Tony Maguire answers thirteen questions in a Booker's Dozen.

TPQ: What are you currently reading?

TM: Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. My nephew recommended this to me in the wake of the BLM movement last year but recently and probably due to Covid anxiety, I have found myself unable to concentrate sufficiently to read anything meaningful! However, I picked this book up only last night and began to flick through it, only to find myself captured by the fear, desolation and anger on its pages. Coates is attempting to forewarn and psychologically arm his teenage son for what he will face as a black man in America. The narrative is depressing and gut wrenching and, so far, paints only a bleak future for young Afro American males. I will finish it this evening and I will be desperately looking for some hope and a future that blue collar Afro Americans can embrace and aspire to.

TPQ: Best and worst books you have ever read?

TM: Difficult question! The 'worst' book I have ever attempted to read has to be Joyce's Ulysses. It is a book I have always wanted to read and I suppose I must have been possessed with some notions of literary grandeur when I bought a copy way back sometime in the '80s. By any account the book is a masterpiece but I simply could not grasp it. It's probably not fair to describe it as the worst book I have ever read because the problem is my lack of intellectual capacity as opposed to the book itself. I suppose I might do better with a mentor or a guide to steer me through its complexities.

The question of the 'best' book I have ever read is just as difficult to address because it is usually the most recent one I have put down! But if I was to answer this question as what is the book I have read most often, it would be Kieth Waterhouse's Billy Liar! I think I have read this at least once a year since I was a teenager and I manage to get a laugh every time!

TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?

TM: I think it was around third year in school we were given Bill Naughton's The Goalkeeper's Revenge and Other Stories to read. Up until that point, we had been assigned with the usual diet of classics and nineteenth century English poets but now and for the first time in my young life, I found myself reading about people and locations to which I could relate.

TPQ: Favourite childhood author?

TM: I am cringing with a sense of historic embarrassment when I realise that I was very fond of the Jennings and Derbyshire series of novels by Anthony Buckeridge. I feel that I must point out that the adventures of two privileged young boys in an English home counties boarding school is far from where I was reared!

TPQ: First book to really own you?

TM: I note that more than a few Booker's Dozen contributors have been really owned by Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Here's another one! I read this for the first time when I was around fifteen. I guess I was experiencing all that adolescent angst that the protagonist, Holden Caulfield was going through. Although Caulfield seemed to be fairly well off and able to navigate the mean streets of New England and New York without coming to any great harm and I was skint and navigating the mean streets of Belfast and never very far from coming to great harm, it seemed that we had a lot in common. I reread it a few years ago and I found that I could no longer identify with Caulfield, so I suppose I have grown up and left that angst and tribulation back in the pages of this classic. Maybe it was just that I never felt the urge to murder any of the Beatles.

A Berlin Book Tower in memory of the Nazi book burning.

TPQ: Favourite male and female author?

TM: Another question to which I cannot give a definitive answer. I am not sure if I ever think of the gender of the author when I am reading but I do enjoy anything by Ian Rankin and I have been working my way through the Ripley novels by Patricia Highsmith.

TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?

TM: When I was working as a trade union official I was required to read, digest and often regurgitate tomes of dry, technical papers, often written in such a way as to say nothing and as a consequence, I somewhat lost my appetite for reading for pleasure. Since I retired from that thankless task I find that I can now enjoy escaping in fiction but I will read facts if I want to learn or understand something or someone better.

TPQ: Biography, autobiography or memoir that most impressed you?

TM: Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom. This book gives me just a little, tiny, infinitesimal flicker of hope that the human condition is not entirely and completely lost to evil.

TPQ: Any author or book you point blank refuse to read?

TM: No. I will read anything that helps me understand humanity, the world or the workings of a food processor.

TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would more fully understand you?

TM: God is Not Great; How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. I am often at odds with family and close friends because of my atheism. So far it hasn't cost me any valued relationships but I constantly get the impression that family and friends are disappointed and hurt that I cannot share their enthusiasm for blind faith.


TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?

TM: Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. My wife Alice and I watched the television adaptation and thoroughly enjoyed it. The characters were real and although the novel is set in a poor quarter of 1950s Naples, the story reflects the life experience in any underprivileged community anywhere. I gave the book to Alice for Christmas although I read it before she did! That's the type of cheap guy I really am!

TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?

TM: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, but only if Jimmy Ellis could play Sergeant Pluck so I suppose it will never happen.

TPQ: A must-read before you die?

TM: I'll probably give Ulysses another shot.
 
Tony Maguire is a former trade union official with the Fire Brigades Union. 

Booker's Dozen @ Tony Maguire

Tony Maguire answers thirteen questions in a Booker's Dozen.

TPQ: What are you currently reading?

