A collection of all-new, original short stories by 12 writers of today. Every copy sold benefits eduction for children with autism.

My favourite story was Nipple Jesus by Nick Hornby.

NB! The cover in my copy is different from the one that's displayed here!

Reserved for seethroughfaith.

Got this from Savotar at the BX meeting this afternoon. thank you I'm looking forward to reading this one

I'm finally getting round to reading this! I'm not a great fan of short stories to be honest - so it'll be interesting to see what I make of this book.

That said I loved what Nick Hornby says right at the beginning in the introduction

soon after I had decided to ask some writers I knew and admired to contribute to this book, I read an interview with Bono in the Guardian, in which he talked about the Jubilee 2000 campaign, aimed at reducing the Third World's debt to the West.

'It's bigger than anything I will ever have anything to do with again as long as I live,' he said. 'So if I can open doors simply because I'm a celebrity, then I'll use that for all it's worth.' So far, his effort have helped to remove $100 billion from the tab.

The interview brought me up shot. I'm not Bono, of course, and I suspect that it would be considerably harder for me to open the door of the Oval office than it was for him, but even so... Third World Debt! $100 billion! Treehouse, the charity to which you have just donated a pound (unless you've been sent a review copy, in which case you can send dome money using the form at the back of this book), is a small -at the moment, a very small - school for severely autisitic children, and one of it's pupils is my son. Luckily I don't have to justify myself to you, because all you've done is buy a book that you wanted to read, a book containing a dozen or so new stories by some of your favourite authors, and your donation was, I hope, incidental. But I certainly owe those authors an explanation, and so this introduction is aimed at them. You can read it if you like, but I don't mind if you skip it. You'll get your money's-worth anyway.

You can read more about TreeHouse here

Bono and his campaign Make poverty history is an inspiration to us all isn't he? I love his passion! But you and I got this book free - that's the beauty of bookcrossing - but I can, if I want, and so can you - support Treehouse or any other charity we see fit. And it's important we do so. It's also important we lobby our local governments for better education for all - including those who are autistic, those who have Down's syndrome, the deaf, blind or those who are disabled in some other way. Let's do our bit to make the society we live in a better, brighter place!

well ... I'm exactly half way through this book - six stories down, six more to go. At this stage I have to say I haven't particularly enjoyed any of them. If what the Guardianwrote is true An excellent colletion [and] a very good sampler of contemporary literature then I'm sad to say that in my estimation literature has gone down a lot in the move from the modern to post-modern era.

I think it's strange really Nick Horby himself is a great author - and this collection has been pulled together for such a good cause - why then is this book so drab and depressing?

Hopeful that the second half will be more humourous and colourful. I've not been impressed so far.

Edited March 24th

I wasn't too keen on a lot of these stories - to be honest I find myself wondering if I really like contemporary literature at all. To be fair the short story isn't my genre - I much prefer novels or biographies - there's something about short stories which leave me a bit dissatisfied I think.

Of these 12 stories, like Savotar I think Nipple Jesus was the best, but I'd also commend Catholic Guilt if only because it really made me think. I loved the Scottish accent - and though the topic was really distasteful in many ways - I found the idea of the eternal punishment very interesting.

too much use of the f-word though - more or less throughout the whole collection. I must be getting old!

This book is now on its way to Chania!

Finnish Bookring - I will donate 1€ Treehouse (charity for education of children with autism in the UK) for everyperson in this ring who:

1. Signs up on the thread
2. JEs when they get the book
3. Reads it
4. JEs when they have finished saying which short story they enjoyed most and why
5. Forwards the book to the next on the ring.

My financial support of the Treehouse ring is limited to a maximum of 50€ and only applies to those who sign up for, read, journal and release Speaking with the Angel within 2008 (ie before 1.1.09!) i.e. I will pay 1€ for each person in the ring in 2008. This is limited to Finland at the time being!

7€ raised so far!


see-through faith (Tku)
Chania (Kokkola)
Bookwormess (Hki)
Purina (Hki)<
Hippolein (Hki)
hallonhakkaaja (Kuopio)
Rita 80 (Kangasalo, Tre)
Em64 (Tre)
Perdue (Espoo) <= Here. November 2008
Tintti (Jyväskylä)

... back to stf (Tku)

I fot this book today, thaks SFT for the great bookring! I'll look forward to read this, as there are stories by many writers that I like, especially Zadie Smith and Nick Hornby.

