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[[Category:New Reviews|Entertainment]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{newreview|title=Dedicated to...: The Forgotten Friendships, Hidden Stories and Lost Loves found in Second-hand Books|author=W B Gooderham|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=I have found many strange and unusual things in second-hand bookshops. I have done one or two strange and unusual things in them as well, but that's a different story. Twice now I have managed to find a secondINSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-hand book, completely signed and dedicated by the author, yet discarded by the recipient, and have been able to present the author with the edition at hand and get it re-dedicated. (If I'm not mistaken, the discarders were a neighbouring babysitter, and a teacher of the author's children.) I'll admit that's rarefied, however, and on the whole the scribble you find in second-hand books is from the person who bought it, and gave it as a gift, not the person who wrote it. But even so, the dedication of the donor can be immensely fascinating and open to all kinds of interpretation, as these examples show perfectly clear.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0593072847</amazonuk>}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Cher: Strong EnoughPatti Smith|authortitle=Josiah HowardYear of the Monkey|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=Having looked at On the title and sub-titlecoast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the latter being no more than lunar year of the twomonkey -word title of one of her latter-day hitspacked with mischief, sorrow, I assumed this was going to be and unexpected moments. In a fairly comprehensive biography of the American singer. The sub-titlestranger's words, ''Strong Enough'', taken from one of her latter-day hit singlesAnything is possible: after all, reveals nothing. Not until I had almost finished it, a little puzzled at it not being quite what I had expected, did I finally look at 's the blurb on year of the back – at which point all became clearmonkey''. This was not As Smith wanders the full story coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a showbiz career which has lasted close year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head on half a century, but for as it the most part an extraordinarily detailed account of her 1975 TV variety showshifting political waters in America.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0859654842</amazonuk>1526614758
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=Walton_Ask|title=My LifeAsk For Blues|author=David JasonMalcolm Walton|rating=43.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Born in North London in February 1940 during Malcolm Walton's book is clearly a memoir about his introduction to the early years Trad Jazz scene of the Second World Warlate 1950s and early 1960s, David John White once had a brief career as an electrician. Fortunately for but he has chosen to write it in the world form of entertainment and a novel, claiming in his prologue that this would give the public, he soon forsook book a different approach to the world of fuses music memoir. His protagonist 'Martin' takes on Malcolm's mantle and wires for that begins with his first discovery of the stage and small screenSalvation Army band with his grandfather. When he joined Equity This catapults him into a love of music, they already had a David White on their recordsinitially taking piano lessons, and after a little quick thinking on later delving into his true love – the phone, he became David Jasontrumpet.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780891407</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Tom PinfoldMoore Bientot|title=Tudor Monastery Farm: Life in rural England 500 years agoA Bientot...|author=Roger Moore
|rating=4
|genre=HistoryEntertainment|summary=Think The news of it the death of Sir Roger Moore in May 2017 came as time travela great shock: he was one of those people you knew would go on forever. Three professional historians have travelled back some five hundred years to put what they've learned into practice. On a monastery farm they've experienced what it There was really like just one small glimmer of light in rural Tudor England. It's a book to accompany the BBC television series but it's still a rich and rewarding experience if sadness - like me - you missed the show. There's news that a wealth matter of experience between days before his death he'd delivered the three authors and they write about what they each know best finished manuscript of his book, ''À bientôt…'', to his publishers. Just a few months later a copy landed on my desk and I didn't even bother to look as though I could resist reading it's all supplemented by some sumptuous photographs of Bayleaf Farm in west Sussex and the surrounding farmlandstraight away.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849906920</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=Maslanka Sherlock|title=Sherlock: The Story of MusicPuzzle Book|author=Howard GoodallChristopher Maslanka and Steve Tribe|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=As an award-winning composer of choral musicWho doesn't love a good puzzle, film and TV scores and stage musicals, Howard Goodall especially those really fiendish ones that get the brain working extra hard? There really is well qualified nothing to compare to write that buzz we get from the Aha! moment, when everything falls into place and present on the subjectsolution reveals itself. Covering something which has flourished for over 40If puzzles are your thing then you may wish to put your grey cells to the test with ''The Sherlock Puzzle Book'',000 years in every shape and form imaginable is no easy task, but in this book, written and published to accompany a recent six-part documentary series based on BBC2, he has distilled the lot into a very enlightening chronological narrative in just over 300 pagespopular TV series.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587173</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=Corcoran_Dylan|title=Armchair NationDo You Mr Jones?: An intimate history of Britain in front of Bob Dylan with the TVPoets and Professors|author=Joe MoranNeil Corcoran