TM: Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. My nephew recommended this to me in the wake of the BLM movement last year but recently and probably due to Covid anxiety, I have found myself unable to concentrate sufficiently to read anything meaningful! However, I picked this book up only last night and began to flick through it, only to find myself captured by the fear, desolation and anger on its pages. Coates is attempting to forewarn and psychologically arm his teenage son for what he will face as a black man in America. The narrative is depressing and gut wrenching and, so far, paints only a bleak future for young Afro American males. I will finish it this evening and I will be desperately looking for some hope and a future that blue collar Afro Americans can embrace and aspire to.

TPQ: Best and worst books you have ever read?

TM: Difficult question! The 'worst' book I have ever attempted to read has to be Joyce's Ulysses. It is a book I have always wanted to read and I suppose I must have been possessed with some notions of literary grandeur when I bought a copy way back sometime in the '80s. By any account the book is a masterpiece but I simply could not grasp it. It's probably not fair to describe it as the worst book I have ever read because the problem is my lack of intellectual capacity as opposed to the book itself. I suppose I might do better with a mentor or a guide to steer me through its complexities.

The question of the 'best' book I have ever read is just as difficult to address because it is usually the most recent one I have put down! But if I was to answer this question as what is the book I have read most often, it would be Kieth Waterhouse's Billy Liar! I think I have read this at least once a year since I was a teenager and I manage to get a laugh every time!

TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?

TM: I think it was around third year in school we were given Bill Naughton's The Goalkeeper's Revenge and Other Stories to read. Up until that point, we had been assigned with the usual diet of classics and nineteenth century English poets but now and for the first time in my young life, I found myself reading about people and locations to which I could relate.

TPQ: Favourite childhood author?

TM: I am cringing with a sense of historic embarrassment when I realise that I was very fond of the Jennings and Derbyshire series of novels by Anthony Buckeridge. I feel that I must point out that the adventures of two privileged young boys in an English home counties boarding school is far from where I was reared!

TPQ: First book to really own you?

TM: I note that more than a few Booker's Dozen contributors have been really owned by Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Here's another one! I read this for the first time when I was around fifteen. I guess I was experiencing all that adolescent angst that the protagonist, Holden Caulfield was going through. Although Caulfield seemed to be fairly well off and able to navigate the mean streets of New England and New York without coming to any great harm and I was skint and navigating the mean streets of Belfast and never very far from coming to great harm, it seemed that we had a lot in common. I reread it a few years ago and I found that I could no longer identify with Caulfield, so I suppose I have grown up and left that angst and tribulation back in the pages of this classic. Maybe it was just that I never felt the urge to murder any of the Beatles.

A Berlin Book Tower in memory of the Nazi book burning.

TPQ: Favourite male and female author?

TM: Another question to which I cannot give a definitive answer. I am not sure if I ever think of the gender of the author when I am reading but I do enjoy anything by Ian Rankin and I have been working my way through the Ripley novels by Patricia Highsmith.

TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?

TM: When I was working as a trade union official I was required to read, digest and often regurgitate tomes of dry, technical papers, often written in such a way as to say nothing and as a consequence, I somewhat lost my appetite for reading for pleasure. Since I retired from that thankless task I find that I can now enjoy escaping in fiction but I will read facts if I want to learn or understand something or someone better.

TPQ: Biography, autobiography or memoir that most impressed you?

TM: Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom. This book gives me just a little, tiny, infinitesimal flicker of hope that the human condition is not entirely and completely lost to evil.

TPQ: Any author or book you point blank refuse to read?

TM: No. I will read anything that helps me understand humanity, the world or the workings of a food processor.

TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would more fully understand you?

TM: God is Not Great; How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. I am often at odds with family and close friends because of my atheism. So far it hasn't cost me any valued relationships but I constantly get the impression that family and friends are disappointed and hurt that I cannot share their enthusiasm for blind faith.


TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?

TM: Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. My wife Alice and I watched the television adaptation and thoroughly enjoyed it. The characters were real and although the novel is set in a poor quarter of 1950s Naples, the story reflects the life experience in any underprivileged community anywhere. I gave the book to Alice for Christmas although I read it before she did! That's the type of cheap guy I really am!

TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?

TM: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, but only if Jimmy Ellis could play Sergeant Pluck so I suppose it will never happen.

TPQ: A must-read before you die?

TM: I'll probably give Ulysses another shot.
 
Tony Maguire is a former trade union official with the Fire Brigades Union. 

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for this Tony - great addition to the series. I said once to Sean Mallory that the reading preferences and habits of people we knew well or grew up with can be so jarring with what we might have expected.
    Two in the above list I had no passion for but unfortunately read both to discover that. Hated the Third Policeman and was not taken by The Catcher In The Rye.
    Fortunately, I don't get bothered by family and friends over my atheism. And even if I was I would simply give the Catherine Tate refrain!

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