Difference between revisions of "Newest Entertainment Reviews"

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{{newreview
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|author=Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold
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{{Frontpage
|title=Tudor Monastery Farm: Life in rural England 500 years ago
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|author=Patti Smith
 +
|title=Year of the Monkey
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=History
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|genre=Biography
|summary=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.
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|summary=On the coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. In a stranger's words, ''Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey''. As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head on, as it the shifting political waters in America.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849906920</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1526614758
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Walton_Ask
|title=The Story of Music
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|title=Ask For Blues
|author=Howard Goodall
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|author=Malcolm Walton
|rating=4.5
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|rating=3.5
|genre=Entertainment
 
|summary=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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587173</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Armchair Nation: An intimate history of Britain in front of the TV
 
|author=Joe Moran
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|summary=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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683912</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Sounds like London: 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital
 
|author=Lloyd Bradley
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|summary=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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687616</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|title=Lucky Me: My Life With - And Without - My Mom, Shirley MacLaine
 
|author=Sachi Parker with Frederick Stroppel
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|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.
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|summary=Malcolm Walton's book is clearly a memoir about his introduction to the Trad Jazz scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s, but he has chosen to write it in the form of a novel, claiming in his prologue that this would give the book a different approach to the music memoir. His protagonist 'Martin' takes on Malcolm's mantle and begins with his first discovery of the Salvation Army band with his grandfather.  This catapults him into a love of music, initially taking piano lessons, and later delving into his true love – the trumpet.
 
 
And that's exactly what she's done.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1592407889</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Moore Bientot
|title=America's Mistress: The Life and Times of Eartha Kitt
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|title=A Bientot...
|author=John L Williams
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|author=Roger Moore
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|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’.
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|summary=The news of the death of Sir Roger Moore in May 2017 came as a great shock: he was one of those people you knew would go on forever. There was just one small glimmer of light in the sadness - the news that a matter of days before his death he'd delivered the 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 straight away.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857385755</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Maslanka Sherlock
|title=Inferno Decoded: The essential companion to the myths, mysteries and locations of Dan Brown's Inferno
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|title=Sherlock: The Puzzle Book
|author=Michael Haag
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|author=Christopher Maslanka and Steve Tribe
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Here be spoilers.  Not so much in my review, but certainly in its subject, a very quickly produced companion guide to the latest [[:Category:Dan Brown|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.
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|summary=Who doesn't love a good puzzle, especially those really fiendish ones that get the brain working extra hard? There really is nothing to compare to that buzz we get from the Aha! moment, when everything falls into place and the solution reveals itself. If puzzles are your thing then you may wish to put your grey cells to the test with ''The Sherlock Puzzle Book'', based on the popular TV series.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251800</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Corcoran_Dylan
|title=Boy About Town
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|title=Do You Mr Jones?: Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors
|author=Tony Fletcher
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|author=Neil Corcoran
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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.
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|summary=Bob Dylan's award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 'for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition' proved highly controversial. It inevitably led some people in the literary world to take stock and look at his work and reputation with a fresh eye. This volume of essays was first published in 2002, and is now reissued with a new foreword by Will Self.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021679</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Kyncl_Stream
|title=Cemetery Gates: Saints and Survivors of the Heavy Metal Scene
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|title=Stream Punks
|author=Mick O'Shea
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|author=Robert Kyncl and Maany Peyvan
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
 
|summary=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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654834</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Dylan Jones
 
|title=The Eighties: One Day, One Decade
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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.
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|summary=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 how to do things, with the instruction videos they seem to have for pretty much anything. At the gym, I'll stick it on on my phone, prop it up on the cross-trainer and watch some behind the scenes interviews with the cast of my favourite shows. And sometimes I'll treat it as if it is Netflix, to watch series with new episodes releasing every few days, exclusively on YouTube. Having a new smart TV adds an extra, easy way to watch without having to plug in my laptop or squint at a small phone screen. So yes, I like YouTube and I use YouTube. But I didn't know a whole lot about the site it until I read this book.
|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 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.
 