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=All Bob Dylan's award of us have a love-hate affair with television, or ‘the idiot lantern’. Hardly anybody who has ever owned a set, or been part of a family which has had one, can envisage life without itthe Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 'for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition' proved highly controversial. It has been a source of endless entertainment and escape from the drudge of everyday life, while at inevitably led some time it has irritated most of us beyond measure. Love it or loathe it, it has always been part of people in the fabric of our existence. While literary world to take stock and look at his work and reputation with a certain extent it has been superseded by online services which have supplemented if not overtaken or usurped part fresh eye. This volume of its roleessays was first published in 2002, its iconic status and is unlikely to disappear for the foreseeable futurenow reissued with a new foreword by Will Self.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683912</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=Kyncl_Stream|title=Sounds like London: 100 Years of Black Music in the CapitalStream Punks|author=Lloyd BradleyRobert Kyncl and Maany Peyvan
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=As Lloyd Bradley points I watch quite a lot of YouTube. I play music videos when I want to listen to a particular song I don't already have in my collection. I use it to find out in how to do things, with the introduction instruction videos they seem to this bookhave for pretty much anything. At the gym, if you stand long enough I'll stick it on on any street corner in London todaymy phone, you will hear musicprop it up on the cross-trainer and watch some behind the scenes interviews with the cast of my favourite shows. More often than not And sometimes I'll treat it will be black music, whether as if it is dubstepNetflix, hip hopto watch series with new episodes releasing every few days, reggae exclusively on YouTube. Having a new smart TV adds an extra, easy way to watch without having to plug in my laptop or any other genresquint at a small phone screen. So yes, I like YouTube and I use YouTube. Once it was in effect But I didn't know a whole lot about the original ‘underground music’ long before the term was ever recognised, site it gradually became the mainstream – and here we find out howuntil I read this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687616</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=JVDK_Swing|title=Lucky MeWe Can Swing Together: My Life With - And Without - My Mom, Shirley MacLaineThe Story of Lindisfarne|author=Sachi Parker with Frederick StroppelJohn Van der Kiste
|rating=4.5
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Born in Los Angeles, raised in Tokyo, and schooled across Europe, Sachi Parker had already lead an eventful life before she turned 18. Add to the mix a secretive father with an explosive temper and a Hollywood icon for a mother and you have enough stories to fill a book.
 
And that's exactly what she's done.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1592407889</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|title=America's Mistress: The Life and Times of Eartha Kitt
|author=John L Williams
|rating=4
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Two quotes on the back of the dust jacket testify to the power and public perception of Eartha Kitt during her lifetime. Orson Welles once called her ‘the most exciting woman in the world’, while to the CIA she was ‘a sadistic nymphomaniac’.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857385755</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|title=Inferno Decoded: The essential companion to the myths, mysteries and locations of Dan Brown's Inferno
|author=Michael Haag
|rating=4
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Here be spoilersIt all began with a group of youngsters in North Shields. Not so much in my reviewRod Clements, Simon 'Si' Cowe, but certainly in its subjectRay 'Jacka' Jackson and Ray Laidlaw formed ''The Downtown Faction'', soon changing the name to ''Brethren'' when they were joined by singer-songwriter Alan Hull. As a US-based group had a very quickly produced companion guide similar name they opted to change the name again - and ''Lindisfarne'' (with the name taken from an island off the latest [[:Category:Dan Brown|Dan Brown]] blockbusterNorthumberland coast) was born. It's More than forty years on and with numerous changes of personnel the band is still very much around. They might not so be touring or producing much a page-by-page guidein the way of new material, but certainly serves as an educational and intelligent look at they still perform, with Rod Clements, one of the background to original members on his fourth stint with the biggest-selling book of 2013group.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251800</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=JVDK_ELO|title=Boy About TownElectric Light Orchestra: Song by Song|author=Tony FletcherJohn Van der Kiste
