Skellig

At Book Group in the pub tonight we discussed Skellig by David Almond; our first foray into the world of children’s literature.

Overall the verdict was very positive. Beautiful, compelling and with a lovely magical air to it.

Some reservations about certain elements, but nothing sufficient to take away from what we generally agreed was a charming, pleasure of a read.

At 170 pages and written with a younger audience in mind, it doesn’t take long to read it cover to cover. So if you feel like escaping into a world of magical innocence for a couple of hours, I’d certainly recommend it.

As ever our discussions never restrict themselves to one book and the converstaion drifts from what we appreciate in literature, to current affairs, to music, to football, to crap TV, to party invites, to raising children, to the trouble with relationships, to ‘why has a Mariachi band just wandered into the pub’, to politics, to the essentialness of a mobile phone, to why Americans find exclamation marks inappropriate, to whether T get’s out enough, to whether he’d get out more if he had a mobile phone, to…oh almost anything. Excellent company and I haven’t laughed so much in a long time.

J turns up 2 hours late and surprise, surprise hasn’t read the book.

In fact she’s been turning up late to Book Group meetings for nearly a year now and hasn’t read a single book (she’s managed the first five pages of about two works, but that’s it). Our usual subtle hints about the absurdity of this, turn into open challenges tonight.

As a teacher and in her mid-fifties, I find it hard to fathom her repeated excuse of "I didn’t know where to get a copy". When predictably she says the same about the next book on the list, I’m afraid I couldn’t hold back any longer : "Well you could try a greengrocers, or you know...maybe a 'bookstore’? Or come, to think of it, you’ve also worked in IT haven’t you – how about Amazon?".

"So they won’t have it in Tescos then?"

Grrrrrrrr…

Sometimes, it's very hard to be a 'nice person'...and sometimes I confess I struggle to find the motivation.