More books I read on holiday

Just back from a week in the sun where in between some quality sightseeing, lazing, eating and drinking I got through a few books.

I love autobiographies because I enjoy reading about the private lives of public people.  Therefore, I especially bought for this holiday a book that I'd wanted to read for a very long time. It was Bill Tarmey's autobiography, Jack Duckworth and Me.  The Coronation Street actor's book wasn't what I expected, however, and I've blogged about it in depth at the Coronation Street Blog.

Another light and fluffy life story I read was Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel-Horwood's autobiography, All Balls and Glitter. Quite interesting but nowhere near enough backstage gossip from Strictly as I would have liked (and to be honest, what I bought the book for).

Onto more weighty work with the release of a hidden gem from 1928, Patrick Hamilton's Twopence Coloured. It's been released by Faber Finds and if you've read any of his work before, then you must read this one too.  It's about a young woman from Brighton who tries, succeeds and then fails, in her quest to Become Someone on the London Stage.  Wonderful book.

And then I read The Slap by Australian author Christos Tsiolkas. This is a book that I'd picked off the shelf in Waterstones loads of times, reckoned it was going to be middle-class angst over whether one should or not slap a child, and then I'd always put it back on the shelf, dismissing it.  But this time I didn't put it back and it was well worth a read.  The Slap of course, isn't what the book is about in the end and as it's set in Australia was a great deal more interesting than I had first thought it might be.  A good read.

Finally I started on Skippy Dies by Paul Murray which I'm still reading now and enjoying a lot. It reminds me of John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meaney in it's style, so far, and it's set in a boy's boarding school in Dublin.  So far, so good.