|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 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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549328</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=JVDK_Swing
|author=Nige Tassell
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|title=We Can Swing Together: The Story of Lindisfarne
|title=Mr Gig
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|author=John Van der Kiste
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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 promoterThen 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 ChristmasAround 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 himThat 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.
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|summary=It all began with a group of youngsters in North Shields.  Rod Clements, Simon 'Si' Cowe, Ray 'Jacka' Jackson and Ray Laidlaw formed ''The Downtown Faction'', soon changing the name to ''Brethren'' when they were joined by singer-songwriter Alan HullAs a US-based group had a similar name they opted to change the name again - and ''Lindisfarne'' (with the name taken from an island off the Northumberland coast) was bornMore than forty years on and with numerous changes of personnel the band is still very much aroundThey might not be touring or producing much in the way of new material, but they still perform, with Rod Clements, one of the original members on his fourth stint with the group.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780721617</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=JVDK_ELO
|author=Jean Christophe Castelli
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|title=Electric Light Orchestra: Song by Song
|title=Making of Life of Pi - A Film, A Journey
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|author=John Van der Kiste
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|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 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.
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|summary=My memories of pop music in the early sixties revolve around guitars and drums, sometimes the piano with only occasional excursions into strings and brass. Pop music rarely stands still and it wasn't long before the basic instruments were seen as constraints and The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys began to experiment, with other groups following where they led. Amongst these groups was The Move and their lead guitarist and songwriter, Roy Wood. Wood wanted to develop the group's sound by adding more instruments but was prevented from achieving what he wanted by cost limitations and because the rest of the group didn't really share his enthusiasm.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781166382</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Watkins_Lets
|author=John Fisher
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|title=Let's Make Lots of Money: My Life as the Biggest Man in Pop
|title=Tommy Cooper 'Jus' Like That!': A Life in Jokes and Pictures
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|author=Tom Watkins
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Biography
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|genre=Entertainment
|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.
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|summary=Who on earth would be a manager in the larger than life, here today gone tomorrow world of pop? Anybody with an ego, a ruthless streak, an opportunity to embrace the chances and accept that it's not going to last, evidently. Tom Watkins is just one of several to have walked the fine line and, for part of the time, quite successfully. As his memoirs suggest, part of the time was achievement enough.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184809311X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Kendrick_Scrappy
|author=J F Roberts
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|title=Scrappy Little Nobody
|title=The True History of the Blackadder: The Unadulterated Tale of the Creation of a Comedy Legend
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|author=Anna Kendrick
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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.
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|summary=Celebrity autobiographies. It's a genre long tainted by the examples of people who clearly didn't deserve to be a celebrity, let alone have a ghost-writer create their book, and by those who did so little but managed to churn out five memoirs before they were even thirty. But more recently it's become a way of staking a claim to importance for female comics. They've not all written autobiographies, as Bridget Christie proved, but enough have to provide for a rapidly-filling shelf at the bookstore. 2016 we had Amy Schumer winning a GoodReads award, Lena Dunham's been at it, and we've also got Anna Kendrick. Now she's not a 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 same bracket.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848093462</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Ropek_Tragic
|author=Francine Stock
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|title=Tragic Magic: The Life of Traffic's Chris Wood
|title=In Glorious Technicolor: A Century of Film and How it has Shaped Us
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|author=Dan Ropek
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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’.
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|summary=Chris Wood was a member of Traffic, the group formed by Steve Winwood in 1967 after he left The Spencer Davis Group. A gifted musician best known for his flute and saxophone work, he also played keyboards, bass guitar and contributed backing vocals as well as having a hand in writing several of the songs and one or two instrumentals. This biography takes its title from the name of one of his compositions for their fifth album.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535645</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Dolby_Sound
|author=Martin Kelner
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|title=The Speed of Sound
|title=Sit Down and Cheer: A History of Sport on TV
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|author=Thomas Dolby
|rating=4
 
|genre=Sport
 
|summary=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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140812923X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Peter Doggett
 
|title=The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie And The 1970s
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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.
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|summary=From struggling post-punk musician to pop star, from Silicon Valley innovator to university professor, Thomas Dolby has had a remarkable if not unique career, often reinventing himself on the way. This memoir is based on his extensive notes and journals.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548879</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Morris_Legion
|author=Scarlett Thomas
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|title=The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains: Oddball Criminals from Comic Book History
|title=Monkeys with Typewriters: How to Write Fiction and Unlock the Secret Power of Stories
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|author=Jon Morris
|rating=4
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|rating=5
|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=Marilyn: 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 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 highway
 
