Steve Stack

I wasn't sure about the title but felt prompted to read this. I am so glad I did. From the first sentence I couldn't put it down! I think I read it in 2 hours! It's the kind of book you would read, curled up on the sofa with a hot cuppa. Although I freely admit I read it in the bath which ended up being embarrassing at one point because Steve actually wrote "If you're a woman you're probably reading this in the bath... and may I say how good you are looking!"
Having depression I have to say show more this book worked wonders in reminding me that even small things can bring happiness if you let them. It has also given me ideas for things I can do to add a little bit more sunshine into what seems like rainy days.
Thanks Mr. Stack! show less

A British-skewed humour book that could probably be enjoyed by other people too, at least in part. It's a compendium of objects and concepts on the verge of going extinct (or already long gone) in our modern life: mix tapes, dial telephones, milkmen, Opal Fruits, half-day closing, 10p mixed bags of sweets, chocolate cigars, Smash Hits magazine, Woolworths... Things I don't remember at all, things I must have only ever come into contact with as a tiny child, perhaps at my grandparents', and show more things that lasted all the way into my early teens and beyond and now wear the rosy halo of nostalgia for me too. Lovely. show less

If you remember sliding your home made mix cassette tape, recorded in silence from the Radio Top 40, into your Walkman and strapping your calculator watch to your wrist before disappearing to play unsupervised in the local park until dinner time, then the nostalgic appeal 21st Century Dodos will be a source of nostalgic appeal.

Subtitled “A collection of endangered objects (and other stuff)” this is a light and humourous tribute to the end of an era. At just forty it seems almost obscene show more that so much of my childhood is now obsolete – rotary phones, Polaroid cameras, 10c mixed lolly bags (Cobbers were my favourite), school blackboards and roller skates but I enjoyed the reminder of these simple pleasures, and treasures.

It might hearten Steve Stack to know Australia still has Woolworths stores and my boys are currently participating in Bob-a-Job week (though I go door to door with them). Not having grown up in England however there are a lot of things mentioned in the book that I’m unfamiliar with, retailers, television shows and product brands among them.

21st Century Dodos is a fun read, for anyone over about 35 I would think, but as it is heavily skewed towards British culture it is to those readers that grew up in England during the 1970/1980′s that I would recommend this book. show less

a fun read for sure.
makes me feel like a dodo myself, since I remember almost all of the items described in this book. It's a fun ride along nostalgia lane, where you feel a little twinge of sadness for things gone by the wayside, a chuckle at the funny way they are explained, and then a sigh of relief that some of them have gone the way of the dodo bird.