Margrave Of The Marshes
John Peel's autobiography was posthumously completed by his Wife and children.
A fascinating, if scattershot, telling of Peel's life up until shortly before he married his first wife and his radio career took off in the USA, is as much as he completed before his death of a heart attack in Peru in October 2004.
The rest of the book is related by his wife, Sheila (also known as Pig), and is a bittersweet reminiscence of her life with him and an honest telling of the obsessiveness that drove Peel in doing his job.
It made me miss Peel very much.
If you ever spent time listening to the man's radio shows, you have to read this book.
All Fun And Games Until Somebody Loses An Eye
This is one of Brookmyre's novels where an ordinary Scot finds themself in the middle of a full out Hollywood movie situation.
It's a blast from beginning to end and features one of the best characters that Brookmyre's ever come up with. Jane Fleming is an East Kilbride based grandmother that feels resigned to the scrapheap of life.
Except she's not yet 50, and there's still a spark of the girl that was a punk in '77. When her engineer son goes on the run for his life after he falls foul of the arms industry, that spark is fanned into flame.
Recruited by a team of mercenaries to help in locating and protecting her son, she transforms from a dowdy grandmother/housewife into an asskicking undercover operative.
Sure it's totally unbelievable, but that's pretty much the point.
If you're not looking for realism but rather for a really fun read for the summer holidays then I totally recommend this book.
JPod
Supposedly an update of the classic Microserfs for the Google generation this is instead a cynical, heartless mess of a novel.
Centred around a group of workers at a faceless games company in Vancouver, the book riffs off on the personal neuroses and bizarre acts of these people and their families.
As always Coupland's prose is superbly readable and some of it is very funny, but the story is stupid, the characters are deeply unlikeable and he fills about a third of the book with concrete text or lists of prime numbers, digits of pi, and other pointless lists. It worked when used sparingly and within context in microserfs - in this novel it makes a slight tale seem more of a rip-off.
If you read Microserfs and wanted more or you just love Coupland's work, then read this book, but be prepared to be disappointed. Otherwise, avoid it.
The Big Over Easy
This book is a story of the Nursery
Crime Division of Reading police. DC Jack Spratt has to unravel the mysterious murder of Humpty Dumpty.
Yes, this is another one of Jasper Fforder's comic novels. This is the first not to feature Tuesday Next, and focusses exclusively on the novel's murder mystery rather than playing some of the meta games of his other novels. As always his jokes depend a hell of a lot on the reader's knowledge of the books that he's referencing or parodying.
The book is a slight, enjoyable read, that I'd recommend to anyone looking for a cheap, mildly funny summer read.
For the first time I can remember I watched practically every one of the 64 games that the World Cup had to offer. Thanks to web streaming, pvr and delayed screenings.
I didn't go into the World Cup with all that much hope. I had France in the work sweep and it seemed kind of inevitable that Brazil would run away with the thing. The first game really brought the tournament to life, though, Germany beat Costa Rica 4 -2 and scored a couple of great goals in the process and revealed one of the stars of the tourney in Lahm. The group stages were by and large great fun. Game of the group stage for me was the 6-0 thrashing that Argentina meted out to Serbia-Montenegro. I have never seen a better example of a team performance and it was all capped off with one of the best goals ever in Cambiasso's effort in the first half.
As things progressed to the knockout stages teams started to become very cagey and it spoiled the play. Some coaches made very stupid decisions (Pekerman of Argentina, Aragones of Spain), in compensation some players upped their ante, in particular Zinedine Zidane of France and Cannavaro of Italy.
Best game of the tournament was the Germany-Italy semi-final match. It was a game played with a superb attitude, great talent and committment.
For a match that went nearly two hours without a goal it was really exciting. Then Grosso scored with that 119th minute goal, and Del Piero followed up a minute later. It was sad that there had to be a winner, but Italy deserved it.
The final itself was rather disappointing. France got a soft penalty, cheekily converted by Zidane, Materazzi scored from a corner with the French defence posted missing. Chances were few and far between and if France had the better of the match it was by a narrow margin. Then, of course, Materazzi said something to Zidane and the Frenchman headbutted him in the chest, thereby tainting his last ever game. It was kind of sad, but it's something that Zidane's done before. As they say, you can take the boy out of Marseille!
Italy won on penalties and it seemed a fair enough result, and I would have felt the same if they had gone the other way.
Not a great World Cup after all, but there were enough highlights and great games to make it a memorable one. God, now we've got four years for the next one. You never know Scotland might even qualify! (we've got no chance with the Euro championships - both WC finalists and a quarter finalist and only 1st and 2nd qualify)
A booklog
Recent Posts
Authors
Bands
Blogs
Boards
treefell
Recently Listened
- Nina Simone – The Look Of Love
- Felt – Evergreen Dazed
- The Beach Boys – Then I Kissed Her
- The Coral – Spanish Main
- Creedence Clearwater Revival – Hey Tonight
