Checkout Girl


Book Description

My name is Anna. Im 31 years old with a degree in literature and a life story that is both completely ordinary and a little bit unusual Former cashier Anna Sam offers an insiders peek at what really goes on behind the register. In the wise and witty voice of the college-educated, underpaid retail worker, Sam comments on everything from ill-cut uniforms, to drunken customers, to Express Lane tricks. Filled with hilarious and hair-raising observations, Checkout Girl is a great gift for anyone who has ever been, or had an encounter with, a supermarket cashier.




Checkout


Book Description

This ode to the unseen supermarket checkout heroes is 'compelling reading’ [Daily Telegraph]. 'The checkout girls of Europe have found a figurehead' The Times Can you scan 800 barcodes an hour? Can you smile and say ‘thanks’ 500 times a day? Do you never need to go to the toilet? Then working at a supermarket checkout could be just the job for you. Anna Sam spent 8 years as a checkout girl. Checkout: A Life on the Tills is a witty look at what it’s really like to work in a supermarket: the relentless grind and less-than-perfect working conditions, along with people-watching and encounters with every kind of customer from the bizarre to the downright rude. Sam’s story has won her fans all over Europe, turning Checkout: A Life on the Tills into a huge international bestseller, published in 10 languages




The Checkout Girl


Book Description

The author has spent 6 months working undercover at a major supermarket chain and in that time has seen pretty much everything there is to see. From the boring and mundane to the ridiculous and absurd. All human life is here.




Checkout 19


Book Description

A NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR AND A NEW YORKER "ESSENTIAL READ" NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND VOGUE “Bennett writes like no one else. She is a rare talent, and Checkout 19 is a masterful novel.” –Karl Ove Knausgaard From the author of the “dazzling. . . . and daring” Pond (O magazine), the adventures of a young woman discovering her own genius, through the people she meets–and dreams up–along the way. In a working-class town in a county west of London, a schoolgirl scribbles stories in the back pages of her exercise book, intoxicated by the first sparks of her imagination. As she grows, everything and everyone she encounters become fuel for a burning talent. The large Russian man in the ancient maroon car who careens around the grocery store where she works as a checkout clerk, and slips her a copy of Beyond Good and Evil. The growing heaps of other books in which she loses–and finds–herself. Even the derailing of a friendship, in a devastating violation. The thrill of learning to conjure characters and scenarios in her head is matched by the exhilaration of forging her own way in the world, the two kinds of ingenuity kindling to a brilliant conflagration. Exceeding the extraordinary promise of Bennett’s mold-shattering debut, Checkout 19 is a radical affirmation of the power of the imagination and the magic escape those who master it open to us all.




The Insatiables


Book Description

“A young woman hustles to climb the corporate ladder in this darkly comedic, deeply insightful workplace drama . . . A humorous and thought-provoking tale about searching for the ever elusive brass ring.” —Kirkus Reviews Since she was a child, Halley has been desperate to escape her simple Midwestern town and reinvent herself. In Middleville, Ohio, the only way to do that is by landing a top-tier position at Findlay Global Manufacturing, Inc. Spending her days as a lowly assistant in a shared cubicle, Halley is ecstatic when a new job opening presents an extraordinary opportunity: a chance to relocate to Europe to launch a new product. For Halley Faust, this job is the epitome of the American dream, and she will do anything to get it. She soon begins to understand that ruthless guile is the only path to success, and the harder she chases after her dangerously decadent American dream, the more her dreams seem to elude her. Ultimately, Halley must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice in pursuit of a life that may very well be a fantasy. The Insatiables details a young woman’s climb up the corporate ladder and the irrevocable choices she must make to survive.