|rating=3
 
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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.
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|summary=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 world's worst Mafioso, with a hobby of waddling along like his pet birds? Where else do you win an Oscar of all 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 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 enemies of ''Batman'', one of the better goodies. You can imagine how awful the baddies related to the bad goodies can be. And if you can't, this is the perfect primer.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654850</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Fletcher_Midnight
|author=Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere
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|title=In the Midnight Hour: The Life & Soul of Wilson Pickett
|title=This is Not the End of the Book;
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|author=Tony Fletcher
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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.
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|summary=Tamla Motown groups and singers apart, in the mid-sixties there were three major names in the soul music field who mattered above all. James Brown was something of a cult name who rarely bothered about or troubled the singles charts, and Otis Redding was on the verge of shooting into the stratosphere when he died in an aeroplane crash. The other was the man from Alabama, 'the wicked Pickett'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552450</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Paling_Reading
|author=Molly Carr
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|title=Reading Allowed: True Stories and Curious Incidents from a Provincial Library
|title=A Sherlock Holmes Who's Who (With of Course Dr.Watson)
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|author=Chris Paling
|rating=2.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|summary=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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780920822</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Robert Cannon
 
|title=Opera
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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 worldWhile 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.
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|summary=I once made a comical faux pas in a library when I was younger, but it certainly didn't put me off returning.  I once declared in a self-important way that I would start at the beginning of the books for young children and not stop til the end, then do the same for those for the older children – ''and then do it all over again with them'', I said, pointing at the large-print shelves.  ''I hope not'', was the response but little me was only aware of a need for large font for my fellow whippersnappers, and not for any other reason. Since then I'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 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 fun.  I'm not alone in sharing the warmth of both their heating system and the very thing they were born to provide – books, but there was still a huge step up between my level of use and knowledge of them to actually working in oneWhich is where Chris Paling comes in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521746477</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=Springsteen_Born
|author=Francesca Beauman
+
|title=Born to Run
|title=Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts Advertisement
+
|author=Bruce Springsteen
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=History
+
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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 historyWhat's more, she gets to write about a lot more than just the contents of the adverts in this brilliant book.
+
|summary=No, you haven't stumbled into a music review from the 1970s, I'm talking about The Boss's autobiographyLots of books have been written about Springsteen by folk who knew him, worked with him and by others who have only read the cuttingsOver the last seven years he has been going about – not putting the record straight, exactly – but telling it from his own perspective.  As he puts it: ''Writing about yourself is a funny business''By his own admission, it isn't the whole truth, discretion holds him back but ''in a project like this, the writer has made one promise, to show the reader his mind.'' ''In these pages, I've tried to do this.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009951334X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Colin Grant
 
|title=I & I: The Natural Mystics
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=
 
Just mention the word reggae, and the name that nearly always springs to mind is that of Bob Marley and the WailersThe music has always been very much a product of the Jamaican culture, nurtured in years of turbulent historyIn 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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526727</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=JVDK_Beatles
|author=Bruce Robinson
+
|title=A Beatles Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Beatles but Were Afraid to Ask
|title=The Rum Diary - A Screenplay
+
|author=John Van der Kiste
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555697</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mick O'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 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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0859654826</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Gillian Lynne
 
|title=A Dancer in Wartime: One Girl'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 of the whole of Gillian Lynne's memoir of her early years, starting out on a brilliant career in dance.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185996</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jermaine Jackson
 
|title=You Are Not Alone: Michael Through A Brother's Eyes
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007435665</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mark Kermode
 
|title=The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Entertainment
 
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=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.
+
|summary=You might have thought that just about everything which could be said about the Beatles had been said and certainly, there's been no shortage of books about what went wrong, what happened to the money and even what went right. But what I've never seen before is a 'miscellany' - all those little facts which are so hard to track down and this is where historian John Van der Kiste comes into his own: he's a man with an eye for detail and the ability to bring everything together into a very readable whole. It's a wonderful collection of the small facts.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847946038</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Robert Ross
 
|title=Marty Feldman: The Biography of a Comedy Legend
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Biography
 
|summary=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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857683780</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
Move on to [[Newest Fantasy Reviews]]

