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TGBC Monthly Challenge – #beersonfilm
TGBC is more than just a book club. Each month TGBC sets a challenge – a suggestion on an activity, thought or task - always angled at making a positive difference in a man's life. Somehow always topical; it might be a blood pressure check, taking a photo of yourself in the great…
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The Messenger - Markus Zusak (2002)
Ed Kennedy is a out on his luck taxi driver, with friends he doesn’t particularly like, a job that’s going nowhere and a family that either dislikes or is disappointed in him. One day, he foils a bank heist and gets chosen by some form of higher power (maybe God?) to carry out…
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Sort It Out – #Sortitout
2020 has thrown up more than its share of curveballs. Pressure around jobs, income, cancelled plans, changing circumstances and breaks in our day to day structure and routines impacted most people. True to the nature of Tough Guy Book Club - it’s much more than just books - the…
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A Man Called Ove - Fredrik Backman (2012)
In the first few pages it's clear Ove is the archetypal curmudgeon and he's going to spend the entirety of the book coming good. Roll out the supporting cast of a feisty and persistent neighbour, the wayward kid who needs a father figure and a self-similar friend for a…
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Last Exit to Brooklyn - Hubert Selby Jr (1964)
Hubert Selby jnr’s controversial first novel set in post war Brooklyn and describes a world a far cry from the gentrified borough that exists today. The characters that populate this world are poor, desperate and are yearning for intimacy. They dull their pain with alcohol, drugs…
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Goon Profile – Lucas Earl
Name: Lucas Earl Chapter: Southbank Who are you: I'm just your average late 20s early 30s bloke struggling to balance work, friendships, hobby and starting my own family. How long have you been with TGBC: Somewhere close to 4yrs, longer than I’ve been with my partner! How did you…
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TGBC End of Year Book Swap 2019
Anticipation. End of Year Book Swap is all about anticipation. It’s not just about what treasure you’ll get in the mail from some far away Goon, it’s about the book that you source from your own collection, or that you buy and send off to another far away Goon. Will he like it…
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Hornblower and the Hotspur - C. S. Forester (1962)
Avast there me hearties ! Now there are no actual skull and crossbones bearing pirates in this book, the 3rd of the popular series about our early 19th C Napoleonic war hero Horatio Hornblower, but there is a wide range of nautical characters here providing plenty of…
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Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh (1993)
[The Soul] exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished - and, in a more general way, on those one supervises, trains and corrects, over madmen, children at home and at school…
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To Name Those Lost - Rohan Wilson (2014)
It’s no easy thing to write simply yet evocatively. Hemingway aspired to do it and yet often, I would argue, failed, The Old Man and the Sea being the clearest exception. Others, like Tim Winton, have gotten better at it over time, straying in their early work into overcooked…
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Hell's Angels - Hunter S. Thompson (1967)
I promised to write a review of this before starting, and maybe I shouldn’t have. I found it impossible to get far through the book, and discussion with my fellow (more dedicated) Hobart goons reassured me that I didn’t miss that much. Why did I find it so hard to engage with…
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TGBC Monthly challenge – #beerwithastranger
This challenge was about getting outside your normal circle and getting to know a goon you don’t know much about. Blokes have a reputation for not being good at getting out there socially so it was great to see the goons putting a major dent in that stereotype. We saw a lot of…
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