I Peig Your Pardon! List of 5 Books From School

Action comedy short has come and gone and also my need to focus the plot on cake. I'm happy I was able to finish before the Thursday deadline, being honest it's not my finest work but the point of writing 55 Genres wasn't to always right my finest work. It was just to write and have some fun.

So, cake based, Terminator inspired comedy is finished. So long!

Now onto the next genre which is due on 3rd of October. It's a Buddy Comedy! I'm looking forward to this genre. A lot of scripts I have written focus mostly on friendships as opposed to romantic relationships so I think I could really ace this one. I've taken some days off of writing so I haven't really thought about this genre. My first actual thought was to think on the word Buddy which led me to remember an old book we read in school called "Buddy".

Which leads me onto what I'm going to blog about today.

Books from my school years.

I vaguely remember them so I figure why not briefly recall the stories we had to read in school and see if anything is in them that stuck with me as I went from little genius to little 33 year old genius!

Also since I've received literally hundreds of imaginary fan emails about my blog requesting a list of top books I read, I'm going to do blog about these as a list! Isn't that exciting.

TOP 5 BOOKS FROM SCHOOL

NUMBER 5 - PEIG

Oh sweet Jesus Peig! Why would you write about your life?!

Just to clarify, being put in at number 5 might sound pretty good. Top 5! Yay! Keep in mind this is bottom of the list and honestly this was going to be a top 4 list because my mind had briefly shielded me from remembering this book.

For anyone who doesn't know, Peig is a book most children in secondary school (from about age 13 - 18) at some point would read in their Irish class. Written in Irish (Gaeilge) it is a story detailing the life of this woman Peig on a small, barren island off the coast of Ireland. It was set around the start of the 20th century and was all about the harsh life lived on the island by Peig and the few inhabitants.

This book was painfully slow. I don't want to speak badly about a real person who has now passed away (I'm betting she was a nice person) but my God she haunted me every weekend when I would dread I would have to go back into school on Monday for 40 minutes of time standing still as we read this book. What did we learn from it? Nothing. Nobody spoke Irish so we were reading a book we had no interest in, in a language we didn't understand. I could not tell you a single thing that happened in this story so I'm going to have to google it.

Actually, I apologize, I remember one thing. There were rocks on the island. Mostly rocks. And I think there were a few fishermen. That's everything I remember from it.

After my quick google search I found some interesting sentences such as:

"one of the greatest woman storytellers of recent time" (If you say so)

"Peig depicts the declining years of a traditional Irish-speaking way of life characterized by poverty, devout Catholicism, and folk memory of gang violence, the Great Hunger and the Penal Laws" (I'm 16 and really hoping that girl I like likes me too but sure, let me bury my head into the often bleak and somber story about poverty, gang violence and the Great Hunger)

"No matter what our personal view of the book might be, there is a sense that one has only to mention the name Peig Sayers to a certain age group and one will see a dramatic rolling of the eyes, or worse."

(Yes! Very excellent point from a politician speaking in the Irish Senate after, what I assume, was seeing his own child being subjected to reading it.

Painful experience this book is. My only good memory is playing Xs and Os with my friend while the teacher read it which went on into a best of 150 game.

I probably won.

NUMBER 3 - CIRCLE OF FRIENDS

The last book I remember reading in school. Maybe when I was 16 or 17? Pretty sure it was turned into a movie. So there is probably some good points to the story. Unfortunately I did not watch, nor did I actually read this. Here's the thing. The teacher would read this every day. Then tell us to read on. Then she would come back to it and skip a few pages.

So let's say. On Monday she would read to page 10.

Then ask us to read more at home.

Then Tuesday we would come in and she would ask has every read to page 20.

Sure.

Then she would read on from page 20.

You can see the error in her strategy there? I hadn't a clue what was happening. Here's what I remember.

Some woman from outside Dublin goes to college in Dublin. I think goes to college, she goes to Dublin anyway. Meets people there, possibly forms a circle with them. She fancies a guy in a shop. Someone may have joined the British to fight in WW1.

Now when I had to answer an exam question on this I had to remember someone else summarizing the story up for me. So I may have misrepresented the story back then and now. I said Mary got married (she didn't) I said Jim went to WW1 (Paul did) and Paul went back to college (Jim blew up the college).

I don't know. Maybe watch the movie?

NUMBER 3 - BUDDY

Buddy was a book we read in primary school, I was probably about 11 or 12. This is as far back a book as I can remember reading in school. Besides this I was also reading Goosebumps stories, but then who wasn't?

