Recommendations based on "The Understudy"

My part of Ireland had a poet at one time, a poor ragged fellow whom no respectable person whom no respectable person would be seen talking to, but he left doors open as he passed. A delightful autobiographical novel from one of Ireland's best-loved writers Time hardly mattered in the village of Mucker, the birthplace of poet and writer Patrick Kavanagh. Full of wry humour, Kavanagh's unsentimental and evocative account of his Irish rural upbringing describes a patriarchal society surviving on the edge of poverty, sustained by the land and an insatiable love of gossip. There are tales of schoolboy skirmishes, blackberrying and night-time salmon-poaching; of country-weddings and fairs, of political banditry and religious pilgrimages; and of farm-work in the fields and kicking mares. Kavanagh's experiences inspired him to write poetry which immortalized a fast-disappearing way of life and brought him recognition as one of Ireland's great poets.

Admission. Everybody stops playing cards and Monopoly, turns towards the day-room door. Most days I'd be out sweeping the hall and see who they're signing in, but this morning, like I explain to you, the Big Nurse put a thousand pounds down me and I can't budge out of the chair. Most days I'm the first one to see the Admiss

"Outlandish fun. . . . Making Money balances satire, knockabout farce and close observation of human — and non-human — foibles with impressive dexterity and deceptive ease. The result is another ingenious entertainment from the preeminent comic fantasist of our time.” — Washington PostThe hero of Going Postal returns in the 36th installment of Sir Terry Pratchett's beloved Discworld series! Moist von Lipwig, condemned prisoner turned postal worker extraordinaire, is now in charge of a different branch of the government: overseeing the printing of Ankh-Morpork’s first paper currency.Amazingly, former arch-swindler-turned-Postmaster General Moist von Lipwig has somehow managed to get the woefully inefficient Ankh-Morpork Post Office running like . . . well, not like a government office at all. Now the supreme despot Lord Vetinari is asking Moist if he'd like to make some real money. Vetinari wants Moist to resuscitate the venerable Royal Mint—so that perhaps it will no longer cost considerably more than a penny to make a penny.Moist doesn't want the job. However, a request from Ankh-Morpork's current ruling tyrant isn't a "request" per se, more like a "once-in-a-lifetime-offer-you-can-certainly-refuse-if-you-feel-you've-lived-quite-long-enough." So Moist will just have to learn to deal with elderly Royal Bank chairman Topsy (née Turvy) Lavish and her two loaded crossbows, a face-lapping Mint manager, and a chief clerk who's probably a vampire. But he'll soon be making lethal enemies as well as money, especially if he can't figure out where all the gold has gone.The Discworld novels can be read in any order, but Making Money is the second book in the Moist von Lipwig series.

Lemony Snicket's work is filled with bitter truths, like: 'It is always cruel to laugh at people, of course, although sometimes if they are wearing an ugly hat it is hard to control yourself.' Or: 'It is very easy to say that the important thing is to try your best, but if you are in real trouble the most important thing is not trying your best, but getting to safety.'For all of life's ups and downs, its celebrations and its sorrows, here is a book to commemorate it all – especially for those not fully soothed by chicken soup. Witty and irreverent, Horseradish is a book with universal appeal, a delightful vehicle to introduce Snicket's uproariously unhappy observations to a crowd not yet familiar with the Baudelaires' misadventures.

"Maupin's San Francisco saga careens beautifully on." —New York Times Book Review The fourth novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin’s best-selling San Francisco saga. When an ordinary househusband and his ambitious wife decide to start a family, they discover there’s more to making a baby than meets the eye. Help arrives in the form of a grieving gay neighbor, a visiting monarch, and the dashing young lieutenant who defects from her yacht. Bittersweet and profoundly affecting, Babycakes was the first piece of fiction to acknowledge the arrival of AIDS.

A book for anybody who's ever had a beard, thought about a beard, seen a beard, not had a beard.The job of the skin is to keep things in.On the buttoned-down island of Here, all is well. By which we mean: orderly, neat, contained and, moreover, beardless. Or at least it is until one famous day, when Dave, bald but for a single hair, finds himself assailed by a terrifying, unstoppable... monster*! Where did it come from? How should the islanders deal with it? And what, most importantly, are they going to do with Dave?The first book from a new leading light of UK comics, The Gigantic Beard That Was Evilis an off-beat fable worthy of Roald Dahl. It is about life, death and the meaning of beards.

