Month: December 2020

Book review: Mother, Brother, Lover: Selected Lyrics

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Mother, Brother, Lover: Selected Lyrics by Jarvis Cocker.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.

So Pulp, eh? Possibly – nah, probably – the best band to emerge from the Britpop years of hype and arse-smacking heroin chic.

The group – in existence since 1978, if you can believe it – weren’t typically sexy. I mean, there was an effort to evoke a certain PR sexiness from lyricist Jarvis Cocker’s gangly frame, but it wasn’t the body that made him sexy: it was the combination of his writing, and of sex itself.

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Book review: In Search of Lost Time Volume VI: Time Regained

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In Search of Lost Time Volume VI: Time Regained by Marcel Proust.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Well, I did it. I survived In Search of Lost Time. Admittedly, this is probably easier to do in a year where chunks were spent in mandatory lockdown than in a year when you can do … I dunno, anything. But here we are.

This review of the final volume of the Modern Library edition will probably serve as a review of the piece as a whole, as it’s difficult to view them as anything except interlinked, because the individual books don’t stand on their own merits – it’s only as part of this elephantine endeavour that they can be appreciated.

Yeah, you’re not the only one who needs a lie down mate.
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Book review: Tai-Pan

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Tai-Pan by James Clavell.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.

The thing I suppose I needed most this year was a balls-out story of daring, legal piracy and hard-nosed colonialism in the service of personal riches and furthering the drug trade. Either that, or everything else going on was balls enough to make me believe that that kind of story would be great.

Enter James Clavell, from beyond the grave, holding a copy of his 1966 tome, wordlessly gesturing that I should get that into me.

Page by page. I’ll wait. This will be a long haunting.
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Book review: In Search of Lost Time Volume V: The Captive & The Fugitive

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In Search of Lost Time Volume V: The Captive & The Fugitive by Marcel Proust.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars.

This review’s going to be shorter than my other Proust ones, which is amusing because, even with everything else going on this year, this book was an enormous fucking slog. I mean you’d think there was more to write about it, but ensuring I maintained the will to live seems to have taken precedence.

Oh Christ, not another fucking party.
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New Howard Stelzer review!

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It’s been a long time between drinks, but I’ve written another review for the fine folks at Cyclic Defrost.

This time, I’m reviewing Howard Stelzer‘s enormous collaborative album, Invariably Falling Forward, Into The Thickets Of Closure. It’s a mouthful, but it’s an absolute triumph.

The album is out through No Rent Records and very much worth your time.

My review can be found here.

Book review: Some Must Watch

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Some Must Watch by Ethel Lina White.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars.

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.

No, really, it was. That’s the set-up for White’s novel, famously made – with some alterations – into The Spiral Staircase in 1946. The film has, it seems, driven many to seek out the novel to sup at the story’s source, though I’m coming at it from the position of a heathen non-watcher, which means I’m likely not as irritated by the material changes which some argue made the film.

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