Month: September 2020

Book review: The Blaze of Obscurity

The Blaze of Obscurity by Clive James.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Well, here we are. This is the final volume in Clive James’s Unreliable Memoirs series. It’s the fifth book wherein the éminence grise (or should that be éminence chauve?) describes his continued ascent through the land of the crystal bucket. With The Blaze of Obscurity, the Australian writer moves from being about the box to being mostly on it. It’s where shows began to be prefaced with his name, not just his image.

From now on, in this book, I will try to leave my name out of the title of the shows, thus to circumvent the twin fears of wasting space and sounding more than necessarily like a self-glorifying pantaloon.

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Book review: Shiver

Shiver by Junji Ito.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

If you’ve read any Junji Ito before, you’ll be pretty aware of the sort of things you’re going to get in Shiver, a collection of his best work, gathered together and presented with brief commentary from the creepmaster himself.

Hey, they’re playing my song!

If you’ve not read any Ito before, you might well want a stiff drink or a change of undies. ‘Cause shit’s going to get weird.

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Book review: Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief.Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

Having recently read Bare-Faced Messiah, the landmark biography of L. Ron Hubbard, I was already aware of how much dickbaggery was behind Scientology.

What I was unprepared for was how much dickbaggery persists in Scientology. That’s where Lawrence Wright’s book excels: highlighting exactly how fucked up the current organisation is. And how much of that is down to one guy.
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