Also known as Dulcimer Street, Norman Collins's London Belongs to Me is a Dickensian romp through working-class London on the eve of the Second World War. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Ed Glinert, author of The London Compendium. It is 1938 and the prospect of war hangs over every London inhabitant. But the city doesn't stop. Everywhere people continue to work, drink, fall in love, fight and struggle to get on in life. At the lodging-house at No.10 Dulcimer Street, Kennington, the buttoned-up clerk Mr Josser returns home with the clock he has received as a retirement gift. The other residents include faded actress Connie; tinned food-loving Mr Puddy; widowed landlady Mrs Vizzard (whose head is turned by her new lodger, a self-styled 'Professor of Spiritualism'); and flashy young mechanic Percy Boon, whose foray into stolen cars descends into something much, much worse... Norman Collins (1907-1982) was a British writer, and later a radio and television executive, who was responsible for creating Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4, and became one of the major figures behind the establishment of the Independent Television (ITV) network in the UK. In all Norman Collins wrote 16 novels and two plays, including London Belongs to Me (1945), The Governor's Lady (1968) and The Husband's Story (1978). If you enjoyed London Belongs to Me, you might like Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'One of the great city novels: a sprawling celebration of the comedy, the savagery, the eccentricity and the quiet heroism at the heart of ordinary London life' Sarah Waters, author of The Night Watch

The hilarious 1980s political satire by Jonathan Coe, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.It is the 1980s and the Winshaw family are getting richer and crueller by the year:Newspaper-columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it isn't; Henry's turning hospitals into car parks; Roddy's selling art in return for sex; down on the farm Dorothy's squeezing every last pound from her livestock; Thomas is making a killing on the stock exchange; and Mark is selling arms to dictators.But once their hapless biographer Michael Owen starts investigating the family's trail of greed, corruption and immoral doings, the time growing ripe for the Winshaws to receive their comeuppance. . .This wickedly funny take on life under the Thatcher government was the winner of the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize'A sustained feat of humour, suspense and polemic, full of twists and ironies' Hilary Mantel, Sunday Times'A riveting social satire on the chattering and all-powerful upper classes' Time Out'Big, hilarious, intricate, furious, moving' Guardian

'brilliant. A Citizen Kane Of A Novel' Daily Telegraph __________________________________ Meet John James Todd: Scotsman, Auteur, Rousseau-fanatic - And 'subversive Element' Born In 1899, John James Todd Is One Of The Great, Failed Geniuses Of The Last Century. His Reminiscences, Collected In The New Confessions, Take Us From Edinburgh To The Western Front, The Berlin Film-world In The Twenties To Hollywood In The Thirties, Forties And Beyond. Suffering Imprisonment, Shooting, Marriage, Fatherhood, Divorce And Mccarthyism, Todd Is A Hostage To Good Fortune, Ill-judgement, Bad Luck, The Vast Sweep Of History And The Cruel, Cruel Hand Of Fate . . . __________________________________ 'a Magnificent Feat Of Storytelling And Panoramic Reconstruction' Observer 'paced And Plotted With Sinewy, Unfailing Skill . . . Boyd Has Given Us A Work Of Rich, Ripe And Immensely Enjoyable Entertainment' Sunday Times 'simply The Best Realistic Storyteller Of His Generation' Independent

A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'An affectionate and revealing account … Funny, sad, real, rueful.' The Times 'Warm, rambling and self-aware' Guardian The long-awaited, rambling, tender, and very funny memoir from Adam Buxton Ramble /?ramb(?)l/ Verb 1. walk for pleasure in the countryside. 'Dr Buckles and Rosie the dog love rambling in the countryside.' 2. talk or write at length in a confused or inconsequential way. 'Adam rambles on about lots of consequential, compelling and personal matters in his tender, insightful, hilarious and totally unconfused memoir, Ramble Book.' Ramble Book is about parenthood, boarding school trauma, arguing with your partner, bad parties, confrontations on trains, friendship, wanting to fit in, growing up in the 80s, dead dads, teenage sexual anxiety, failed artistic endeavours, being a David Bowie fan; and how everything you read, watch and listen to as a child forms a part of the adult you become. It's also a book about the joys of going off topic and letting your mind wander. And it's about a short, hairy, frequently confused man called Adam Buxton.