D H Lawrence,Oscar Wilde and Guisborough Town FC

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Chatting and reminiscing about a couple of towns in my last few posts does mean that I need to go through the books I have and am reading during the past days. Given that the next few posts will revert to the house moving situation which all of a sudden has moved a lot quicker it's better that I deal with it today.

Have finally finished The Rainbow by D H Lawrence. Nothing has changed from my earlier post on the subject. Lawrence is still the literary super villain of this blog and I doubt it will ever change.

When that was finished the next amongst the pile of ebook unread turned out to be Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde.

The best way to describe these stories is this. Imagine you've gone to a fancy restaurant. Having had the main course that you didn't enjoy you're then presented with something relatively light as a dessert. After eating it, you realise that just going home and having some chocolate ice cream would have been more substantial, tastier and cheaper.

That's my view of this book. Though not awful these semi comic stories (so don't expect a laugh a minute) are OK in themselves (though the last one, The Portrait of Mr W H needed some editing) but ultimately too light to be remembered warmly.

So the next ebook, and the one I'm currently halfway through is Far From The Massive Crowds by Mark Cowan. This is a fan's diary of the 2010/11 season of the team he supports, Guisborough Town of the Northern League.

It came with many advantages immediatwely, it's a football book (tick) it's a football book about a team and a league I've little knowledge about but appreciate given the attitude of fans of bigger clubs to the League of Wales (tick), it's a football diary where few people outside the North East will have any idea of what's going to happen next (triple tick and an explanation mark for the excitement of it all).

What it also has now I'm reading it is a genuine sense of humour, a writer who is honest when his team doesn't play well and also has the capacity to like other teams whilst always being faithful to his first love. That I would argue is the sign of a true football fan.

If this was a man you'd be having friendly banter with him down the pub. It's so far the most enjoyable book I've read this year.

D H Lawrence, Oscar Wilde. And yet it's a book by Mark Cowan about Guisborough Town FC that's the best of the three. Who'd have thought it?

Until the next time.