The Wagner Compendium - Barry Millington

Advantages: Generally amusing and quite witty.
Disadvantages: A bit over long and humour begins to grate.

...would HAVE to get a job if he gave up his place! Barry leads a really good life ~ he doesn’t have to do any work and all the girls love him! This comfortable existence all changes when the grasping forces of the movie industry (Wagner Brothers) try to release the film “Barry Trotter and the Inevitable Attempt to Cash-in” and bury Hogwash in a sea of Merchandise and Muddles (Muggles). Barry and his side kicks Ermine Cringer and Lon Measly HAVE to defeat them and save Hogwash ~ or, as the Headmaster Alpo Bumblebore says, “if Hogwash closes you’ll have to get a job!” Will they succeed? Will the jokes and sarcasm last until the end of the book? You’ll just have to read the book…or my review! ~~~WHAT I THOUGHT! I enjoyed Shameless Parody, but not as much as I thought I would. It IS funny and the sarcastic references to the Harry Potter... Read review

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Advantages: Very funny.
Disadvantages: Ends very suddenly, thin plot.

...This book started off as a web site (http://www.thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com/) on which Mil Millington lists the various arguments he and his partner Margret have had over some of the strangest things. It's hilariously funny and it's given me loads of entertainment. He's also written a weekly column for the Guardian, which I admit I've never read. A few months ago, I went back to the site to find that he'd written a book loosely based on the web site. Seeing as the website was so funny, I ordered the book from Amazon (in their logic-crumpling 3 books for £12 offer or each book at £3.99). In this book, Pel Dalton works at a university library doing an I.T. job he knows very little about and is continually bluffing his way around. He lives with his German partner, Ursula and their two sons Peter and Jonathan. Arriving... Read review

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Advantages: freeky
Disadvantages: none

...This is a short story which once again takes up Hesse’s favourite characterisation method, that of the composite character. The bourgeois father Klein flees his former existence (as Hesse had done himself leaving his family behind) and flees into the country. He feels, in his new freedom, a strange affiliation to Wagner, a school teacher he has never met, but who is famous for murder. He sees in Wagner the dark drives for destruction that live within him. These drives eventually turn to self-destruction when he rows out into a lake and drowns. By drowning he unifies these disparate elements of his character and achieves inner unity.... Read review

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