Should you read this book?

Should you read this book? I thought this was great - until about half way through. My friend thought the opposite. So either it's all great or all shit. Stand out moments:  interesting description of carving out a role as deputy prime Minister; brilliant analysis of populis; demolition of Theresa May; Osborn and Cameron not that nice.

Yes. Definitely. I'd heard of Biafra, I thought it was about famine. Turns out that famine was a deliberate war strategy to starve a section of what is now Nigeria into submission. This is the story. I'm aware it pretty much followed rich Biafrans, with some visits to camps of starving people, rather than having its protagonists suffer the full event. Even so, worth knowing, important stuff. Dreadful film btw.

Yes probably. It's a bit of a hotch potch of columns mushed together. But it provoked lots of thoughts on a pretty regular basis which is invaluable.

Yep 100% and straight into my all time good reads. It's a fictional autobiography of a whelk picker turned music hall star, It's pretty explicit, loads of plot, historically interesting...what more could anyone want?

I'm 50/50 on whether you should read this one. It's plotty (hurrah!) and fast moving. Descends a bit, flipping between characters and scenes and grating punchlines . Really good, powerful and thought-provoking ending, which you needed the rest of the novel to really get.

Read it for quirky Irish gloom. The book won the 1996  Guardian  Fiction Prize and the 1996 South Bank Show Annual Award for Literature, is a  New York Times  Notable Book, won the  Irish Times  International Fiction Prize and the Irish Literature Prize in 1997, besides being shortlisted for the  Booker Prize  in 1996. [2]  It has been translated into 20 languages. [3] It's just ok.

100% yes, an all time favourite. Beautiful writing, matter-of-fact / shocking / blunt. I was living in Victorian England there for a while. It takes 40 hours to listen to, which I didn't realise until I'd bought it, and I'm so glad I did. Plenty of direct address to readers and grim irony.

Yes read this one. It's a series of life stories compiled by a journalist. Importance of marriage, living with abusive in-laws, importance of having a son... Makes you realise how far women in the West have come, and how much there is to do for women who are being abused as a cultual norm in many parts of the world.