Life Stories of a Glasgow Boy

Life Stories of a Glasgow Boy
Author: Edward Norton
Publisher: FriesenPress
Total Pages: 113
Release: 2021-12-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1039131999

At the age of fifteen, Edward Norton left school to become an apprentice ladies’ hairdresser at the top salon in Glasgow, Scotland. A few years later, he was competing in hairdressing competitions, winning awards (including a Scottish national championship), and teaching others. Emigrating to Canada, he started his own successful hairdressing business. He’s now been a Master Hair Stylist for sixty years. Along the way, he spent a couple of nights in jail (for two very different reasons), owned racehorses, gambled with a noted “bad guy” at a boxing event, made a couple of memorable trips to Belfast during the Troubles, coached children’s soccer, and even hosted a television cooking show. At the age of seventy-eight, he continues to work—to pay for his golf, he says. And now, he’s done something he once would have thought impossible: he’s written a book. With humor and warmth, Edward writes about his many and varied life experiences, “some good and some not so good.” His goal is simple: to inspire readers to make the best of what life gives them—just as he has. In his introduction, Edward says, “I will try to make it fun to read and maybe help you along with your journey through your life.” And that’s exactly what he’s done. This is Edward Norton’s story, his way.

Night Song of the Last Tram - A Glasgow Childhood

Night Song of the Last Tram - A Glasgow Childhood
Author: Robert Douglas
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2007-10-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1444719351

This is a wonderfully colourful and deeply poignant memoir of growing up in a 'single end' - one room in a Glasgow tenement - during and immediately after the Second World War. Although young Robert Douglas's life was blighted by the cruel if sporadic presence of his father, it was equally blessed by the love of his mother, Janet. While the story of their life together is in some ways very sad, it is also filled with humorous and happy memories. "Night Song of The Last Tram" is a superb evocation of childhood and of a Glasgow of trams and tenements that has long since disappeared.

The Real Gorbals Story

The Real Gorbals Story
Author: Colin MacFarlane
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2011-07-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1780571682

Colin MacFarlane was born in the Gorbals in the 1950s, 20 years after the publication of No Mean City, the classic novel about pre-war life in what was once Glasgow's most deprived district. He lived in the same street as its fictional 'razor king', Johnnie Stark, and subsequently realised that a lot of the old characters represented in the book were still around as late as the 1960s. Men still wore bunnets and played pitch and toss; women still treated the steamie as their social club. The razor gangs were running amok once again, and filth, violence, crime, rats, poverty and drunkenness abounded, just like they did in No Mean City. MacFarlane witnessed the last days of the old Gorbals as a major regeneration programme, begun in 1961, was implemented, and, as a street boy, he had a unique insight into a once great community in rapid decline. In this engrossing book, MacFarlane reveals what it was really like to live in the old Gorbals.

Brenda's Beaver Needs a Barber

Brenda's Beaver Needs a Barber
Author: Bimisi Tayanita
Publisher:
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2016-12-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9781946178046

Sumguyen has always had a thick mane of hair, in the summer of 2016 he decided to grow a beard. Deep into month three he started to look like an armpit with eyeballs.It was a sultry August night in Old Town Scottsdale as Bimisi and Sumguyen made their way from one bar to another. They took pause to to enjoy the rhythms of a homeless crooner who was soulfully picking his guitar. When Sumguyen threw a five into his tip jar the artist looked up, thanked him with a nod and said, "That is a beautiful beard. My friend Brenda has a beard just like that, but hers doesn't talk."A fair amount of beer sprayed from Bimisi's nose...and just like that they had their subject matter for the final book of season one. Brenda's Beaver Needs a Barber is the fifth of five books that make up Reach Around Books Season One.

Girl in Pieces

Girl in Pieces
Author: Kathleen Glasgow
Publisher: Ember
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1101934743

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A haunting, beautiful, and necessary book."—Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she’s already lost more than most people do in a lifetime. But she’s learned how to forget. The broken glass washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don’t have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you. Every new scar hardens Charlie’s heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge. A deeply moving portrait of a girl in a world that owes her nothing, and has taken so much, and the journey she undergoes to put herself back together. Kathleen Glasgow's debut is heartbreakingly real and unflinchingly honest. It’s a story you won’t be able to look away from. And don’t miss Kathleen Glasgow's novels You’d Be Home Now and How to Make Friends with the Dark, both raw and powerful stories of life.

