| Author | Message | ||
     Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2399 Registered: 10-2006 |
Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years – Mark Lewisohn A brilliant forearm-testing read, starting with a dense social history of Liverpool, you can almost smell the poverty, when child survival was a lottery. Amazing to see all the required genes locking into place to produce a musical revolution! The author writes with a light touch despite the immense amounts of information he’s dealing with, switching smartly back and forth between the main characters as they grow, with Richy pursuing a sort of parallel but similar course as the other three gradually find their way towards each other in a raggedy but raw city-traversing beat combo. At the moment, about 200 pages in, a friend’s guitar-strumming cousin has already been magically transformed from Ron Wycherley into Billy Fury, Cliff is hitting the bigtime down in London, but there’s still a bit of a struggle ahead for the yet to be fab four. I’m curious to see how Sam Mendes is going to handle all this in his tetralogy, there’s so little you’d want to miss out. Will he adopt four different styles for each member, a different writer and tone? | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10884 Registered: 05-2005 |
The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin. It's 50 years old, so it's about time I read it. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 556 Registered: 02-2007 |
Voss - Patrick White | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2401 Registered: 10-2006 |
I read several PWs a long time ago, with admiration, I seem to remember, but not exactly enjoyment. Meanwhile, I have come, with deep sorrow, to the end of Lewisohn's Beatles book, a magnificent thing with something worth knowing on every page. He's working on Volume 2, now, and I hope he documents the years of fame with the same detail, verve and wit, and that I'll still be around to read it. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10902 Registered: 05-2005 |
Mick Herron - Clown Town, the latest in the Slow Horses series. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2404 Registered: 10-2006 |
How's the series holding up, Pádraig? I'm about to start Joe Country and he's been keeping it fresh and entertaining in great style up till now. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10903 Registered: 05-2005 |
He's still got it, Stuart. Maybe a few fewer laugh out loud moments, but the pot boiling plotting is simmering along nicely. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4994 Registered: 03-2005 |
Darryl W. Bullock - Love And Fury: The Extraordinary Life, Death and Legacy of Joe Meek I have already read an earlier biography by John Repsch and probably didn't need to get this one but it's hardcover and I have prejudice in favor of those. The big problem is that it's challenging to read a biography that ends with the subject shooting his landlady and then himself. I think I'll look for something more lightweight as the next choice from my table of books waiting to be read. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 557 Registered: 02-2007 |
The Thin Red Line - James Jones Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2406 Registered: 10-2006 |
Two pretty decent reviews of Morrissey’s latest, which is two more than normal. "Resurrection of the year" according to Les Inrockuptibles. Well, it's only February. What will Uncut say though? How heavy lies the weight of unwokeness on the head of Moz? We shall see. Been listening to Now my heart is full again recently, what other lyricist could get a ringing chorus out of the names of Greene’s Brighton gangsters and a virtually unknown British 1950s actor? His drole stage declarations make me laugh and then you read something he said in the press and it's “oh dear” and then he's singing something new and rather beautiful and then on no evidence whatsoever he insists Notre Dame was torched by... (oh, a Muslim immigrant probably) ... ah well. He is what he is and I shall… (perhaps)… buy his music all the way to the gates of hell. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10908 Registered: 05-2005 |
The Last Days of John Lennon, by James Patterson, with Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge. I bought this five years ago when it was released but have only now got around to reading it. In the meantime I’ve read and hated another Patterson book, which would have led to me not buying the Lennon one if I’d been aware before how dull his writing is. It isn’t as bad as I’d feared, but the title is very misleading. There is a long buildup to the murder, with chapter after chapter after chapter of Beatles history., and almost all of this is stuff I’ve read over the decades in features in Uncut and Mojo magazines. I’ll persevere, though, and unlike the other Patterson book I read, I may not immediately donate it to the nearest street library. Maybe. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4996 Registered: 03-2005 |
Kingdom Come - J. G. Ballard Ballard's last novel published before his death, I found its very British social dystopia sci-fi entertaining for maybe about half the book. Over the last 80 pages or so Ballard tried to keep the tension at a hysterical fever pitch for far too long. The only tension for me was the increasingly impatient question "can I force myself through the rest of this and call it a done job?" I'm not strong on my knowledge of science fiction but Kingdom Come seemed to me like a mashup of Anthony Burgess and sentiments expressed in the lyrics of songs on X-Ray Spex' 1978 album Germfree Adolescents. And maybe there was a little bit of Jean-Luc Godard's Week-end stirred in as well. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10914 Registered: 05-2005 |
I know what you mean, Randy. I encounter this in crime novels sometimes, where I think, “I’ve already figured out who did it, so there’s no need to keep adding red herrings. Hurry up and have them caught.” | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 915 Registered: 08-2005 |
(I thought I'd posted this earlier but it seems I didn't - unless it's been excised in some futuristic sci-fi-sort of way). I've struggled with JG Ballard and haven't got beyond his short stories; never finished a novel, which is unusual for me. But I love this anecdote about him: it's in the first paragraph so I won't spoil it. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/col umnists/john-walsh/john-walsh-jg-ballard -was-our-own-private-home-counties-proph et-of-doom-1671598.html | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4997 Registered: 03-2005 |
I originally purchased the book after reading a commentary in Guardian about the way its plot predicted so much of our current era. Well, sort of. That's a funny story, Simon. Financial naivety seems to be almost a universal trait of artists. That's a pretty vivid example though. Speaking of financial naivety I paid $134 including shipping for this "signed first edition." I should probably pop it into the local neighborhood book share kiosk just for the inward laugh. Are the short stories good? Maybe I should try them since pacing the long form is a particular problem with Kingdom Come. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10916 Registered: 05-2005 |
What a great story. Thanks for the link Simon. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10919 Registered: 05-2005 |
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins, a 1970 Boston Irish crime novel. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 2421 Registered: 10-2006 |
The first paragraph of an Australian classic called the Shiralee, of which I knew nothing till a few weeks back. I managed to find an old 1950s Italian copy for the wife, and now the original has arrived for me. It's one of those first paragraphs that stamps itself straight into your skull so that there's no way you're not going to go on with it. I wanted to paste it in here, but couldn't find the text online anywhere. Usually a new book will go into my "to read" pile for months or years ahead, but this has been bumped up to "soon as I finish this one." |