Hellraisers
From time to time I venture a toe into the waters of comics. I’m not really a super-hero type of guy and have neither the interest or energy to try to figure out what’s happening in whichever universe is currently en vogue, so much of the genre—certainly from the Big Two—is pretty much lost on [...]
Kindle Swindle
I’ve been in ‘streamlining’ mode of late, getting rid of a lot of old books and whatnot. It got me thinking about the benefits of a Kindle so I started researching. While I was checking out Kindle hardware, Amazon kindly recommended a Kindle-format book that I’ve been planning to buy. It would cost me €7.71 [...]
A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book: Room
I’m currently reading Room by Emma Donoghue. Room is the story of a five-year old boy, Jack, and his Ma. They live in a single, locked room. Jack has spent his entire life in this eleven feet square world. He was born here and has never been outside. He and his mother are prisoners. The story [...]
A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book: The City And The City
I want to be careful to avoid spoilers here. Perhaps I’m just hopelessly ill-informed but I came to The City and The City without knowing what it was all about. Because of this I was able to discern the arena of the book gradually. And Miéville does draw that arena carefully and naturally. There’s no [...]
A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book: The Moor’s Last Sigh
I’ve been more than a little remiss in keeping my eager Tea/Book community updated of late. I’ll state, now, that I intend to work harder at taking funny little photos of the books I read and the tea I drink but we all know that I’ll probably get distracted by something shiny or by porn [...]
A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book: Three For One
It’s occurred to me that I haven’t done one of these for a while. Well, I say ‘occurred’ but I’ve been all too aware of it over the last month or two. I’ll attempt to get you up to speed a little with a subsection of the books I’ve read since the last book/tea post [...]
A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book: The Infinities
The day you start a new Banville is always a good day. I haven’t done one of these Tea-And-Book posts for a while. This is chiefly because my brilliantly fractured skull (and I’m certain it was fractured brilliantly, despite that I can’t remember the incident) gave me a headache that lasted about a month and [...]
A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book: Risk
I haven’t done one of these for a couple of weeks so I thought I’d make it extra special. This is not just A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book, this is A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Lovely Scone With Some Jam And a Book The scone: Fruit. The jam: Strawberry. The [...]
A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book: 1980
OK, so I lied. I said I’d need a break between 1977 and this, David Peace’s 1980. It seems I didn’t. I tried to take a break. I started two other books and gave up a dozen pages in. They were too light. My brain had grown accustomed to the distressing world of Peace’s Yorkshire [...]
A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book: 1977
It’s grim up north* At least it is in David Peace’s 1977. Bleak, gloomy and darker than closing your eyes at the bottom of an ocean where even those weird, ugly fish are scared to go. Awful, terrible, beautiful darkness. Peace just won’t leave you alone. His words gnaw and eat at you and his [...]
keep looking »Gerry Hayes
I mostly sit around all day and drink tea. Occasionally, I write stuff and send it to strangers so they can humiliate me and debase my efforts. Other than the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it's not a bad life. Like I say, there's tea.
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