SYNOPSIS:
What’s on your Becket List?
What really grates on you?
What gets you ranting at the television?
Henry Becket decided to compile a list of things that could be put right/restored/replaced to help rid the world of unrighteous anger. A list of things that make him (and he suspects many, many others) angry. Turns out there’s so much to be angry about!
This is a hilarious, witty guide that will find a good home in many a downstairs loo library. It’s the ultimate gift for the grumpy git in your life. It’s also a wonderful form of escapism from what might be perceived as the REAL issues of the day. After all, there’s nothing like a pandemic to make you realise you miss not being able to complain about the price of a packet of crisps in a pub, or about the wobbly table leg in a restaurant… ah, those were the days!
An A to Z of First World Problems is… just that.
The Becket List is a not entirely serious compendium of 'First World Problems' - the sort of stuff that drives us round the bend on a daily basis. How is it that atonal music, bus stations, cling-film and coat-hangers can b*gger us up so comprehensively? Or passport control people, Chuggers, email strings, fake candles, loud eating, predictive text, or just about anything you'll find in a typical hotel bedroom?
Embracing both the inanimate - from allen keys to rawlplugs - and the animated (well, in some cases) - from your fellow-travellers to every third-rate waiter who ever walked the earth - this book is essential for your sanity. As such, this comprehensive A to Z provides a signal service to humanity. A collection of entries about many of the things in life that, whilst essentially trivial, day after day contrive to p*ss you off. In the greater scheme of things they don’t matter a damn, but in the context of advanced civilisation they take on a huge significance. The book is a both an important resource for future social historians and a call to action. It’s also, mostly, really rather silly.
MY THOUGHTS:
There is something so entertaining about listening to other people's pet peeves and it is often the most simplest or smallest of things that drives one person crazy with annoyance. The Becket List is exactly that. Henry Becket has compiled a list of things that drive him round the bend, which in the purest form is downright hilarious. From Bum Bags to Loud Keyboard Usage there is a whole host of annoyances that will have you either roaring with laughter, nodding your head in agreement or looking at the subject with new eyes. The Becket List is like a grumpy man's guide to the world, think Victor Meldrew or Karl Pilkington. There is something so compelling about moany men and their take on things that you can't help chuckling along.
As our world becomes a lot more stressful and busier, and with the current unprecedented circumstances that we find ourselves in, this book allows a gentle release from all that we face and a moment to have a good laugh. It is a book that you can dip in and out of, whether you have a spare hour or just a moment or two. You can use the contents page to search for a desired subject or just open the book at a random page, either way I guarantee you will find something entertaining or humorous in those open pages.
Many thanks to Helen from Literary PR for inviting me on the blog tour of The Becket List. This book would make the perfect gift or stocking filler this Christmas and no doubt open up endless discussions and much laughter amongst family members as you pour through the book, although perhaps best to not do so around the dinner table!
AUTHOR:
Henry Becket was one of that curious breed, a Choral Exhibitioner at Cambridge, where he read... books. And magazines.
He then spent decades nurturing what a head hunter once described as an iffy CV – as a Westminster speechwriter, lobbyist, wine merchant, copywriter, ad agency supremo (industry-speak for MD), and writer/director of innumerable eminently forgettable TV commercials in an awful lot of languages.
He is lucky enough to have an impressively large family, and is also pretty obsessed with sailing, skiing, claret, churches and hillwalking, among other things. Oh, and the foibles of the world around him