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=My stepchildrenmemories of pop music in the early sixties revolve around guitars and drums, who were not even born at sometimes the time, would disagree piano with me fiercelyonly occasional excursions into strings and brass. But for those of us who Pop music rarely stands still and it wasn't long before the basic instruments were growing up during the 1970sseen as constraints and The Beatles, it was a very exciting time The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys began to be a popular music fanexperiment, with other groups following where they led. Tony Fletcher, who Amongst these groups was born almost ten years after meThe Move and their lead guitarist and songwriter, evidently agreesRoy Wood. In this memoir of his formative years, covering the years 1972 Wood wanted to 1980, he conveys develop the thrill of how it group's sound by adding more instruments but was to be a schoolkid who grew up loving prevented from achieving what he wanted by cost limitations and eventually becoming part because the rest of the scene. It all started with the purchase of a David Cassidy single and ended up with him becoming founder-editor of a fanzine and interviewing household names while taking his O-levels. In fact it didn’t exactly end up that way, for these days he is known best for group didn't really share his highly-respected biographies of The Who drummer Keith Moon and R.E.Menthusiasm.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021679</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=Watkins_Lets|title=Cemetery GatesLet's Make Lots of Money: Saints and Survivors of My Life as the Heavy Metal SceneBiggest Man in Pop|author=Mick O'SheaTom Watkins
|rating=4
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=The way to hell is paved with dead heavy metal stars, or so you might Who on earth would be forgiven for thinking after reading this book. On the other hand, some have made it back from the brink. In this book, Mick O’Shea has summarised a manager in twenty chapters the lives and often troubled times of ten 'saints' who ended up inside the cemetery gates, and ten survivors.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654834</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dylan Jones|title=The Eighties: One Day, One Decade|rating=5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Most of us can count on the fingers of two hands, perhaps only onelarger than life, a select few special days when it was as if the eyes of the here today gone tomorrow world were focused on one major event. These include 9/11; the day Princess Diana was killed; and for those of us pop? Anybody with even longer memories the day Kennedy was shot. Add to that grim litany an event which had far more positive results.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848094132</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Robert Sellers|title=What Fresh Lunacy is This?: The Authorised Biography of Oliver Reed|rating=5|genre=Biography|summary=For rather more of his career than heego, his family and closest friends might have likeda ruthless streak, an opportunity to embrace the name Oliver Reed was a byword for booze, brawls chances and all types of laddish behaviour. As Sellers’ very full and remarkably objective biography reveals, accept that it was a funny yet sad life all at once. For although he repeatedly played up to the image of the lovable rogue which he had created, underneath the bad boy of popular legend he was at heart a professional actor who could always deliver a first-rate performance on the film set when required.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147210112X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sylvie Simmons|title=I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen|rating=4.5|genre=Biography|summary=If you or I wanted to write a story about an imaginary figure who began as a novelist and poet, then became acclaimed as a singer-songwriter in the swinging sixties, made and lost a fortune, became a monk, and returned to a musical career at an age when most mortals are well into retirement, and found himself s not only more popular than ever but also playing going to the largest audiences in his entire lifelast, it would be dismissed as total fantasyevidently. Nobody could make it up – and nobody needs to, because in a nutshell that Tom Watkins is the life (so far) of Leonard Cohen, the subject of this biography and surely just one of the music business’s most unique figures.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549328</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nige Tassell|title=Mr Gig|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Born too late several to remember have walked the 60s and early 70s, music lover fine line and journalist Nige Tassell, who has written for ''The Guardian'', ''New Statesman'' and others, lived the life for some years as punter, reviewer, roadie, DJ and promoter. Then he married and became a father, and the most important gig (if the one with the least comfortable seats) was the kids’ primary school nativity play ten days before Christmas. Around 2010 the midlife crisis hit with a vengeance, and the urge to hit the road in search of what live music was all about these days came upon him. That does not just require private transport capable of taking roads the length and breadth of the land in its stride (and the car passed the test - just), it also requires a certain amount part of courage.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780721617</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jean Christophe Castelli|title=Making of Life of Pi - A Film, A Journey|rating=4.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Before I'd seen the film of Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi I knew the end result would leave me either wondering 'how did they make that?!' or 'WHY did they make that?!'. The fact I ended up watching it twice before the general public had their chancetime, and lapped up a repeat viewing within a fortnight, says it allquite successfully. There's no plot spoiler in the fact that the creators left us with a visually dazzlingAs his memoirs suggest, splendidly luxurious-looking piece part of cinema, one that left me scrabbling for tiny faults to nitpick with and just acknowledging how brilliant the FX and acting were. And, as the resulting question time was the right one, I am still interested very much in the answer - luckily for me this book provides itachievement enough.