Latest revision as of 16:30, 29 August 2020


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Review of

Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith

4star.jpg Biography

On the coast of Santa Cruz, Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the monkey - one packed with mischief, sorrow, and unexpected moments. In a stranger's words, Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey. As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and ageing are faced head on, as it the shifting political waters in America. Full Review

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Review of

Ask For Blues by Malcolm Walton

3.5star.jpg Autobiography

Malcolm Walton's book is clearly a memoir about his introduction to the Trad Jazz scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s, but he has chosen to write it in the form of a novel, claiming in his prologue that this would give the book a different approach to the music memoir. His protagonist 'Martin' takes on Malcolm's mantle and begins with his first discovery of the Salvation Army band with his grandfather. This catapults him into a love of music, initially taking piano lessons, and later delving into his true love – the trumpet. Full Review

link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/Moore Bientot/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21

Review of

A Bientot... by Roger Moore

4star.jpg Entertainment

The news of the death of Sir Roger Moore in May 2017 came as a great shock: he was one of those people you knew would go on forever. There was just one small glimmer of light in the sadness - the news that a matter of days before his death he'd delivered the 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 straight away. Full Review

link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/Maslanka Sherlock/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21

Review of

Sherlock: The Puzzle Book by Christopher Maslanka and Steve Tribe

4star.jpg Entertainment

Who doesn't love a good puzzle, especially those really fiendish ones that get the brain working extra hard? There really is nothing to compare to that buzz we get from the Aha! moment, when everything falls into place and the solution reveals itself. If puzzles are your thing then you may wish to put your grey cells to the test with The Sherlock Puzzle Book, based on the popular TV series. Full Review

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Review of

Do You Mr Jones?: Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors by Neil Corcoran

4.5star.jpg Entertainment

Bob Dylan's award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 'for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition' proved highly controversial. It inevitably led some people in the literary world to take stock and look at his work and reputation with a fresh eye. This volume of essays was first published in 2002, and is now reissued with a new foreword by Will Self. Full Review

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Review of

Stream Punks by Robert Kyncl and Maany Peyvan

4.5star.jpg Entertainment

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 how to do things, with the instruction videos they seem to have for pretty much anything. At the gym, I'll stick it on on my phone, prop it up on the cross-trainer and watch some behind the scenes interviews with the cast of my favourite shows. And sometimes I'll treat it as if it is Netflix, to watch series with new episodes releasing every few days, exclusively on YouTube. Having a new smart TV adds an extra, easy way to watch without having to plug in my laptop or squint at a small phone screen. So yes, I like YouTube and I use YouTube. But I didn't know a whole lot about the site it until I read this book. Full Review

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Review of

We Can Swing Together: The Story of Lindisfarne by John Van der Kiste

4.5star.jpg Entertainment

It all began with a group of youngsters in North Shields. Rod Clements, Simon 'Si' Cowe, Ray '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 similar name they opted to change the name again - and Lindisfarne (with the name taken from an island off the Northumberland coast) was born. More than forty years on and with numerous changes of personnel the band is still very much around. They might not be touring or producing much in the way of new material, but they still perform, with Rod Clements, one of the original members on his fourth stint with the group. Full Review

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Review of

Electric Light Orchestra: Song by Song by John Van der Kiste

4.5star.jpg Entertainment

My memories of pop music in the early sixties revolve around guitars and drums, sometimes the piano with only occasional excursions into strings and brass. Pop music rarely stands still and it wasn't long before the basic instruments were seen as constraints and The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys began to experiment, with other groups following where they led. Amongst these groups was The Move and their lead guitarist and songwriter, Roy Wood. Wood wanted to develop the group's sound by adding more instruments but was prevented from achieving what he wanted by cost limitations and because the rest of the group didn't really share his enthusiasm. Full Review

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Review of

Let's Make Lots of Money: My Life as the Biggest Man in Pop by Tom Watkins

4star.jpg Entertainment

Who on earth would be a manager in the larger than life, here today gone tomorrow world of pop? Anybody with an ego, a ruthless streak, an opportunity to embrace the chances and accept that it's not going to last, evidently. Tom Watkins is just one of several to have walked the fine line and, for part of the time, quite successfully. As his memoirs suggest, part of the time was achievement enough. Full Review

