Ridiculously funny, especially if you hear it in your head as being read by various characters from The Commitments. Oh, and for those offended by foul language, you may want to take a pass on this one. ;)

I do feel guilty having this count towards my books for this year though as it is such a wee book. I'll make sure I read a fat book to balance it out. ( )

I've had some good laughs! You've got to love these two amusing Irish men who talk about most important events of 2011-2012, about soccer, the queen, etc. You've got to love Damien, the grandson of one of the two. You've got to love their Irish English dialect. Very agreeable short lecture! ( )

It's 2011, going into 2012, a tumultuous year or so in Europe affecting everyone from the great and the good down to the two old soaks in a Dublin bar. The Eurozone crisis, a succession of deaths in the pop world, visits to Ireland by the Queen and Barack Obama, the London Olympics, other sporting events, tribal loyalties---they're all up for discussion by these worldly-wise observers meeting up for the odd jar or two.

Nameless, though with individual voices, this middle-aged pair come together to chew the fat on family, fame, news and other miscellanea in short conversational vignettes. In some ways they are a modern equivalent of Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon: the spotlight is totally on them and their inconsequential chat full of what might or might not be of meaningful significance: always humorous, sometimes poignant and for us now, at a few years' remove, it's even somewhat nostalgic.

I did so enjoy these dialogues, each one headed by date and yet not dated, if you see what I mean: often they referred to that day's happenings, as reported by news outlets---the death of one of the Bee Gees, how does Facebook make its money back, the candidates for the Irish presidential election, for example---but they also might mention something personal such as the crazy exploits of a grandson or a wife raiding savings to travel to a celebrity funeral. I could hear the asides, liberally sprinkled with colourful language, almost as if I was eavesdropping at the bar or at an adjacent table. At times the scenarios became surreal (a hyena? a polar bear?!), even metafictional (Sydney, Australia, where the writer happened to be on that self-same day).

But in many ways this is a cross between a journal and an exercise in nostalgia. Why else do we record daily thoughts except to revisit them at some future date and consider Is that really what happened then? Is that how I thought at the time? In the dialogues (how I'd love to hear them as a recording or a broadcast) there is a looking back to past popular culture and received opinions, musings on current trends like tweeting or digital enhancement, all of which suggest to me the reflections of a couple of men at some notional crossroads, one that they're not quite consciously aware of but somehow know is there.

It's a state that many of us recognise right now, and no doubt will continue to recognise. Dare we hope? Can we laugh in the face of a looming disaster? Can we take refuge in bar room banter and a beverage in the faint expectation that when we leave the pub the weather will not be as bad as we feared?

Do yourself a favour when you're feeling low: pick up a copy of this slim volume and rejoice in the homespun wisdom and incidental humour of a 21st-century Estragon and Vladimir. ( )

Fuckin' brilliant.

This hilarious slim book started life as a series of Facebook posts. Doyle wanted to figure out how to use FB so he played around with creating posts as if they were daily conversations between a couple of buddies in a pub.
The book is written entirely as dialogue. It's coarse, it's rude, it's LOL funny.
Bracing and invigorating.

************************************************
(On his grandson learning poetry)
“An’ he asks me to, yeh know, look at the poem. So I get the oven gloves on an’ I give it a dekko. ‘The Road Not Taken’ – some bollix called Robert Frost. Have yeh read it, yourself?
— I won’t even say no.
— Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. Stay where yeh are; I’m just givin’ yeh a flavour o’ the thing.
— And – wha’?
— Well, this cunt – Robert Frost, like – he’s makin’ his mind up abou’ which road to take an’ he knows he’ll regret not takin’ one o’ them. An’ that’s basically it.
— He doesn’t need a fuckin’ poem for tha’. That’s life. It’s common fuckin’ sense.
— Exactly. I go for the cod, I regret the burger.
— I married the woman but I wish I could be married to her sister.
— Is tha’ true?
— Not really – no.
— Annyway. Yeh sure?
— Go on.
— So annyway, the poor little bollix – Damien, like – the grandson. He has to answer questions about it. An’ the last one – it’s really stupid now. What road do you think you should never take? An’, like, I tell him, The road to Limerick.
— Did he write tha’?
— He fuckin’ did. “An’ guess where the fuckin’ teacher comes from? An’ guess who’s been called up to the fuckin’ school, to explain himself to the fuckin’ headmaster?
— Brilliant.
— Tomorrow mornin’.
— Serves yeh righ’ for readin’ poetry.”

Excerpt From: Doyle, Roddy. “Two Pints: A Collection.”

( )

Coming in at under a 100 pages, this amusing (and occasionally hilarious) book is a collection of conversations between two men in a Dublin pub, during 2011-2012. It’s somewhat unusual in that we never learn the men’s names, there are no other characters, and the whole book is just their dialogue.

It really works too. The men make reference to the news stories of the day (the London Olympics, the deaths of Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston and others, and the whereabouts of Colonel Gadaffi – who one of the men is convinced is working as a cleaner at Dublin Airport), and discuss snippets of their lives.

A funny and enjoyable book, which can be easily read in one sitting. ( )