 was the sound and ethos that defined a generation. It was also arguably the point at which 'indie' was born.But what happened next to all those musical dreamers?Some of the bands, like Primal Scream, went on to achieve global stardom; others, such as Half Man Half Biscuit and the Wedding Present, cultivated lifelong fanbases that still sustain their careers thirty-five years later. Then there were the rest, who ultimately imploded in a riot of paisley shirts, bad drugs and general indifference from the record-buying public.Now, for the first time, music journalist Nige Tassell tracks down the class of C86 and recounts their stories, both tragic and uplifting.Yet, while the pursuit of long-lost musicians can often manifest as earnest hagiography, Tassell's unique, light-hearted approach makes this a very human story of ambition, hope, varying degrees of talent and what happens after you give up on pop - or, more precisely, after pop gives up on you. It's a world populated by bike-shop owners, architecture professors, dance-music producers, record-store proprietors, birdwatchers, solicitors, caricaturists and even a possible Olympic sailor - and let's not forget the musician-turned-actor gainfully employed as Jeremy Irons' body double...More than simply the tale of the tape, Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids? is an exploration of C86's wide-reaching and often surprising legacy.