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Week 72 – Transition

typewriterThis week I mentioned to my twenty-two year old gaffer something about Irvine Welsh’s book ‘Trainspotting’. She hadn’t a Scooby. I thought about it and realised that I wasn’t mentioning something ‘Hip and Happening’. There was no ‘Respect’ or ‘Bringing It On’. The only thing that was there, was me, an old git mentioning a book that I thought was ‘Street’ and bang up to date, when the actual fact was that it’s twenty-three years old! This got me thinking on the books that I have read, when I read them and the difference between them and short stories.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Chocolate Kid by Tom Sheehan

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Today it all came back. Once again, on another brilliant dawning, the Western Yetness still calling me, I woke with a toothache. A stupendous one! In half an hour, despite quick brushing, the stimulator poked here and there, gargling, all proving useless, the ache remained in force. It was, without a doubt, the chocolate again, or the mere thought of chocolate. I knew I was weak to most any candy, and to chocolate in particular, right from the beginning.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Paperback Summer by Embe Charpentier

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A reputable librarian knows how to tell a story. My eleven year-old grandniece, reader extraordinaire, inquires about my days as Cabbagetown’s librarian. Our rockers creak on the covered porch, a steady rain patters all about us. “Best story you got, Auntie Claire. And I better not be able to see the end comin’.”

I sip my sweet tea. She leans toward me as I begin. “This story is true, more or less.”

1980

Reading success; the number one predictor of a successful future. The research said children who chose books read more. Yet every summer, I rarely saw a child more than once or twice.

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