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Tuesday Tipplers Book Club - newbies welcome


susan_

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Poor Lady Chatterley. Nobody seemed to think she caught fire, or was racey enough to merit a ban. I must get you to read some Anais Nin.........


I volunteered to do a list of political fiction for next meeting, which will be 11 July. Meet at 8 at House of Tippler.


Here's the list.


A very British Coup - Chris Mullin (226pp)


Former steel worker Harry Perkins, has, against all the odds, led the Labour Party to a stunning victory at the general election. His manifesto includes the removal of American bases, public control of finance, and the dismantling of the newspaper monopolies. The Establishment is appalled by the prospect, and secretly decides that something must be done. As M15 conspires with the city and the press barons, Perkins the PM finds himself in a no-holds-barred battle for survival.


House of Cards - Michael Dobbs (412pp)


Chief Whip Francis Urquhart has his hand on every secret in politics - and is willing to betray them all to become prime minister.


Mattie Storin is a tenacious young political correspondent. She faces the biggest challenge of her life when she stumbles upon a scandalous web of intrigue and financial corruption at the very highest levels. She is determined to reveal the truth, but she must risk everything to do so?


Head of State - Andrew Marr (385pp)


Two corpses. A country on the edge of a political precipice. A conspiracy so bold it would make Machiavelli wince. Andrew Marr?s debut novel imagines what really might be going on behind the door of 10 Downing Street.


When a young investigative reporter is found dead on the streets of London few people notice. But when another body ? minus its head and hands ? is washed up on the banks of the Thames, its grisly condition arouses a little more interest.


1984 - George Orwell (294 pp)


1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell's prophetic, nightmare vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. "1984" is still the great modern classic "negative Utopia" - a startling original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing from the first sentence to the last four words. No one can deny this novel's power, its hold on the imagination of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions - a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.


Yevgeny Zamyatin - We (224pp)


Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is set in an urban glass city called OneState, regulated by spies and secret police. Citizens of the tyrannical OneState wear identical clothing and are distinguished only by the number assigned to them at birth. The story follows a man called D-503, who dangerously begins to veer from the 'norms' of society after meeting I-330, a woman who defies the rules. D-503 soon finds himself caught up in a secret plan to destroy OneState and liberate the city.

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    • But all those examples sell a wide variety of things,  and mostly they are well spread out along Lordship Lane. These two shops both sell one very specific thing, albeit in different flavours, and are just across the road from each other. I don't think you can compare the distribution of shops in Roman times to the distribution of shops in Lordship Lane in the twenty first century. Well, you can, but it doesn't feel very appropriate. Haa anybody asked the first shop how they feel? Are they happy about the "healthy competition" ?
    • ED is included in the 17 August closure set (or just possibly 15 August, depending on which part of the page you trust more) listed at https://metro.co.uk/2025/07/25/full-list-25-poundland-stores-confirmed-close-august-23753048/. Here incidentally are some snippets from their annual reports, at https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02495645/filing-history. 2022: " during the period we opened 41 stores and closed 43 loss-making/under-performing stores.  At the period-end we were trading from 821 stores in the UK, IoM and ROI. ... "We renogotiated 82 leases in the year, saving on average 45% versus the prior lease agreement..." 2023: "We also continued to improve our market footprint through sourcing better store locations, opening 53 and closing 51 stores during the year." 2024:  "The ex-Wilco stores acquired in the prior year have formed a core part of this strategy to expand our store network.  We favour quality over quantity and during the period we opened 84 stores and closed 71 loss-making/under-performing ones."
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    • You've got a point.  Thinking Leyland and Screwfix too but this felt different.
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