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781166382</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John FisherKendrick_Scrappy|title=Tommy Cooper 'Jus' Like That!': A Life in Jokes and Pictures|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=I grew up watching Tommy Cooper, and watching my dad do impressions of Tommy Cooper. I thought he was hilarious (the real Tommy!) and loved his expressions as he repeatedly tried and failed to do magic tricks! This book is rather unusual as although it is a biography of sorts, giving information about Tommy's life and his history in the world of entertainment, it isn't text heavy, and so mostly Tommy's story is told through photographs and pictures.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184809311X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewScrappy Little Nobody|author=J F Roberts|title=The True History of the Blackadder: The Unadulterated Tale of the Creation of a Comedy LegendAnna Kendrick
|rating=3.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=If you need to know everything about Celebrity autobiographies. It's a genre long tainted by the history examples of people who clearly didn''Blackadder'' t deserve to be a celebrity, let alone have a ghost-writer create their book, and all by those who worked on did so little but managed to churn out five memoirs before they were even thirty. But more recently it, this is probably the book 's become a way of staking a claim to importance for youfemale comics. It has in-depth biographies of They've not all of the main actors involvedwritten autobiographies, lots of details about their prior achievementsas Bridget Christie proved, and but enough have to provide for a huge amount of information which includes scripts of deleted scenesrapidly-filling shelf at the bookstore. That said2016 we had Amy Schumer winning a GoodReads award, Lena Dunham's been at it, and we've also got Anna Kendrick. Now she's staggering that not a book about one strict comic – not all of her films are designed to make you laugh, and some of them that are just don't – but this has to be in the funniest TV programmes ever made can be anywhere near this dullsame bracket.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848093462</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Francine StockRopek_Tragic|title=In Glorious TechnicolorTragic Magic: A Century The Life of Film and How it has Shaped UsTraffic's Chris Wood|author=Dan Ropek
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Many Chris Wood was a member of us have been captivated from an early age by Traffic, the world of movies, whether introduced to them group formed by visits to the cinemaSteve Winwood in 1967 after he left The Spencer Davis Group. A gifted musician best known for his flute and saxophone work, or watching them on TVhe also played keyboards, video bass guitar and latterly DVD. Author and presenter Francine Stock’s lifelong love affair with the medium began when she was taken contributed backing vocals as well as having a child to see ‘My Fair Lady’ on the large screen. A little later, for her the most memorable thing about the summer hand in writing several of 1970 was not the weather, but repeated viewings of ‘Butch Cassidy songs and the Sundance Kid’one or two instrumentals.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535645</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Martin Kelner|This biography takes its title=Sit Down and Cheer: A History from the name of Sport on TV|rating=4|genre=Sport|summary=Like many English sports fans, the majority one of the calories I burn are used up by shouting at the TV and occasionally going to the shops his compositions for more beer and crisps. Sports books tend to be about the sport itself or biographies of those who expended great effort to reach the top of their chosen sport. But in Martin Kelner's 'Sit Down and Cheer: A History of Sport on TV', there is finally a book for the less energetic among usfifth album.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140812923X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter DoggettDolby_Sound|title=The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie And The 1970sSpeed of Sound|author=Thomas Dolby
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=With hindsight, it’s difficult to argue with the oftFrom struggling post-expressed opinion that David Bowie was the single most important rock punk musician of the 1970s. Having been a perpetual ‘one to watch’ pop star, from around 1966 onwards but with only one hit during that decadeSilicon Valley innovator to university professor, ‘Space Oddity’, from 1972 onwards he went through several Thomas Dolby has had a remarkable self-reinventions in musical styleif not unique career, with an uncanny knack of being able to pre-empt often reinventing himself on the next big trendway. In examining his whole career but focusing largely This memoir is based on his work throughout that particular decade, Peter Doggett looks specifically at every song he recorded, including cover versions. There are also boxed-out features on each album, and articles on related topics such as ‘The Art of Minimalism’ extensive notes and ‘The Heart of Plastic Soul’. He concludes that by 1979 the man’s extraordinary creativity was more or less spent and his subsequent output, successful though it may have been, was in effect treading water up to his ‘elegant, unannounced retirement’ in 2007journals.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548879</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Scarlett ThomasMorris_Legion|title=Monkeys with Typewriters: How to Write Fiction and Unlock the Secret Power The Legion of Stories|rating=4|genre=Reference|summary=I really wasn't expecting a book about how to write fiction to change my TV viewing habits. Alter my reading? Possibly. Improve my writing? Hopefully. But watching Grand Designs in a completely different light?