Entertainment
Mr Gig by Nige Tassell
Born too late to remember the 60s and early 70s, music lover 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 of courage. Full review...
Making of Life of Pi - A Film, A Journey by Jean Christophe Castelli
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 chance, and lapped up a repeat viewing within a fortnight, says it all. There's no plot spoiler in the fact that the creators left us with a visually dazzling, splendidly luxurious-looking piece 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 was the right one, I am still interested very much in the answer - luckily for me this book provides it. Full review...
Tommy Cooper 'Jus' Like That!': A Life in Jokes and Pictures by John Fisher
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. Full review...
The True History of the Blackadder: The Unadulterated Tale of the Creation of a Comedy Legend by J F Roberts
If you need to know everything about the history of Blackadder and all who worked on it, this is probably the book for you. It has in-depth biographies of all of the main actors involved, lots of details about their prior achievements, and a huge amount of information which includes scripts of deleted scenes. That said, it's staggering that a book about one of the funniest TV programmes ever made can be anywhere near this dull. Full review...
In Glorious Technicolor: A Century of Film and How it has Shaped Us by Francine Stock
Many of us have been captivated from an early age by the world of movies, whether introduced to them by visits to the cinema, or watching them on TV, video and latterly DVD. Author and presenter Francine Stock’s lifelong love affair with the medium began when she was taken as a child to see ‘My Fair Lady’ on the large screen. A little later, for her the most memorable thing about the summer of 1970 was not the weather, but repeated viewings of ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’. Full review...
Sit Down and Cheer: A History of Sport on TV by Martin Kelner
Like many English sports fans, the majority of the calories I burn are used up by shouting at the TV and occasionally going to the shops 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 us. Full review...
The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie And The 1970s by Peter Doggett
With hindsight, it’s difficult to argue with the oft-expressed opinion that David Bowie was the single most important rock musician of the 1970s. Having been a perpetual ‘one to watch’ from around 1966 onwards but with only one hit during that decade, ‘Space Oddity’, from 1972 onwards he went through several remarkable self-reinventions in musical style, with an uncanny knack of being able to pre-empt the next big trend. In examining his whole career but focusing largely 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’ 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 2007. Full review...
Monkeys with Typewriters: How to Write Fiction and Unlock the Secret Power of Stories by Scarlett Thomas
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? Full review...
Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox by Lois Banner
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 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. Full review...
Hammered: Heavy tales from the hard rock highway by Kirk Blows
Kirk Blows is the former editor of hard rock journal Metal Hammer. Just to confuse, he is also well known as a sports writer and an authority on 'the other Hammers', 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 publication. Full review...
This is Not the End of the Book; by Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere
In many ways, the cover of my edition of this book is perfectly appropriate. Huge, bold serif script, with nothing but the typeface; a declamatory instance of the art in the most common of fonts, and that perfect semi-colon at the end of the book's name - proving that that itself is not the be-all and end-all. Buy this book, as you can, in electronic form, and you might see this cover for ten seconds at most, but it is so much part and parcel of what's within. Full review...
A Sherlock Holmes Who's Who (With of Course Dr.Watson) by Molly Carr
Given the amount written about Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, even the most dedicated of Sherlockians must sometimes require a refresher on the characters. As I'm certainly not the most dedicated of anything, 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 anticipation. Full review...
Opera by Robert Cannon
Opera, Cannon tells us in the introduction to this book, 'has never ceased to grow and change – often quite radically.' His aim is to describe and show the many different facets of opera in its development over the centuries, and its relevance to the modern world. While he does not intend to write a history as such, he has organised this book chronologically as opera developed in a very conscious way across Europe. Full review...
Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts Advertisement by Francesca Beauman
You might think the Lonely Hearts ad a trivial matter. You might think it should appear in lower case and not be capitalised, but you'd be in disagreement with Ms Beauman, who gives a big L and a big H to it every time she writes of it in her survey of its history. What's more, she gets to write about a lot more than just the contents of the adverts in this brilliant book. Full review...
I & I: The Natural Mystics by Colin Grant
Just mention the word reggae, and the name that nearly always springs to mind is that of Bob Marley and the Wailers. The music has always been very much a product of the Jamaican culture, nurtured in years of turbulent history. In this book Colin Grant, born in Britain of Jamaican parents, goes back deep into its roots, and in the process examines the childhood lives of the Wailers’ three main personalities, namely Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Neville Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailer, to provide an account of the group – but much more than that. Full review...