This Good Book


Book Description

‘Sometimes I wonder, if I had known that it was going to take me fourteen years to paint this painting of the Crucifixion with Douglas as Jesus, and what it would take for me to paint this painting, would I have been as happy as I was then?’ Susan Alison MacLeod, a Glasgow School of Art graduate with a dark sense of humour, first lays eyes on Douglas MacDougal at a party in 1988, and resolves to put him on the cross in the Crucifixion painting she’s been sketching out, but her desire to create ‘good’ art and a powerful, beautiful portrayal means that a final painting doesn’t see the light of day for fourteen years. Over the same years, Douglas’s ever-more elaborately designed urine-based installations bring him increasing fame, prizes and commissions, while his modelling for Susan Alison, who continues to work pain and suffering on to the canvas, takes place mostly in the shadows. This Good Book is a wickedly funny, brilliantly observed novel that spins the moral compass and plays with notions of creating art. 'A novel about Glasgow, about art, and about obsession. This Good Book will have you gripped from the opening chapter to its disturbing conclusion. Iain Hood is an original new voice in Scottish fiction.' Colette Paul




Refereeing Identity


Book Description

What "national pastime" novels tell us about our country.




Poker Madness


Book Description

If you are a losing limit Texas hold 'em player and are tired of losing or if you make money playing limit Texas hold 'em, but you want to make more money or if you want to play limit Texas hold 'em for a living, this is the book for you! I was already a winning limit Texas hold 'em player when I decided to turn professional, but I was not prepared mentally nor was I good enough to make the kind of money I needed to play poker for a living. I learned in a hurry though. Most of what I needed to know to be really successful I learned at the "school of hard knocks." The lessons at this school are expensive ones. Fortunately, you are not going to have pay for these "hard knock" lessons like I had to, instead for the price of one small pot that you would have won if you had read this book first, you will learn what you need to know in order to become a successful professional limit Texas hold 'em player.




Alice Asks the Big Questions


Book Description

For readers who love A Man Called Ove and the works of Alain de Botton comes the story of how a young woman's project to help a friend launches her on a journey of self-discovery, from international bestselling author Lauren Gounelle. Alice is very good at her job. She's on the rise at a prominent PR firm, and there is no image-management disaster she can't fix. But when her dearest friend, a parish priest in a charming French village, becomes depressed about his dwindling number of parishioners, she may finally have met her biggest challenge. Though an avowed atheist, Alice is determined to apply her skills to the problem. She plunges into research, immersing herself in the world of spirituality, from Christianity to Hinduism, from self-empowerment seminars to the Tao Te Ching. In her quest to understand how thinkers through the centuries have tried to answer the age-old questions of existence, Alice uncovers an astonishing truth--almost lost to time--that will forever change the way she thinks about humankind's place in the universe, and her own. In this moving and captivating novel, Laurent Gounelle takes us on a journey of spiritual and intellectual discovery that is sure to surprise and enlighten.




Happy Cruelty Day!


Book Description

For everyone looking to find a little extra magic in a life with little to celebrate, Happy Cruelty Day! is here. Beginning on January 1, this book features 365 new holidays, each accompanied by a strange, dark and humorous short story explaining the day you woke up in and how to celebrate it. These 365 daily doses of delight, perversion, and nonsense include "Hire Someone Attractive To Pretend To Love You Day," "Hang on to Your Wide-Eyed Innocence Day," "Sit in Abject Terror Day," and, of course, "Cruelty Day." Far more than just a humor book, Happy Cruelty Day! is like a daily instructional manual written by a psychopath. On one page, the book has you joining a community crime watch group in an effort to make friends (it won't work). Flip the page, and you'll find the details of your attempt to rescue your husband from a POW camp (you'll fail). Flip it again, and Happy Cruelty Day! will have important insight into how best to befriend a runaway teen (offer her some soup). These holidays celebrate everything from that pivotal point in your life when everything changes, to the day you're not going to do anything but sit on the edge of your bed and get very drunk. When people realize they've fallen in love, or when they realize their love was just a lie. And of course, when love of whatever incarnation brings an index finger to clench tight around the trigger of a gun. Raw, ridiculous, and laugh-out-loud funny, this is a sharp-edged satire on the subtleties, shallowness, and stupidity of daily life.