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857863789</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lois Banner|title=MarilynRegrettable Supervillains: The Passion and the Paradox|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=With the possible exception of Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe is probably the most written-about deceased woman in twentieth-century history. The thirty-six years of her life and the manner of her death will no doubt continue to provide an opportunity for as many writers as they have since her sudden passing. After a decade of research Lois Banner, a Professor of Oddball Criminals from Comic Book History and Gender Studies at university in California, has added another weighty tome to the relevant shelves. As a self-styled pioneer of second-wave feminism and the new women’s history, she has some interesting insights to offer into her subject’s life as a gender role model.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408814102</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kirk Blows|title=Hammered: Heavy tales from the hard rock highwayJon Morris|rating=35
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Kirk Blows As much as I like comics – and I do, whether superhero ones or not – I have to admit one thing, namely that the villains in them are a bit pants. What is The Penguin but the former editor world's worst Mafioso, with a hobby of waddling along like his pet birds? Where else do you win an Oscar of hard rock journal Metal Hammer. Just to confuseall things by playing a two-bit killer who just fell in a vat of random chemicals and changed colour, and got mardier as a result (although recently he 's become a nanotech genius – but let's not go there)? And what is also well it with the gimp in the see-through plant pot because he is the embodiment of cold? And that's just some of the better-known as a sports writer and an authority on enemies of ''Batman'', one of the better goodies. You can imagine how awful the baddies related to the other Hammersbad goodies can be. And if you can't, namely West Ham FC. However this book is nothing to do with sport. Instead it devotes its attention to a brace of his interviews with various hard rock luminaries. These took place for the journal some years ago, and have now been revised and updated for book publicationperfect primer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654850</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude CarriereFletcher_Midnight|title=This is Not In the End Midnight Hour: The Life & Soul of the Book;Wilson Pickett|author=Tony Fletcher
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=In many ways, the cover of my edition of this book is perfectly appropriate. Huge, bold serif scriptTamla Motown groups and singers apart, with nothing but the typeface; a declamatory instance of the art in the most common of fonts, and that perfect semimid-colon at sixties there were three major names in the end soul music field who mattered above all. James Brown was something of the book's a cult name - proving that that itself is not who rarely bothered about or troubled the be-all and end-all. Buy this book, as you can, in electronic formsingles charts, and you might see this cover for ten seconds at most, but it is so much part and parcel of what's within.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552450</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Molly Carr|title=A Sherlock Holmes Who's Who (With of Course Dr.Watson)|rating=2.5|genre=Entertainment|summary=Given the amount written about Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, even Otis Redding was on the most dedicated verge of Sherlockians must sometimes require a refresher on shooting into the charactersstratosphere when he died in an aeroplane crash. As I'm certainly not The other was the most dedicated of anythingman from Alabama, although I love Holmes and have read 'the entire canon, I was eagerly anticipating the chance to remind myself of those within. Sadly, this book has done little to quench my anticipationwicked Pickett'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780920822</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert CannonPaling_Reading|title=OperaReading Allowed: True Stories and Curious Incidents from a Provincial Library|author=Chris Paling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=OperaI once made a comical faux pas in a library when I was younger, Cannon tells us but it certainly didn't put me off returning. I once declared in a self-important way that I would start at the introduction to this bookbeginning of the books for young children and not stop til the end, then do the same for those for the older children – ''has never ceased to grow and change then do it all over again with them'', I said, pointing at the large-print shelves. ''I hope not'', was the response often quite radicallybut little me was only aware of a need for large font for my fellow whippersnappers, and not for any other reason. Since then I' His aim is ve needed libraries, and going to them has been second nature. On the dole I made sure I could use the free Internet they provided to describe pay me back for my council tax; later I was intent on finding out if a Senior Library Assistant girl was worthy of her title, and of course, it saved a fortune on books for study and show fun. I'm not alone in sharing the many different facets warmth of opera in its development over both their heating system and the centuriesvery thing they were born to provide – books, but there was still a huge step up between my level of use and its relevance knowledge of them to the modern worldactually working in one. While he does not intend to write a history as such, he has organised this book chronologically as opera developed Which is where Chris Paling comes in a very conscious way across Europe.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521746477</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Francesca BeaumanSpringsteen_Born|title=Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts AdvertisementBorn to Run|author=Bruce Springsteen
