Last weekend, on my weekly pilgrimage to Bunnings, (OK I didn’t really have a hardware or garden need… just a hankering for a charitable sausage on a bit of bread), the fundraising group de jour was The Tough Guy Book Club – a wonderful oxymoron of a name and a much more fun expression of the contemporary need for positive male bonding. I hope there’s a female version out there too.

I wandered over to their web and FaceBook pages and found out some nourishing information. The club is a worldwide organisation of local chapters that meet on the first Wednesday night of every month – usually in a pub. I asked the chap serving snags on bread whether they were like the Peaky Blinders of Books Clubs – and he liked my characterisation – perhaps with less razor gangster action.

But the thing that really got me interested was the list of previously discussed books. It was like a compendium of books I’ve read throughout my adolescence, my university days, mid-life and now senior years. Also – books that are still in my bucket list.

AND … one of the books was … David Ireland’s “The Glass Canoe” – set in the Inner West pub where my late father used to drink … and the spark that prompted me to invent the Pig’s Arms.

https://toughguybookclub.com/

See what you think.
Kind regards,

Emm