Giddy Old School

Giddy Old School
Author: Eilidh Nisbet
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2011-03-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467006297

How were your schooldays – happy, horrible, or just a bit crazy? For one teenager, writing in Austerity Britain sixty years ago, they were a mixture of all three, but it was the craziness that stood out in retrospect. Eastwood School, near Glasgow, went through a very lively period in the years following the Second World War. Many of the staff were young men not long back from the forces, often as high-spirited as the pupils they strove to teach. Yet somehow, they earned respect from these rowdy pupils. Relations between staff and pupils were generally good, with the teachers emerging as the real heroes of the piece. Many things were done differently in the days before calculators, computers, mobile phones and iPods. Ball-point pens and television existed, but not many people had either, and even paper was in short supply. Other aspects no doubt remain much the same. All school life is chronicled here: high jinks to alleviate the boredom of classes; the giggling girls and the earnest students; the blushes of embarrassment; the dramas and disasters of exams; hopes and disappointments; crushes on teachers; the excitement of concerts, dances and sports events, which included annual contests of pupils versus staff in hockey, cricket, badminton and tennis. For many, the “Staff Hockey” was the highlight of the school year. Food, of course, was still rationed, and the dinner-ladies did not have an easy life. All these activities, interwoven with the on-going saga of the disintegrating bicycle and keen observation of teachers and fellow-pupils, are linked by one pupil’s odyssey from gawky fourteen-year-old “new girl”, desperately trying to fit in, to senior student eager to move on to the next stage of life. This account is an edited version of the author’s diaries from 1948 to 1951. Irreverent illustrations were added at a later date.

Old School

Old School
Author: Tobias Wolff
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2004-08-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0375701494

The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself. The agency of revelation is the school literary contest, whose winner will be awarded an audience with the most legendary writer of his time. As the fever of competition infects the boy and his classmates, fraying alliances, exposing weaknesses, Old School explores the ensuing deceptions and betrayals with an unblinking eye and a bottomless store of empathy. The result is further evidence that Wolff is an authentic American master.

My Weird School Daze #9: Mrs. Lizzy Is Dizzy!

My Weird School Daze #9: Mrs. Lizzy Is Dizzy!
Author: Dan Gutman
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010-04-27
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0061991996

The weirdness never stops! Help! With the Recess Enrichment Program, A.J. and the gang have to take classes even during recess! The new teacher, Mrs. Lizzy, teaches how to make balloon animals, how to compost worms, and lots of other weird useless skills that nobody would ever want to know in a million hundred years!

Old School Rap and Hip-hop

Old School Rap and Hip-hop
Author: Chris Woodstra
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2008
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780879309169

Contains brief reviews of over five hundred old school rap and hip-hop albums, as well as albums from the 1960s and 70s that provided inspiration for the development of rap; arranged alphabetically, some with cover art.

Fab

Fab
Author: Howard Sounes
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2010-10-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0306819384

Howard Sounes, the bestselling author of Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan and Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life, turns his considerable reporting and storytelling skills to one of the most famous, talented—and wealthiest—men alive: Paul McCartney. Fab is the first exhaustive biography of the legendary musician; it tells Sir Paul's whole life story, from childhood to present day, from working-class Liverpool beginnings to the cultural phenomenon that was The Beatles to his many solo incarnations. Fab is the definitive portrait of McCartney, a man of contradictions and a consummate musician far more ruthless, ambitious, and moody than his relaxed public image implies. Based on original research and more than two hundred new interviews, Fab also reveals for the first time the full story of his two marriages, romances, family feuds, phenomenal wealth, and complex relationships with his fellow ex-Beatles.

Old School

Old School
Author: Tobias Wolff
Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2005
Genre: Authors
ISBN: 9780747574651

It's 1960, in America, at a prestigious boys' public school, a place of privilege that places great emphasis on its democratic ideals. A teenage boy in his final year, on a scholarship, has learned to fit in with his adoptive tribe while concealing as much as possible about himself and his background. Class is ever present, but the only acknowledged snobbery is a literary snobbery. These boys' heroes are writers - Fitzgerald, Cummings, Kerouac. They want to be writers themselves, and the school has a tradition whereby once a term big names from the literary world are invited to visit. A contest takes place with the boys admitting a piece of writing and the winner having a private audience with the visitor. When it is announced that Hemingway will be the next to come to the school, competition among the boys is intense, and the morals the school and the boys hold dear - honour, loyalty and friendship - are tested. No one writes more astutely than Wolff about the process by which character is formed, and here he illuminates the irresistible strength, even the violence, of the self-creative urge. This is a novel that, in its power and its beauty, in its precision and its humanity, is at once contemporary and timeless.

An Old-Fashioned Girl

An Old-Fashioned Girl
Author: Louisa May Alcott
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2023-07-04
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 166592618X

Over the course of summers spent with a much wealthier friend, a country girl struggles to stay true to herself and her values in this tender story from Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women! When fourteen-year-old Polly Milton goes to stay with her friend Fanny for the summer, she finds that the Shaw family’s wealthy city life couldn’t be more different from her country upbringing. With her plain clothes and more practical interests, Polly is out of place among a crowd focused on following the latest trends and presenting the right image. One of the few people who doesn’t pressure her to fit in is Fanny’s brother, Tom, but he’s also one of the most annoying people Polly has ever met. Over the next six years, Polly’s annual visits challenge the Shaw family to question their values even as Polly feels pressured to conform to societal expectations, though she remains old-fashioned at heart. As Polly navigates the highs and lows of growing up, friendship, love, and fortune, her greatest challenge is being true to herself.