The Olivetti Chronicles: Three Decades of Life and Music
by John Peel
John Peel isn’t remembered primarily for his writing but it’s something he did a lot of. He wrote almost-weekly columns for 30 years, for various publications from Disc to the Observer to BIKE. He wrote in much the same manner as he spoke on the radio – warm, funny and not shy of a little vitriole…
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
by Toby Young
This infamous “memoir” is funny and entertaining but not brilliantly written. Young repeats himself endlessly and uses too many quotes from philosophers and sociologists in an attempt to make himself sound intelligent. I’m sure he is, but that isn’t the way to convey it…
This is a topic that fascinates me. It has been debated over and over whether “low culture” (by which I mean such things as gossip magazines, tabloid newspapers, celebrity biographies, trashy romance novels, generic Hollywood romcoms, generic Hollywood action films, reality TV, soaps, graffiti, all-girl pop bands, etc etc) is somehow a threat to “real” art and artists, or perhaps to society as a whole. Is it demeaning to people in general to pitch the majority of culture to the lowest common denominator? Or does popular culture exist because people…want it?…
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
by Michael Chabon
This is a big book and, like all the best chunky tomes, it’s a little bit heartbreaking when you get to the end to leave that world and all of its characters behind. Which is a long way of saying that I liked it…
A barman at our local asked the other day what I would wish for if I had one wish. I think my answer – “I would wish to never be ill” – threw him a little but it was the first thing my brain came up with. It’s a pretty selfish wish, when I could have plumped for world peace, or an end to all suffering, or for the proposed solutions to global warming to all immediately be put in place and to work…
Petite Anglaise
by Catherine Sanderson
Having been a fan of the blog for years it’s not a huge surprise that I loved this book. It was the first blog I ever read and opened up a whole new world to me. Now the book has filled in many of the blanks that were necessarily kept out of the blog at the time…
I love to read. I mean, I really love to read. I was that child whose parents had to wrestle the book from my hands at the dinner table to get me to eat, who had to seriously weigh up severe car travel sickness against the awful idea of a (sick-free) journey without reading, who read almost every book at the local library so was greatly relieved when they largely restocked in my early teens, who in a recent house move packaged up my most beloved books more carefully than the crystal wine glasses. In my defence I know that Debenhams still sells those glasses…