|rating=5
|genre=HistoryEntertainment|summary=You might think the Lonely Hearts ad a trivial matter. You might think it should appear in lower case and not be capitalisedNo, but youhaven'd be in disagreement with Ms Beaumant stumbled into a music review from the 1970s, who gives a big L and a big H to it every time she writes of it in her survey of its historyI'm talking about The Boss's autobiography. What's more, she gets to write Lots of books have been written about a lot more than just the contents of the adverts in this brilliant book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009951334X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Colin Grant|title=I & I: The Natural Mystics|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=Just mention the word reggaeSpringsteen by folk who knew him, worked with him and by others who have only read the name that nearly always springs to mind is that of Bob Marley and the Wailerscuttings. The music Over the last seven years he has always been very much a product of going about – not putting the Jamaican culturerecord straight, nurtured in years of turbulent historyexactly – but telling it from his own perspective. As he puts it: ''Writing about yourself is a funny business''. In this book Colin GrantBy his own admission, born in Britain of Jamaican parentsit isn't the whole truth, goes discretion holds him back deep into its rootsbut ''in a project like this, and in the process examines writer has made one promise, to show the childhood lives of the Wailers’ three main personalities, namely Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Neville Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailerreader his mind.'' ''In these pages, I've tried to provide an account of the group – but much more than thatdo this.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526727</amazonuk>''
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bruce RobinsonJVDK_Beatles|title=The Rum Diary - A ScreenplayBeatles Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Beatles but Were Afraid to Ask|author=John Van der Kiste
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionEntertainment|summary=Kemp has lied his way onto a failing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rica, as You might have thought that just about everything which could be said about the only candidate for the job, Beatles had been said and in a semi-comatose state induced by too many miniatures from the hotel minibarcertainly, stumbles into a conspiracy there's been no shortage of epic proportionsbooks about what went wrong, via classic bar room brawls what happened to the money and nightclub mayhemeven what went right. On the way he (almost) writes horoscopes and bowling championship stories, meets the fantastically erotic girlfriend of the evil businessman, and teams up with But what I've never seen before is a proto'miscellany' -Nazi out of his mind on a cocktail of hootch and LSD, all those little facts which are so hard to track down and a photographer side kick. There is no question that this is Hunter S Thompson territory, especially when all the above is combined with a witty, slow-talking hero who in spite of where historian John Van der Kiste comes into his alcoholic haze sees clearly through the exploitation of a third world country by its massive first world near neighbour. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555697</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mick Oown: he'Shea|title=Amy Winehouse: A Losing Game|rating=4|genre=Biography|summary=At the risk of stating the obvious, this is a sad book. Writing this review some five months after her death, now the immediate smoke has cleared, it is apparent from this book (as well as other general sources) that she was s a gifted performer, man with a jazz voice which could have qualified her an eye for a lengthy career long after scores of aspiring X-Factor contestants had given up singing and opted for less glamorous, more steady careers. After all, her idols had been not only near-contemporaries like Michael Jackson detail and Missy Elliott, but also those of an earlier generation such as the classic 1960s girl groups, as well as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, with whom she was thrilled ability to record bring everything together into a duet four months before she diedvery readable whole.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654826</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gillian Lynne|title=A Dancer in Wartime: One GirlIt's Journey from the Blitz to Sadler's Wells|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=At eight years old, Gill Pyrke was driving her parents crazy, as she couldn't sit still and was nicknamed ''wriggle-bottom''. Her mum took her to see the family GP and told him in great detail how annoying she was. The doctor asked if he could talk to Gill alone and put on some music. She started to dance around and climbed on to his desk. He prescribed ballet classes. She started off in a Bromley dance class where one of her classmates was later to be the famous ballerina Beryl Grey. This story is lovely and funny, and has lots of elements of a dream story, yet is told in a very down to earth style which makes it very convincing. The same could be said wonderful collection of the whole of Gillian Lynne's memoir of her early years, starting out on a brilliant career in dancesmall facts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185996</amazonuk>
}}
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