Having occasionally read Gill's newspaper columns, I didn't expect to like his book, but I've been repeatedly surprised at the clever and insightful writing in each one. ( )

Done. I can pretty much predict what he will say at this point and it is not worth my time to read anymore. I just don't want to spend any more time with this writer. I got this book out of the library and it looks like it has been on the shelves for 13 years and while people check it out, they send it back. I like a clean library book more than most but sometimes the ones that are grimy are grimy because everyone who checks them out loves them to pieces. Others may disagree but I have so many interesting books to read that I am moving on. ( )

From the very beginning you know you are going to laugh out loud at least once or twice while reading Angry Island. Right in the preface Gill starts off with, "Facts are what pedantic, dull people have instead of opinions." Well okay! He later states "the national character of the English is anger." At the time of this writing he was a food and travel critic so he was required to be a little...well...critical. It was expected of him. In The Angry Island his snarky essays cover all kinds of topics from language to war memorials, from sports and animals to drinking. Needless to say, he has a well-barbed opinion about everything. My big question is this, if he was born in Scotland and considers himself Scottish and hates England, why stay there? Why didn't he move away? He has even less of an opinion about America but that (or Ireland or Australia) would have been an option for an English speaking bloke, especially one with a sharp tongue. ( )

A. A. Gill is a very biting, clever man. And he can be very cruel.
But my goodness, is he ever funny.
This is a look at what makes England England. Although he's definitely an insider, having lived there since he was a baby, he looks at England as an outsider (he was born in Scotland) and his observations make for a very enjoyable read. ( )

Writer and critic Gill was born in Scotland and considers himself wholly Scottish despite having lived in England almost his entire life. It gives him a viewpoint of being an outsider who sees both the good and the bad in the English character, with much of his time spent on the flaws.
Gill writes about city people moving to the Cotswolds to lead what they think will be romantic lives, the deeper meaning of queues, the many reasons the English will say "sorry", the anger that political correctness has caused, and most of all, the need to see themselves as fair and funny. His essay on English humor, in which he theorizes that the basis is anger, is hilarious, as he visits tiny stand-up clubs and sits through painfully unfunny comedy acts.

"All I want to do during a stand-up act is heckle. I don't want to shout obscenities, or offer wit. I just want to ask what they think they're really doing. What is it all about? Is it about being ugly and unappreciated? Is it a sort of endurance thing, like climbing a cliff? Because it's obviously got nothing to do with the audience or the money or the approbation. It's like watching someone have a cathartic moment of self-loathing, auto-humiliation. I never do heckle, of course, but I'm always on the side of the heckler. Whatever they shout, I think: they're actually paramedics trying to talk someone down." ( )