The Ballad of Peckham Rye - Muriel Spark

My wonderful employer gives us 100£ every year to spend on books that help us do our job - I argued that for my workshops on London I need to get ideas from books set in the city. Surprisingly, this long short worked (and thanks to Amazon I now have 20 extra books or so that should see me through the summer).

The Ballad of Peckham Rye made me really happy - it's not exactly great literature, but seeing the problems caused by immigrants (Scottish and Irish) that nowadays are no longer considered immigrants was truly interesting. Disclaimer - I'm an immigrant myself, though I have British nationality now because, you know, short-sighted policies, decisions, referenda etc.

Most of all, however, the book reminded me of how I love being able to visualize the places were a novel is set, and how wackily funny life can be in South London.

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

During my first year at university I only read a couple of books. Shame on me, but I had other priorities: trying to prove to the kids in my class that, despite my funny accent, I was as smart as them, washing dishes as I already mentioned, and playing basketball for my university team. Of Mice and Men was one of the few books I read that year, it was lent to me by my Singaporean roommate and I read it while travelling for an international friendly match in Barcelona.

How I suffered. Despite the brevity of the novel, I was quite shattered by the end of it. Over the final few pages I was so desperate for George to find a solution like he always seemed to do. And in the end he does find a solution, even in that dramatic situation. To me that’s one of the greatest displays of love in 20^th century literature. I just still wish he had found another solution, another way to run away and finally have “their little place”.

A dislikeable teammate of mine saw me finishing the novel on the flight back to London. He told me he hated Steinbeck because he had to read Grapes of Wrath in high school. I hadn’t read it at the time, but as soon as I did his comment became another reason to have fairly bad opinion of the guy.