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The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons And Growing Up Strange
 
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The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons And Growing Up Strange (Hardcover)

by Mark Barrowcliffe (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.99
Price: £10.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons And Growing Up Strange + Game Night + Achtung Schweinehund!
Price For All Three: £25.61

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  • This item: The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons And Growing Up Strange by Mark Barrowcliffe

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

  • Game Night by Jonny Nexus

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  • Achtung Schweinehund! by Harry Pearson

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Macmillan (6 April 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1405091266
  • ISBN-13: 978-1405091268
  • Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 13.8 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 451,421 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #6 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > B > Barrowcliffe, Mark

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Product Description

Daily Mail

'It's a lovely book, far funnier and more enjoyable than its
slightly terrifying subject matter might suggest.'


Product Description

Coventry, 1976. For a brief, blazing summer, twelve-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had the chance to be normal.

He blew it.

While other teenagers concentrated on being coolly rebellious, Mark – like twenty million other boys in the ‘70s and ’80s – chose to spend his entire adolescence in fart-filled bedrooms pretending to be a wizard or a warrior, an evil priest or a dwarf. Armed only with pen, paper and some funny-shaped dice, this lost generation gave themselves up to the craze of fantasy role-playing games, stopped chatting up girls and started killing dragons.

Extremely funny, not a little sad and really quite strange, The Elfish Gene is an attempt to understand the true inner nerd of the adolescent male. Last pick at football, spat at by bullies and laughed at by girls, they were the fantasy wargamers, and this is their story.

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons And Growing Up Strange
82% buy the item featured on this page:
The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons And Growing Up Strange 3.8 out of 5 stars (24)
£10.99
Game Night
7% buy
Game Night 3.9 out of 5 stars (7)
£7.43
Achtung Schweinehund!
5% buy
Achtung Schweinehund! 3.9 out of 5 stars (25)
£7.19
Mr Wrong: Lover, loser or Ladies' Man? The true confessions of
3% buy
Mr Wrong: Lover, loser or Ladies' Man? The true confessions of 3.4 out of 5 stars (9)
£7.40
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Customer Reviews

24 Reviews
5 star:
 (5)
4 star:
 (13)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (24 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Very funny, 29 April 2007
By Mrs. Susan J. Doherty (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I knew some of these people although a bit later. I cetainly remember "Billy" who I lived with for almost 3 years.
The book is authentic, funny and accurate. It is life as the teenage boys lived it at the time. As a rare girl who played D&D I well recall the interminable male arguments over the rules and "Billy" being the most brilliant and creative DM ever.
This is a very funny book. Buy it.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Close to the (funny) bone, 7 Sep 2007
By Fintan Palmer "fintanp" (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I picked this up on spec a while ago and when I finally started to read it I just couldn't put it down (cliche but true).

Like the author I discovered D&D when I was about 11 and played it and other RPGs until my late teens. I think everyone who ever played at that age must have had a Porter or a Billy in their group and so much of what Mark Barrowcliffe describes could have been experiences I had. My granny also had to endure a lengthy description of finer aspects of D&D...

Both laugh-out-loud funny and poignantly sad I can definitely recommend this for anyone who grew up with dwarves, haflings, elves and orcs.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Well worth a read, 4 May 2007
By David Gee (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Mark has a very engaging writing style and as I read I found myself transported back to my adolescence. I think the experiences Mark shares are common to a lot of males of that age and era, whether or not they were consumed by D&D. I did laugh out loud on several occasions and found the book "unputdownable".
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Charisma - 7
Mark Barrowcliffe is a former stand up and current writer of comedic fiction; this is what I gleaned from the inlay in his books and tbh this was perfectly enough for me... Read more
Published 20 days ago by Sam

4.0 out of 5 stars Sent To Coventry
This book is worth buying for its title alone, some of the chapter names are nearly as good, e.g. "Lord of the Ringbinders" or "Come to Mordor, It's Nicer Than Where You Live. Read more
Published 2 months ago by J. J. O'neill

2.0 out of 5 stars Unpleasant
This book was fine and dandy until Barrowcliffe's 'Mr Wrong' came out. If, as this book (and especially the jacket) seems to tell us, D&D somehow stunted Barrowcliffe's social... Read more
Published 4 months ago by sosickofstudying

5.0 out of 5 stars Very funny and a little bit sad.
Mark Barrowcliffe, with affection and humour, details the world of a little understood interest group - the teenage Role Playing Game enthusiast. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Stucumber

4.0 out of 5 stars If you over a certain age, and played D&D when you were young, this will resonate...
This book was so engaging I finished it in one sitting.

At least three times during reading this book I was physically crying due to laughter. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Aaron Richardson

4.0 out of 5 stars Porter was a mate of mine...
When Mark Barrowcliffe tires of his weekly wargaming club he is enticed by the magical and mystical game of Dungeons and Dragons. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Rachel Green

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll like this is you know what a D20 is...
I personally loved this book, but I fear that it might be aimed at a minority audience and not to everyone's tastes. Read more
Published 9 months ago by A. Phillips

4.0 out of 5 stars Exploring adolescence... with a vorpal sword
This is a very curious book. It's essentially an autobiography. Strangely, it tells us next to nothing about the author's family, early childhood etc and even less about his adult... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Jon Rowe

4.0 out of 5 stars I attack Billy

For the record, I have never played Dungeons and Dragons. What's more, I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to even start playing. Read more
Published 9 months ago by E. A Solinas

3.0 out of 5 stars Youth of Horrors
As a 30-something male who spent a good deal of my teen years playing wargames and role-playing games, I'm squarely within the target audience for this "growing up geeky" memoir... Read more
Published 12 months ago by A. Ross

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