Shuggie Bain

Shuggie Bain
Author: Douglas Stuart
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2020-02-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1529019303

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE WINNER OF 'BOOK OF THE YEAR' AND 'DEBUT OF THE YEAR' AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER 'An amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love.' – The judges of the Booker Prize 'Douglas Stuart has written a first novel of rare and lasting beauty.' – The Observer 'Shuggie Bain means so much to me. It is such a powerfully written story . . . I love a heartbreak book but there is so much love within this one, particularly between Shuggie and his mother Agnes.' – Dua Lipa It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life, dreaming of greater things. But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and as she descends deeper into drink, her children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest. Shuggie is different, he is clearly no’ right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place. Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. For readers of A Little Life and Angela's Ashes, it is a heartbreaking novel by a brilliant writer with a powerful and important story to tell. 'A heartbreaking novel' – The Times 'Tender and unsentimental . . . The Billy Elliot-ish character of Shuggie . . . leaps off the page.' – Daily Mail

A Life In Pictures

A Life In Pictures
Author: Alasdair Gray
Publisher: Canongate Books
Total Pages: 931
Release: 2010-10-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1847679625

Alasdair Gray is Scotland's best known polymath. Born in 1934 in Glasgow, he graduated in design and mural art from the Glasgow School of Art in 1957. After decades of surviving by painting and writing TV and radio plays, his first novel, the loosely autobiographical, blackly fantastic Lanark, opened up new imaginative territory for such varied writers as Jonathan Coe, A.L. Kennedy, James Kelman, Janice Galloway and Irvine Welsh. It led Anthony Burgess to call him 'the most important Scottish writer since Sir Walter Scott'. His other published books include 1982 Janine, Poor Things (winner of the Whitbread Award), The Book of Prefaces, The Ends of our Tethers and Old Men in Love. In this book, with reproductions of his murals, portraits, landscapes and illustrations, Gray tells of his failures and successes which have led his pictures to be accepted by a new generation of visual artists.

Glasgow: The Autobiography

Glasgow: The Autobiography
Author: Alan Taylor
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2016-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857909185

Glasgow: The Autobiography tells the story of the fabled, former Second City of the British Empire from its origins as a bucolic village on the rivers Kelvin and Clyde, through the tumult of the Industrial Revolution to the third millennium. Including extracts from an astonishing array of contributors from Daniel Defoe, Dorothy Wordsworth and Dr Johnson to Evelyn Waugh and Dirk Bogarde, it also features the writing of bred-in-thebone Glaswegians such as Alasdair Gray, Liz Lochhead, James Kelman and 2020 Booker prize-winner Douglas Stuart. The result is a varied and vivid portrait of one of the world's great cities in all its grime and glory – a place which is at once infuriating, inspiring, raucous, humourful and never, ever dull.

Divided City

Divided City
Author: Theresa Breslin
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2013-03-14
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1408181576

Nominated for ten UK book awards, Theresa Breslin's hit novel tells of how two young boys - one Rangers fan, one Celtic fan - are drawn into a secret pact to help a young asylum seeker in a city divided by prejudice. Now adapted for the stage by Martin Travers, the play has already been produced to great acclaim at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre. Graham and Joe just want to play football and be selected for the new city team, but a violent attack on Kyoul, an asylum seeker, changes everything when they find themselves drawn into a secret pact to help the victim and his girlfriend Leanne. Set in Glasgow at the time of the Orange Order walks, Divided City is a gripping tale about two boys and how they must find their own way forward in a world divided by difference. This educational edition has been prepared by national Drama in Secondary English experts Ruth Moore and Paul Bunyan. Published in Methuen Drama's Critical Scripts series the book: - meets the curriculum requirements for English at KS3, GCSE and Scottish CfE. - features detailed, structured schemes of work utilising drama approaches to improve literary and language analysis - places pupils' understanding of the learning process at the heart of the activities - will help pupils to boost English GCSE success and develop high-level skills at KS3 - will save teachers considerable time devising their own resources.

Put Tony's Nuts in Your Mouth!

Put Tony's Nuts in Your Mouth!
Author: Bimisi Tayanita
Publisher:
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2016-12-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9781946178039

Curious but not concerned as to where they would sleep that night, Bimisi and Sumguyen aimlessly meandered down the cobblestone calles of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. As the sun set over the Pacific they found themselves sequestered by a weathered native peddler who mimed towards his cart and through his guttural broken english encouraged them to "Put Tony's nuts in your mouth..."60 pesos later, as a cold cerveza washed down the first of Tony's nuts,pen was put to parchment and book four of season one came to be.Put Tony's Nuts in Your Mouth is the fourth of five books that make up Reach Around Books Season One.