Read it! Well, let's see. I didn't like all of the stories, but there were couple that were quite good.
At first, I did like the Last Requests by Giles Smith - I think the combination of such an ordinary thing as cooking dinner and such a terrible thing as death penalty worked quite well.
Then I also like Peter Shelley by Patrick Marber. There was kind of tenderness in it, I think.
But also my favourite was NippleJesus by Nick Hornby. And why? Well, at least it made me think. It was also quite of funny in sarcastic way. The main character was sympathetic bloke and I felt really sorry for him at the end.

Sending this to Bookwormess now.

Thank you stf and Chania, the book arrived on Thursday. I just got too busy to make a journal. Have one book ahead of this, most likely I'll be able to start during the next week.

Edit April 12:
Already started. Now, after couple of stories, I find the book quite ok. It's not quite as catchy as I thought it would be.

Finally finished. Some of the stories bored me, totally. And some I did't really get..
My favourite was Helen Fielding's Luckybitch. I thought it was clever, story about old "Bridget Jones". It was funny how she resisted on being old or having lost memory.

Thank you fro the experience. I'll give this to Purina when we next meet, if not soon then I'll mail it to her.

Got the book from bookwormess yesterday, thank you!

Finished it this morning. Some of the stories were good, some not good at all. Zadie Smith's story was probably the worst, there was no point in it at all. Colin Firth wasn't too bad, but you could see he's not a professional writer. My favourites were Helen Fielding, Nick Hornby and Giles Smith. I agree with the people above, why did the stories have to be so bleak? Robert Harris' story was the only one with a little humour to it.
The book is going to Hippolein next.

Received this book at the meeting this evening in Helsinki (raining, raining, everybody wet...)
Will try to read it as soon as possible ;-)

Have to tell honestly that I didn't like most of the stories. Can be because I haven't been sleeping that well lately, or because they just are not my type of stories, I have no idea.

My favorite story was written by Colin Firth: The Department of Nothing.
At least there I could feel a bit like "at home", a story with few persons in it, talking about one thing only, and trying to make it understandable to all. Felt a bit sorry at the end, the boy will never get out of Nothing ....

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Speaking with Angel is going in the mail today, direction halonhakkaaja.
Hope it arrives fast and safely!

Speaking with Angel arrived today, so it was fast and safely. Thanks stf for this lovely idea and thanks hippolein for posting it forward. I've already started to read it and I believe it will continue it's travel quite soon.

Excellent stories! I really enjoyed all of them. My favourite one was the Department of Nothing by Colin Firth. I've previously read only books by Nick Hornby and Roddy Doyle but now I'm interested to read more by all of them. The book is next going to Rita80.

The book arrived today. Thank you halonhakkaaja! I like the cover. I'll start with it as soon as I've finished the book I'm reading now.

Mostly I didn't like the stories, they were boring to me, but there were few exceptions. I think the best story was Peter Shelley by Patrick Marber. It was fresh and I really liked the dialogue and the humour of the kids. Other stories I liked were The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank and Last Requests by Giles Smith which really had an interesting topic.

The book will go next to Em64! And thank you for this ring!

The book arrived yesterday. I'll be off to the UK tomorrow morning so will probably start reading this next week when I'm back.

I really wanted to like the stories in this book and it started well as my favourite story was PMQ (I would love to see it in a BBC series with Nigel Hawthorne playing the PM). Nipplejesus was also quite good but the rest was unfortunately not much to my liking. The idea of the book was very good though so I'm happy that I joined. The book was mailed yesterday to Perdue so she should receive it soon. Thanks for organising the ring, stf!

I received the book a few days ago. Thanks, em64, for sending it my way! Sorry it took me a little time to journal it, I've been quite busy these past couple of days.

Well I have to agree with some of you that I didn't like most of the stories. Some of the crudities were just a bit too much for me - I mean, love scenes are fine in fiction targeted at adults, but using sexual themes and swear words to make charactes more approachable and down to earth is just too easy, and it happened again and again. My favourite story was probably The Slave by Roddy Doyle: I liked the way it depicted the loss of sense of security from the point of view of an average father of a family in what I imagined was suburban Dublin. Even in that story I skipped a page or two when it was about watching pornography (I'd really not want to know any details). I really liked the structure of the story, though, how it was like from the point of view of an interviewer we never get to know anything about.

