Another book by one of my favourite authors, it was hardly surprising that The Shipping News would appeal to me. It tells the story of Quoyle, a reporter who leaves New York with his daughters after his estranged wife is killed in a car crash. He returns to his ancestral home in Newfoundland and begins working for a local newspaper, 'The Gammy Bird', reporting on the ships arriving and departing the port. The paper had remarkable similarities to the one I was working for when I read it although I was envious of their computers as I only had a typewriter at the time!