The Rum Diary - A Screenplay by Bruce Robinson
Kemp has lied his way onto a failing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rica, as the only candidate for the job, and in a semi-comatose state induced by too many miniatures from the hotel minibar, stumbles into a conspiracy of epic proportions, via classic bar room brawls and nightclub mayhem. On the way he (almost) writes horoscopes and bowling championship stories, meets the fantastically erotic girlfriend of the evil businessman, and teams up with a proto-Nazi out of his mind on a cocktail of hootch and LSD, 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 his alcoholic haze sees clearly through the exploitation of a third world country by its massive first world near neighbour. Full review...
Amy Winehouse: A Losing Game by Mick O'Shea
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 a gifted performer, with a jazz voice which could have qualified her 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 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 to record a duet four months before she died. Full review...
A Dancer in Wartime: One Girl's Journey from the Blitz to Sadler's Wells by Gillian Lynne
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 of the whole of Gillian Lynne's memoir of her early years, starting out on a brilliant career in dance. Full review...
You Are Not Alone: Michael Through A Brother's Eyes by Jermaine Jackson
It is inevitable that the books we have already seen about Michael Jackson in the two years since his sudden passing will be merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet for those which comprise and are based on first-hand knowledge of his life and death, there will surely be few if any to rival this account by his brother Jermaine and ghostwriter Steve Dennis. Full review...
The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex by Mark Kermode
I've been there, and so, despite all number of free press screenings, has Mark Kermode. When a major cinema chain I probably shouldn't name, but will - Odeon - moved from their smelly inner-city fleapits to a major new development far from any convenient bus routes, they started their multiplex life with the best intentions, having an arthouse film every week, on a Wednesday, and an offer of free entry courtesy of the local newspaper. This was brilliant for me - or would have been, if they'd managed to keep up with my expectations. I lost track of the number of weeks they had the wrong film on the projector, and particularly how many times they started the right one without glimpsing that it was being shown on the wrong-sized screen, through the wrong lenses, not matching with the gate, or even upside down. The projectionist of course had eleven other screens to worry about, pressing a button for each and never needing (or wanting?) to watch a movie. Kermode is correct in that if we must still think of cinemas in the parlance of theatres, and film-showings as performances, the projectionist can ruin a show just as a bad actor can a stage play. Full review...
Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend by Robert Ross
Some years ago, I was given a Penguin edition of Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', with what looked like an uniquely fearsome face on the front cover. A year or two later, I saw a photograph of Marty Feldman and was convinced he must have inspired it if not actually been the model. Full review...
You Really Got Me: The Story of The Kinks by Nick Hasted
'People in America talk about 'The Beatles, the Stones, The Who.' For me it's 'The Beatles, the Stones, The Kinks.' Those words, quoted in the book, are those of Pete Townshend of The Who himself. He is certainly not alone in his verdict that, at the height of the swinging sixties in Britain, the Muswell Hill quartet were No 3 in the premier music league. Patchy chart success since their heyday has done nothing to diminish their reputation, or that of leader Ray Davies as one of the most gifted British songwriters of the last fifty years. Full review...
Route 19 Revisited: The Clash and London Calling by Marcus Gray
When I began reading these 500 pages or so, my initial feeling was – how could anybody write a book THIS long on one album? Soon, it became clear that I had been slightly misled by the title. Although 'London Calling', long feted as the best LP (now a CD, naturally) ever made by one of punk's most seminal groups, is the focal point, this volume also charts in detail the history and development of the Clash to that point, their subsequent career (and decline), and their legacy. Full review...
Lady Blue Eyes: My Life With Frank Sinatra by Barbara Sinatra
Barbara Blakeley, born in 1926, was married firstly to Robert Oliver, an executive, with whom she had a son, and secondly to Zeppo Marx. But it was the already thrice-married and thrice-divorced Francis Albert Sinatra, whom she had idolized as a singer for a long time, with whom she would make her most enduring marriage, and vice versa. They tied the knot in 1976, and stayed together until his death in 1998. Full review...
John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman
For part of my formative years, John Lennon was one of the four most famous people in the world. All that we have learnt about him in the thirty years or so since his death has kept his name firmly in the public eye, if not always for the best of reasons. At over 800 pages, this is one of the lengthiest biographies written about the extraordinary life and times of the former Beatle. It's also surely one of the most impartial. Full review...