The Becket List by Henry Becket

 

The Becket List by Henry Becket.

Published 1st October 2020 by Red Door Press.

From the cover of the book:

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 bugger us up so comprehensively? Or passport control people, modern poetry, 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.

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Welcome to the world of Henry Becket, and the A to Z guide of all the things that drive him round the bend - and there are hundreds of them! 

Most people have pet hates, I know I do, however it is rare for someone to feel the compulsion to write a whole book listing all those pesky things that drive them to despair... every... single... day.. but to be honest, Henry has such a lot of things that drive him mad, from Absurd Beards all the way to Zeitgeist, I can see why this has come about - as his wife says, he is "so angry, about so many things. ALL the time".

But have no fear! Although this is a book full of pet peeves, Henry Becket 'rants' about them in such a humorous, sardonic and tongue-firmly-in-cheek kind of way that this book is actually very entertaining to read. You will probably find yourself nodding along and agreeing with his views on many of these annoying things about modern life, and chuckling at the way he talks about them. but you would have to be a serious grump to agree with them all, I think! Sorry, Henry...

This is exactly the kind of book that makes the ideal present for the whingers in your life (the festive season is approaching after all), and it can easily be read in a single sitting or dipped into at leisure - or indeed, with the use of the helpfully supplied alphabetical list of contents at the front, be perused by going straight to the very pages talking about those favourite irritating subjects/people. 

Lots of fun, with amusing illustrations by Tony Husband to enjoy alongside Henry Becket's words, and not to be taken too seriously, I hope, but them I am the kind of person who rearranges the dishwasher after it has been (helpfully) loaded by someone else! See: Reloading the dishwasher for no good reason, page 180, for more!

The Becket List is available to buy from your favourite book retailer now, or from Bookshop.org HERE.

Thank you to Henry Becket and Red Door Press for gifting me a copy of this book in return for an honest review and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the 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. Obvs.