Leonard and Hungry Paul | 
"Leonard was getting overstimulated. Having gone through long barren stretches, his romantic feelings were now starting to awaken, with all their crazy body chemistry. It was exhausting. It was actually physically uncomfortable: all this genetic programming kicking in at once, while his poor fragile personality got run over."
"Leonard was raised by his mother alone with cheerfully concealed difficulty, his father having died tragically during childbirth."
A rather late #FirstLineFridays offering ⌛ @shybookowl
Mrs B watched the TV adaptation of this book, which I didn't watch all of myself, but was charmed by the bits I did see, enough that I thought I'd buy the book and not spoil the end by watching all the episodes. I'm hoping the book's as sweet as the show, and when I've finished, I'll go back and watch the rest of it.
"Hungry Paul lived on a knife edge between a passion for board games and an aversion to instruction booklets."
pickLeonard and Hungry Paul, by Rónán Hession (2019)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Premise: Two friends who live the kind of quiet lives often looked down on manage a series of changes prompted by one‘s sister‘s marriage and the other‘s dipping tentative toes into the dating world.
Review: This is an absolutely delightful, big hug of a novel. ⬇️
pickA book about nice people trying to make their way into the world. Leonard and Hungry Paul are two friends that live their lives in a simpler kind of way, they are not very experienced in the world, but they have a clarity about how they see it that benefits everyone in their lives and the reader. Very funny and easy read.
pickA very quiet, enjoyable characters book.
I am posting one book per day from my extensive to-be-read collection. No description and providing no reason for wanting to read it, I just do. Some will be old, some will be new. Don‘t judge me - I have a lot of books. Join in if you want!
#ABookADay2023
This was such an epiphany moment - and a perfect description of what it feels like when I‘m picking my next book.
(The tweet is written by the author of the tagged book - which I haven‘t read but this tweet suggests good things)
https://youtu.be/1h4pgQqW5xo
Rónán Hession (the author of Leonard and Hungry Paul, and Panenka) is one of the most passionate readers I know, and he speaks so darned eloquently about what he reads. Here, he shares an hour‘s worth of recent reading as well as teasing the heck out of us about his forthcoming novel. Do check it out!
pickA humorous and enjoyable book full of good people muddling their way through life. It made me laugh out loud. A gentle, life-affirming read.
pick1st week of the year, back to work, dark damp mornings , so this gentle book has added a bit of sunny sky back into my week as I fell in love with the story of two men in their 30's, somewhat at odds with the world but close friends bonding over board games, and with ancillary characters (esp Paul's parents). As changes happen to both men the relationship shifts slightly. Lots of so so reviews on litsy but already one of my bks of yr
panNope.
Just didn't do it for me.
Too much unnecessary narrative and quite saccharine sweet characters.
I finished it purely because it was my friend's choice!
A good friend has picked this for our book club. A few chapters in and I'm not feeling the love...
panI really wanted to like this; heck, I enjoyed the first half of it. It has a gentleness in both the story telling and the characters that I enjoyed for a while. I have a hard time warming up to a character like Hungry Paul. He‘s a middle-aged man who can‘t be bothered to work more than one day/week and who undeniably mooches off his parents. Yes, there‘s a lot of love in the familial relationships, but they‘re also enablers.
#bookspinbingo
pickI really enjoyed this book. It‘s full of humour and kindness towards his characters. It was a great comfort read during lockdown. I recognised much of myself in the elder sister which made me reflect on my tendency to “organise” other peoples‘ lives.
“Hungry Paul then dropped to the floor and started a push-up on his knuckles. There was a cracking sound, followed by some oaths, and then he started again, looking like a break dancer doing the caterpillar.” 😂
pickI feel so much love for this funny, understated novel about gentle people. People who are quiet, kind, and almost invisible to their work colleagues. Gentle people who are not in the least bit ordinary. People who give me hope that perhaps the world will be okay, after all, because there are people like this in it.
Solitude and peace lose their specialness when they no longer stand in contrast to anything. In a busy—or at least busier—life, quiet reflection provides resonance to experience. But to deprive life of experiences deliberately and to hide from its realities was not special. It was just another form of fear that led to a life-limiting loneliness […].
“I used to have parents coming to the school telling me that their kids wouldn‘t read and my advice was always the same: if the parents read, the children will follow.”
(Note: Quote from tagged novel. Ashleigh Corrin is the illustrator of the Get Caught Reading poster above)
“How do you make sure you get enough protein?” asked Leonard.
“Ah, protein. I know how you meat eaters stay awake at night worrying about how much protein vegetarians get. Margaret, who works with me, lives on a diet of cigarettes, popcorn and Diet Coke, and the other week she starts giving me the whole protein speech. I just told her not to worry, that silverback gorillas are vegetarian and they get by okay.
There was a section at the back of the shop full of books about history and other deadly serious subjects. It seemed to be some sort of crèche for older men who had been left there while their wives had gone off shopping elsewhere.
(Internet photo)
She met Peter after he had stopped one day to give her directions to an art exhibition and then invited himself along. They fell in love effortlessly. Their initial chemistry broadened into physics and then biology, until they were blessed with Hungry Paul‘s older sister Grace as their first child.
Bluemoose Books appealed on Twitter for people to buy books direct from them. So I did (and what a great publisher name)
so-soThis sweet meandering novel was very reminiscent of Forest Gump. Cute, but the lack of any strong plot made it drag a bit for me #ARC #Netgalley
Awesome first line! I think I‘m going to like this one. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
What a surprise to open your email and find that you have won this ebook!
After a rough week, here‘s hoping this is the gentle, hopefully at-least-slightly-uplifting book I‘m looking for. Humans can be so awful to each other. *sigh*
Happy Independent Bookshop Week! #indie #booksaremybag #bookshop #independentbookshopweek
This opening paragraph of this new Irish debut novel so utterly beguiled me that I immediately bought the e-book. Two chapters in, I‘m feeling just as enthusiastic!
pickLovely book. I completely recommend this, especially if you want to just spend some time with interesting characters. Not much happens, but that's a good thing. There's no twist, no bad guys, just people living their lives, trying to make the best of them. It was refreshing.
Doing my bit for local bookshops, one (two) books at a time. The tagged one is also from a local publisher, so thought I'd give it a go. Seems to have some good reviews already. #dogsoflitsy
pickBeautiful, sweet, and wholesome beyond words. Hession has delicately crafted a subtle little masterpiece.
This will be the first book of 2019 for me. And I'm already so excited for it. Heard so many positive things about this pre-release! 🙌 #arc #newbooks #advancereadingcopy
