Dedicated to...: The Forgotten Friendships, Hidden Stories and Lost Loves found in Second-hand Books by W B Gooderham
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 second-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. Full review...
Cher: Strong Enough by Josiah Howard
Having looked at the title and sub-title, the latter being no more than the two-word title of one of her latter-day hits, I assumed this was going to be a fairly comprehensive biography of the American singer. The sub-title, Strong Enough, taken from one of her latter-day hit singles, 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 the blurb on the back – at which point all became clear. This was not the full story of a showbiz career which has lasted close on half a century, but for the most part an extraordinarily detailed account of her 1975 TV variety show. Full review...
My Life by David Jason
Born in North London in February 1940 during the early years of the Second World War, David John White once had a brief career as an electrician. Fortunately for the world of entertainment and the public, he soon forsook the world of fuses and wires for that of the stage and small screen. When he joined Equity, they already had a David White on their records, and after a little quick thinking on the phone, he became David Jason. Full review...
Tudor Monastery Farm: Life in rural England 500 years ago by Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold
Think of it as time travel. 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 was really like in rural Tudor England. It's a book to accompany the BBC television series but it's still a rich and rewarding experience if - like me - you missed the show. There's a wealth of experience between the three authors and they write about what they each know best and it's all supplemented by some sumptuous photographs of Bayleaf Farm in west Sussex and the surrounding farmland. Full review...
The Story of Music by Howard Goodall
As an award-winning composer of choral music, film and TV scores and stage musicals, Howard Goodall is well qualified to write and present on the subject. Covering something which has flourished for over 40,000 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 on BBC2, he has distilled the lot into a very enlightening chronological narrative in just over 300 pages. Full review...
Armchair Nation: An intimate history of Britain in front of the TV by Joe Moran
All 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 it. It has been a source of endless entertainment and escape from the drudge of everyday life, while at some time it has irritated most of us beyond measure. Love it or loathe it, it has always been part of the fabric of our existence. While to a certain extent it has been superseded by online services which have supplemented if not overtaken or usurped part of its role, its iconic status is unlikely to disappear for the foreseeable future. Full review...
Sounds like London: 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital by Lloyd Bradley
As Lloyd Bradley points out in the introduction to this book, if you stand long enough on any street corner in London today, you will hear music. More often than not it will be black music, whether it is dubstep, hip hop, reggae or any other genre. Once it was in effect the original ‘underground music’ long before the term was ever recognised, it gradually became the mainstream – and here we find out how. Full review...
Lucky Me: My Life With - And Without - My Mom, Shirley MacLaine by Sachi Parker with Frederick Stroppel
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. Full review...
America's Mistress: The Life and Times of Eartha Kitt by John L Williams
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’. Full review...
Inferno Decoded: The essential companion to the myths, mysteries and locations of Dan Brown's Inferno by Michael Haag
Here be spoilers. Not so much in my review, but certainly in its subject, a very quickly produced companion guide to the latest Dan Brown blockbuster. It's not so much a page-by-page guide, but certainly serves as an educational and intelligent look at the background to the biggest-selling book of 2013. Full review...
Boy About Town by Tony Fletcher
My stepchildren, who were not even born at the time, would disagree with me fiercely. But for those of us who were growing up during the 1970s, it was a very exciting time to be a popular music fan. Tony Fletcher, who was born almost ten years after me, evidently agrees. In this memoir of his formative years, covering the years 1972 to 1980, he conveys the thrill of how it was to be a schoolkid who grew up loving and eventually becoming part 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 his highly-respected biographies of The Who drummer Keith Moon and R.E.M. Full review...
Cemetery Gates: Saints and Survivors of the Heavy Metal Scene by Mick O'Shea
The way to hell is paved with dead heavy metal stars, or so you might 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 in twenty chapters the lives and often troubled times of ten 'saints' who ended up inside the cemetery gates, and ten survivors. Full review...
The Eighties: One Day, One Decade by Dylan Jones
Most of us can count on the fingers of two hands, perhaps only one, a select few special days when it was as if the eyes of the world were focused on one major event. These include 9/11; the day Princess Diana was killed; and for those of us with even longer memories the day Kennedy was shot. Add to that grim litany an event which had far more positive results. Full review...
What Fresh Lunacy is This?: The Authorised Biography of Oliver Reed by Robert Sellers
For rather more of his career than he, his family and closest friends might have liked, the name Oliver Reed was a byword for booze, brawls and all types of laddish behaviour. As Sellers’ very full and remarkably objective biography reveals, 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. Full review...
I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons
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 not only more popular than ever but also playing to the largest audiences in his entire life, it would be dismissed as total fantasy. Nobody could make it up – and nobody needs to, because in a nutshell that is the life (so far) of Leonard Cohen, the subject of this biography and surely one of the music business’s most unique figures. Full review...
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...