This month, we're reading Tish's choice of book, "Logging Off" by Nick Spalding, £1, 321 pages
An "hilarious, uplifting story about one man’s attempt to live a tech free life. Andy Bellows is in a right state. Plagued with insomnia, anxiety and neckache, he’s convinced there’s something seriously wrong with him. And the worst thing is that his doctor agrees. The diagnosis: Andy is in the grip of a self-destructive addiction to technology—he just cannot put that bloody mobile phone down.
Texting, tweeting, gaming and online dating—technology rules Andy’s life. His phone even monitors his bowel movements. So how will he cope when he’s forced to follow doctor’s orders and step away from all of his beloved screens?
When he loses his precious digital window on the world, Andy discovers just how bewildering and scary living an analogue life can be. And when his sixty-day detox hits the headlines—making him a hero to suffering technophiles everywhere—Andy is sorely tempted to pack it all in and escape in the nearest Uber.
Can he get himself out of this mess, and work out how to live a better, technologically balanced life…without consulting Google even once?"
If we have time at the end and if anyone fancies reading this novella that Sandra's already started, we could also have a short discussion on this one:-
"Western Lane" by Chetna Maroo, 99p, 166 pages
"A deeply moving novel about grief, sisterhood and a teenage girl's struggle to transcend herself.
Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo.
But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe."
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