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Review of

Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick

3.5star.jpg Entertainment

Celebrity autobiographies. It's a genre long tainted by the examples of people who clearly didn't deserve to be a celebrity, let alone have a ghost-writer create their book, and by those who did so little but managed to churn out five memoirs before they were even thirty. But more recently it's become a way of staking a claim to importance for female comics. They've not all written autobiographies, as Bridget Christie proved, but enough have to provide for a rapidly-filling shelf at the bookstore. 2016 we had Amy Schumer winning a GoodReads award, Lena Dunham's been at it, and we've also got Anna Kendrick. Now she's not a 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 same bracket. Full Review

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Review of

Tragic Magic: The Life of Traffic's Chris Wood by Dan Ropek

4.5star.jpg Entertainment

Chris Wood was a member of Traffic, the group formed by Steve Winwood in 1967 after he left The Spencer Davis Group. A gifted musician best known for his flute and saxophone work, he also played keyboards, bass guitar and contributed backing vocals as well as having a hand in writing several of the songs and one or two instrumentals. This biography takes its title from the name of one of his compositions for their fifth album. Full Review

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Review of

The Speed of Sound by Thomas Dolby

4.5star.jpg Entertainment

From struggling post-punk musician to pop star, from Silicon Valley innovator to university professor, Thomas Dolby has had a remarkable if not unique career, often reinventing himself on the way. This memoir is based on his extensive notes and journals. Full Review

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Review of

The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains: Oddball Criminals from Comic Book History by Jon Morris

5star.jpg Entertainment

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 world's worst Mafioso, with a hobby of waddling along like his pet birds? Where else do you win an Oscar of all 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 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 enemies of Batman, one of the better goodies. You can imagine how awful the baddies related to the bad goodies can be. And if you can't, this is the perfect primer. Full Review

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Review of

In the Midnight Hour: The Life & Soul of Wilson Pickett by Tony Fletcher

4.5star.jpg Entertainment

Tamla Motown groups and singers apart, in the mid-sixties there were three major names in the soul music field who mattered above all. James Brown was something of a cult name who rarely bothered about or troubled the singles charts, and Otis Redding was on the verge of shooting into the stratosphere when he died in an aeroplane crash. The other was the man from Alabama, 'the wicked Pickett'. Full Review

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Review of

Reading Allowed: True Stories and Curious Incidents from a Provincial Library by Chris Paling

4.5star.jpg Entertainment

I once made a comical faux pas in a library when I was younger, but it certainly didn't put me off returning. I once declared in a self-important way that I would start at the beginning of the books for young children and not stop til the end, then do the same for those for the older children – and then do it all over again with them, I said, pointing at the large-print shelves. I hope not, was the response – but little me was only aware of a need for large font for my fellow whippersnappers, and not for any other reason. Since then I'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 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 fun. I'm not alone in sharing the warmth of both their heating system and the very thing they were born to provide – books, but there was still a huge step up between my level of use and knowledge of them to actually working in one. Which is where Chris Paling comes in. Full Review

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Review of

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

5star.jpg Entertainment

No, you haven't stumbled into a music review from the 1970s, I'm talking about The Boss's autobiography. Lots of books have been written about Springsteen by folk who knew him, worked with him and by others who have only read the cuttings. Over the last seven years he has been going about – not putting the record straight, exactly – but telling it from his own perspective. As he puts it: Writing about yourself is a funny business. By his own admission, it isn't the whole truth, discretion holds him back but in a project like this, the writer has made one promise, to show the reader his mind. In these pages, I've tried to do this. Full Review

JVDK Beatles.jpg

Review of

A Beatles Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Beatles but Were Afraid to Ask by John Van der Kiste

5star.jpg Entertainment

You might have thought that just about everything which could be said about the Beatles had been said and certainly, there's been no shortage of books about what went wrong, what happened to the money and even what went right. But what I've never seen before is a 'miscellany' - all those little facts which are so hard to track down and this is where historian John Van der Kiste comes into his own: he's a man with an eye for detail and the ability to bring everything together into a very readable whole. It's a wonderful collection of the small facts. Full Review

Move on to Newest Fantasy Reviews