Things Snowball

by RichHall (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.24

  I stopped off at the Peace Gardens - a memorial straddling the US-Canadian border commemorating 'Lasting Peace Between America and Canada', as if there had ever been a problem. Show me a garden commemorating Peace Between America and, say, Iraq and I'll be impressed. America is like a beauty contestant. It's gorgeous, until it opens its mouth.' From the similarities between US gun laws and British drinking hours, to what cryptic crosswords really tell us about the British psyche, American in London Rich Hall casts a keen eye on the lunatic contradictions and weird marvels of his native and adoptive homelands. 'Full of acute left-field reflections on America and Americans, plus some marvellously irreverent sketches ...wise, witty and strangely true' GUARDIAN

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.24

  Rich Hall plumps up the cushions, sets out a few drinks and invites us into his world. He describes his idyllic childhood in Eastern Tennessee, helping to operate his grandfolks' backyard nuclear plant. He explains how he sold his soul to the Devil to make him a better bluesman, and how the Devil tried to sell it back. And he reveals what happened when Neil Diamond invited him to dinner, and more importantly, why he had to wear a hardhat. Along the way he tackles the questions we've all asked ourselves from time to time, such as, which element did people breath before oxygen was discovered in 1774? (neon.) What's the difference between iron and lead? (There isn't one: ask anyone who has ever been hit in the head by a length of pipe.) And, if Jesus was a carpenter, How come not a single example of his craftsmanship exists, not even a crude chest of drawers? In the tradition of Woody Allen's Without Feathers , Things Snowball is a comic, inventive book: subversive and entertaining.

• New

  Paperback
  2003

  $16.25

  I stopped off at the Peace Gardens - a memorial straddling the US-Canadian border commemorating 'Lasting Peace Between America and Canada', as if there had ever been a problem. Show me a garden commemorating Peace Between America and, say, Iraq and I'll be impressed. America is like a beauty contestant. It's gorgeous, until it opens its mouth.' From the similarities between US gun laws and British drinking hours, to what cryptic crosswords really tell us about the British psyche, American in London Rich Hall casts a keen eye on the lunatic contradictions and weird marvels of his native and adoptive homelands. 'Full of acute left-field reflections on America and Americans, plus some marvellously irreverent sketches ...wise, witty and strangely true' GUARDIAN