Never Have Your Dog Stuffed
Short, enjoyable but incomplete feeling autobiography from the well loved star of the MASH tv series
Category: Non-Fiction
truth?
American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story
I idly re-read this over the last few months.
target?
You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing
Blog entries about writing and the writing business
whispers?
Dawn of the Dumb
This is the second volume of Brooker’s TV criticism, with the addition of some non-tv columns.
It’s still a pretty great read, but reading it straight on after Screen Burn like I did is not recommended as his starts to become a bit over familiar.
dr ruth?
Heartfelt
Hibee follows Hearts for a season
breadhead?
White Bicycles
A memoir of Boyd’s involvement with music roughly covering the period from the late 50s to early 70s.
pow?
The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize
This book is not only a comprehensive account of Creation records but also manages to place everything in the context of the fortunes and transformations of the british record industry over the course of a couple of decades.
Alan McGee reportedly hates it, which is a good indication of just how close to the truth the author has managed to get. Indeed it is a deeply impressive piece of research before you even consider it’s other merits.
It is authoritative and intelligent, thorough and thought-provoking. It’s single great flaw is that reading another page on the breakdown of the relationships in The House of Love or another page on the umpteenth studio that My Bloody Valentine spent two hours in before Kevin Shields decided it wasn’t good enough kills much of the momentum of the story and you can start to get bogged down bored with it and it can become a chore to get to the next interesting bit.
I think that you really have to be keen to know everything about Creation before even thinking about picking this one up. If you are you’ll find that you couldn’t wish for better overview.
walk-in?
Kitchen Confidential
Anthony Bourdain, thanks in large part to this book, now spends a lot of his time travelling the world making TV shows about cookery. Back when he wrote this he was the executive chef at a successful brasserie in Manhattan specializing in ‘peasant-style’ French cooking.
What he does in this book is tell his life story in terms of how he fell in love with food, how he ended up becoming a cook, how he nearly threw it all away before getting his life in order. He also throws in a few interesting truths about how the catering industry works and what it takes to run a successful kitchen in terms of equipment and attitude.
Sadly this book really doesn’t stand up to a second reading, much of his attitude coming off as false, more of a schtick than his real personality. After all, he comes from a comfortable background, had every educational opportunity and any hardship he went through was largely down to his own sense of entitlement.
If you’ve never read it before, borrow yourself a copy and enjoy it for what it is.
pious?
Our Band Could Be Your Life
The story of the American indie underground in the eighties as told through short biographies of some of the leading lights of the scene.
I really enjoyed at least half of these short bios, as some of the bands had fascinating interpersonal struggles, financial problems and made great music.
However, the author made some odd decisions. Your band is only indie if your records are recorded for an indie label who used only indie distribution? A pointless distinction if you ask me. If, as I suspect, he only did this to avoid covering REM for the millionth time, then why not just say that?
Why, also, decide to not cover the major label careers of the bands that he does write about beyond a brief sneery paragraph or two about how none of their records were as good once they took money from the big boys?
Why spend countless pages wittering on about the idealism of certain bands? Sure they had admirable politics, that’s great, I want to read about the music too at some point though.
Maybe I’m too comfortably cynical about the music business as a whole but the whole concept of indie purity just seems silly to me nowadays. So I’m docking points for his pious devotion to his precious hardcore band’s purity.
Otherwise highly recommended for those with an interest in 80’s underground indie music.
boston crab?
The Wrestling
Excellent look at British professional wrestling, told essentially in the words of the participants. Professional wrestling is remembered in the British collective memory as a naff spectacle of deeply unfit men participating in obviously fake matches in the afternoon on ITV. It was like that, but also it was home to some intriguing personalities and an interesting mat based style in comparison to the major US promotions. British wrestlers knew their stuff even if the stars ended up being big fat men like Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks who won through their sheer size. This book gives an historical overview of the wrestling and a personal view of the business as told in the wrestlers, promoters and managers own words. Highly recommended to anyone with a passing interest in professional wrestling.