Journal Entry 1 by ann-718my from Cyberjaya, Sultanate of Selangor (Shah Alam) Malaysia on Thursday, January 15, 2004

excellent pick! a pulitzer prize winner

Book Description
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling -- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors -- yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

This is going out as a bookray (formerly a bookring). New participants will be added after the first four. The participants:
1. brewster13 (Canada) - ship intl
2. alarob (Alabama, US) - ship intl
3. Hobitten (Denmark) - ship intl
4. tantan (Australia) - ship intl
-------
5. Bunnybee (Texas, US) - ship intl
6. bookmanu (Portugal) - ship intl
 

Journal Entry 2 by ann-718my from Cyberjaya, Sultanate of Selangor (Shah Alam) Malaysia on Wednesday, June 02, 2004

posted the book to brewster13 yesterday. the book looks soooo old, it had been collecting dust for a couple of years ;) so be gentle ladies..... =)

happy reading! 

Journal Entry 3 by brewster13 from Calgary, Alberta Canada on Friday, June 11, 2004

I just received this in the mail this morning. I am laid up with a sprained ankle, and so look forward to getting to read this soon - after the book I'm reading right now.

Thank you for the bookring, ann-718my!

Brew

UPDATE: June 20 -- finally finished my previous book, and will be starting this book today. 

Journal Entry 4 by brewster13 from Calgary, Alberta Canada on Monday, June 28, 2004

I enjoyed this book - can see how it won a non-fiction book of the year award. I liked learning about Frank's life as he grew up in poverty, firstly in New York and then in Limerick, Ireland. And of course it was nice to see Frank's risk pay off (not taking the post office exam, instead working for Eason's delivering papers). My mom told me there's a second book by him called Tis, about his life when he goes to America - I think I'll have to see if I can find a copy of that to read now too.

I mailed this book to Alarob today. Thank you ann-718my for this bookring. I hope everyone else enjoys this as I did! 

Journal Entry 5 by alarob from Birmingham, Alabama USA on Monday, July 12, 2004

He’ll give us a nickel for ice cream if we promise to die for Ireland and we promise but we never get the nickel. [p. 39]

I was out of town when the book arrived. Found it yesterday, and already I’m starting chapter VII. I like the way Frank McCourt preserves the child’s-eye perspective in this memoir. It’s a good job of tale-spinning, as I’m sure McCourt doesn’t really remember (for example) his younger brother’s exact words in the funeral carriage on the day the family buried a third child. But it feels truthful, which is what counts more than actual veracity in a book like this one.

One thing that heightens my interest in the book is my sister’s several years’ residence in Ireland, where she became an expert veterinarian and incidentally picked up the accent. 

Journal Entry 6 by alarob from Birmingham, Alabama USA on Friday, July 23, 2004

It’s not perfect, but almost. One of the strongest impressions this book has made on me is of the slow violence of poverty: how it keeps grinding away at people, making difficult even the routine tasks of living, and how many lives it steals — not only from among the McCourt children but from among relations and neighbors in the lanes. If this tale had been told from Angela’s perspective, rather than from that of her young child, it would have been almost too grim to read. For me, this story is also a renewed challenge never to be ungenerous, like the priests who kept slamming doors in Frank’s face, or the rich of Limerick who (in Paddy Clohessy’s vivid phrase) wouldn’t give a neighbor the steam of their piss. I guess it’s a failure of imagination: We can’t imagine how poor people live, but we too easily dream up terrible things that might happen if we part with a few bucks for a stranger. And so we (and I include myself) are too easily frightened out of charity and kindness. Angela’s Ashes is not some plodding fable with a moral at the end, but if it had a moral, I guess this would be it. “Would you ever give something to a stranger now and again?” 

Journal Entry 7 by Hobitten from Odense, Fyns Amt Denmark on Monday, August 02, 2004

Just received it today. Will get on with it, as soon as I finish my other bookring-book. (rather stressing...=

hobitten 

Journal Entry 8 by Hobitten from Odense, Fyns Amt Denmark on Thursday, August 19, 2004

It's an excellent book. McCourt is very good at describing his world through the eyes of a child. The book is on its way to Australia now.

Hobitten 

Journal Entry 9 by Hobitten at mailed it off - bookring in Odense, Fyns Amt Denmark on Thursday, August 19, 2004

Released on Thursday, August 19, 2004 at mailed it off - bookring in Odense, Fyn Denmark. 

Journal Entry 10 by tantan from Gympie, Queensland Australia on Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Received in the mail today. A few down on the TBR pile, but I will get to it as soon as I can.
 

Journal Entry 11 by tantan from Gympie, Queensland Australia on Saturday, September 18, 2004

I really enjoyed this, and while I was at the USB yesterday I bought 'Tis so I can read it also when I'm ready. The thing that really hit me with this story was the squalor, and the seeming inability to rise above it. Things were so difficult, and it was so difficult to get out of the continuing cycle of poverty. The child's voice made this so easy to read, and the child's perspective put such a different slant on events. Definitely a recommended read. It will be off to Bunnybee next. 

Journal Entry 12 by Bunnybee from Amarillo, Texas USA on Thursday, September 30, 2004

Perfect timing! I just finished and sent out my last bookray book (McCourt's 'Tis) yesterday! I have one book to finish reading so I can meet a release challenge and then I will get right to this one.

Thanks, ann-718my for the McCourt bookrays! 

Journal Entry 13 by Bunnybee from Amarillo, Texas USA on Monday, October 11, 2004

Spent just over a week getting this one read. It was a bit slow in starting, but once I got through about the first 1/3 of the book and had a better feel of the family members... it turned into a very moving book. Depressing that they had to live through such deep poverty, but inspirational the way they just kept going and going. And the way the author could still find humor in so many things in the midst of it all.

One of my favorite parts was spoken my Mr. O'Halloran, a teacher at Frank's school, about education: "You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can't make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it. If you won the Irish Sweepstakes and bought a house that needed furniture would you fill it with bits and pieces of rubbish? Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace."

I just love that.

Anyway, I will be mailing this out tomorrow to bookmanu in Portugal. Thank you ann-718my for sharing the book!

**Update- Oct 12- mailed to bookmanu via surface mail. 

Journal Entry 14 by bookmanu from Cascais, Lisboa (distrito) Portugal on Thursday, October 21, 2004

Received it yesterday...

Thanks ann-718my for starting the bookray. I'm planning to pass this book on to 'global'(to whom I gave my copy of'Tis) after I've read it.It's been well looked after on its round the world trip, no pages missing, etc.

Thanks also to bunnybee for mailing it and for the nice postcard.After opening the envelope, I was inspired to download 'Amarillo' by Tony Christie.I listened to the song twice and sang-a-long loudly last night.My kids looked on and thought that their dad had finally lost it!

ETA: 17/05/2006 - Unfortunately I'm no longer in contact with 'global'. The book has been gathering dust for some time now...I should have released it ages ago...I've offered it up as a RABCK, now waiting for an answer.

ETA: 10/06/06 - Took it along to release at the BC picnic at Parque das Nações in Lisbon earlier this afternoon. 

Journal Entry 15 by BOKWORMY on Saturday, June 10, 2006

BC Meeting at Parque das Nações 10/06/2006

Great fun thanks bookmanu for sharing Angela´s Ashes!

Pleasure in meeting you & the children *-)