Buddy was about a boy with the same name. Not quite sure what his problem was, I don't think he was having a great home life. He might have been living only with his mother. I think his dad was a bit of a letdown. Buddy got his name from Buddy Holly, which his dad may have been a big fan of. Buddy ended up spending some time at some old woman's house, helping her out and keeping her company and such. I can't remember what the old woman was really getting out of it except probably she enjoyed having him around. I think she also had a problem with her neighbor so she may have used Buddy as a silent threat (leave me alone neighbor or I hurt the kid sorta threat you know?)

Either way, something happens, let's say the old woman dies *cops still investigating, neighbor has fled to Germany). Buddy ends up running away for a night or two and sleeps on a bench. Mother is probably searching for him but not very well.

I remember Buddy trying to break into someone's house at some point. He tries to get through the window but, get this, Buddy has planned the break in and doesn't just smash in the glass and hops in. No that would be amateur hour. He (brilliantly!) puts duct tape over the glass...then smashes it. Duct tape over the glass masks (hehe get it?) the noise. At 11 years of age I think this guy is a damn genius (At 33 I still hold healthy respect for him).

No clue what the purpose of it all was in the end. He probably ends back with the mother. Or maybe she died? Did she die?

Ah no, let's say she didn't. The duct tape - glass move earns it third place anyway.

NUMBER 2 - THE CAY

First book I read moving from little primary school into the big world of secondary school. And we move from Buddy and his genius duct tape to little white boy stranded on an island with an old black man and the racial intolerance the boy had grown up with.

....Jesus Christ I just wanted to get back to Pokemon!

Actually quite a decent read. I think it's around WW2 (Seriously why was my schools always trying to get me world war related fiction?). A boy is on a boat that gets hit and sinks. He winds up on a tiny island with an old black man who was also on the boat. I believe the boy is blinded which adds another wrinkle into the desperate situation. I'm not sure how awful the boy was to the old man, maybe he wasn't so bad but definitely had a bit of a mentality of being superior to him. Obviously that is swept away as the old man helps them both survive, gathering food, water and shelter together.

Some way into the book, disaster strikes as a hurricane hits the island. A real bad one that ends up killing the cool old man. I think he shielded the boy from the hurricane. Basically he "We are Groot" the situation and died. So boy now is blind, alone on the island. He manages to survive a little longer until he is picked up by some ship. A little bit of a nice ending is he gets his eyesight back and goes searching for this island to find the burial place he made for the old man. I think it ends with him standing on the small beach of it and closing his eyes to realize that he has found the correct place.

Interesting book about harsh conditions on an island. You see Peig?!! This is how you do it!!

NUMBER 1 - THE SILVER SWORD

"Now class for our next book, we will read The Silver Sword about a Jewish family travelling through Nazi occupied Europe during WW2.

(13 year old Kevin perks up at his desk) "Sword? Nazis? WWF? Let's read it!

After learning the teacher said WW2 I remember really enjoying this. About three young children who are separated from their parents. I think their father was a Jewish school teacher who was taken from them. Then the family home was bombed. The three children travel through nazi occupied land barely surviving. They meet another boy and bring him with them. They are caught and sent to the concentration camps but luckily escape. Enter into a town where the allies have recently taken control. This town was the unfortunate sight where a girl in my class was reading and kept calling the chimpanzee that escaped the zoo "Bozo the Japanese". Sorry but it was hard not to laugh as she read aloud to the class how Bozo the Japanese was screeching, jumping on the soldiers truck and ripping their window wipers off before scratching his arse with them, without the rest of my class trying not to laugh.

Away from unintentionally hilarious reading, the story was great. I really liked the characters travelling through Europe to get to their destination. I believe one of the children died, this wasn't pulling any punches. But in the end the living children, plus the boy who tagged along, reach safety and actually find their father alive. I think the mother had died long before this. So it didn't end on a complete bleak note. Major downside was The Silver Sword was not really a sword, more like a little plastic or paper pin they had in a box. It had sentimental value instead of (what I hoped was) nazi-heads-lobbing-off value.

But that's a minor point against it. That's the best book I read in school. I don't remember anything specific about it but there was some tense chapters in it escaping the nazi soldiers and hiding in plain sight too.

Done! That's your list. Next week. Five best reasons I was rejected by girls in school!!

Thanks for reading

Kevin