***

I really like seethroughfaith's idea of donating a euro for every participant, since it addresses the often heard idea that bookcrossing could hurt book sales (which I don't fully buy into...). I'm fairly sure many Finnish bookcrossers who have taken part in this ring wouldn't have read the book (let alone heard from TreeHouse) hadn't there been a book ring.

I like seethroughfaith's idea so much that I want to do the same: I'll donate to a Finnish autism/asperger's society the same amount of money that stf raises. They have a school project going on in Bangladesh, and that's where the money will go. If life is as hard for British autistic kids and their parents as Hornby tells us, I can't even imagine what it must be like in a developing country.

At first I was worried that someone might think that I'm trying to steal stf's thunder, but I'm absolutely sure that such a thought wouldn't even cross stf's own mind.
Besides, I kept the book for over a month, I *should* pay a small fine for that! ;)

Here's more information about the Bangladesh project in English and in Finnish and how to donate (in Finnish only, and scroll down the page if you just want to donate, not buy Christmas cards).

--------

*edit 25 Jan 09*

The 12 euros were donated today. This fundraising campaign for the project in Bangladesh will continue up untill 19 Sept 2009. Their permission for fundraising for this period of time has been officially granted and is applicable for fundraising in Finland except for the Åland Islands. The project also gets funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Will be mailed to Tintti today.

The book arrived today - thanks!

It's interesting that so many previous readers didn't like the book much - I think almost all the stories were excellent! It's really hard to name a favourite. The only one that I didn't like was Colin Firth's. I found it so boring that I just had to skip some pages. Melissa Bank and Zadie Smith were okay, but not great (I was actually surprised by how much I liked Bank's story, as I absolutely hated "The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing"). Dave Eggers was weird but interesting.

A few previous readers mentioned that the stories were bleak or depressing, but I found many of them to be quite humorous or funny. For example PMQ, Luckybitch, Walking into the Wind and Catholic Guilt made me chuckle. Maybe my sense of humour is a bit special. :)

If I must choose just one favourite, it would be Catholic Guilt (You Know You Love It) by Irwin Welsh. The Scottish accent is great, and the story is just hilarious.

Thanks for the ring, stf! If there are no more participants, I'll send the book home soon.

Jumping in here (though the book is still with Tintti so hope this doesn't mess things up too much!)

There are two names on the UK/EU ring so far

Tintti <== book is here 20.11.08

Kirstykat (UK) http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/kirstykat
Tregossip (UK) http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Tregossip


stf

I'll add another names here as people sign up.

same rules apply.

Please JE when you get the book and after you've read it say which short story you liked the most and why. For each person on the ring I'll contribute 1€ to treehouse charity for autism.

raised 10€ to date (and will almost certainly make this a donation in pounds when we tally up at the end of this year).

Note too that Perdue has kindly offered to match the amount (in euros) raised in 2008 to "donate to a Finnish autism/asperger's society ... They have a school project going on in Bangladesh, and that's where the money will go. If life is as hard for British autistic kids and their parents as Hornby tells us, I can't even imagine what it must be like in a developing country."

Just received from Lorna as part of a Bookring raising money for Autism.

Thank you for sparing this book. I will read it and get it on its way ASAP. Looking forward to reading it!

I really did enjoy this book, except for one or two stories that I felt were lazily written with unnecessary swearing. I don't mind the odd bit of swearing here and there, but if used to often I feel it brings the author down as they should be using the amazing power of the English Language to express themselves. Granted, some poetical licence is necessary, but this is not to be abused.

My favourite short story has to be 'The Department of Nothing' by Colin Firth. I was in hysterics,I couldn't help myself!!

Thank you again to Lorna/STF for setting this bookring up.

I will be posting this on to Tregossip tomorrow - hopefully it will arrive in time for Christmas...

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

On it's way to Tregossip.

Enjoy!

Arrived early this morning 22/12/08 and only just found the time to read Nick Hornby's intro - very moving.

It seems I'm last on the list for this book and just squeaked into the 31/12/08 deadline for donations.

So what to do with it once I've read it? The donation idea for this charity is too good to just wild release the book.
If there is no one after me, I'll take my time reading it (appols as a busy time of the year) and think about doing something similar in UK/EU in 2009.

Happy Christmas one and all and wishing you and your's good health for 2009

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Good luck book and happy travels