Tag: books

Book review: Use Your Words: A Myth-Busting, No-Fear Approach to Writing

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Use Your Words: A Myth-Busting, No-Fear Approach to WritingUse Your Words: A Myth-Busting, No-Fear Approach to Writing by Catherine Deveny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Catherine Deveny is a writer, comic and general shit-stirrer. She’s a dyslexic atheist who sees CAPS LOCK as COCK SLAP and is by her own admission pretty lazy. She’s also authored a bunch of books, shows and columns, and manages to get shit done with alarming regularity. Use Your Words is an excellent distillation of her work ethic, and a rarity in the world of writing-help books: something that’s useful without being bone dry or coming across as some kind of pan-pipe backed recruitment ad for a writing cult. Continue reading “Book review: Use Your Words: A Myth-Busting, No-Fear Approach to Writing” →

Book review: Frankenstein

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FrankensteinFrankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s almost a fool’s errand to review Frankenstein. The book’s been so firmly ensconced in the literary canon for so long that it can’t be dislodged, and the story of its inception – spooky story competition with Byron, Percy Shelley, Polidori – is almost so doused in writerly name-dropping as to be something you couldn’t make up.

But hey, I’ve never shied away from a fool’s errand so away we go. Continue reading “Book review: Frankenstein” →

Book review: Gardener to the King

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Gardener to the KingGardener to the King by Frédéric Richaud
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In this brief work, Frédéric Richaud manages to encapsulate the world of the Sun King and the rising tide of discontent between the French classes by way of… gardening?

Versailles is the focal point of this work, an expression of Royal dominance over the land. There’s plenty of information about the place itself, and there’s a distinct feeling that the abode – we begin just prior to court moving there from the Louvre – is itself a character. It’s treated with as much authorial love as any of the major figures in the work. Continue reading “Book review: Gardener to the King” →

Book review: The Ladybird Book of the Zombie Apocalypse

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The Ladybird Book of the Zombie ApocalypseThe Ladybird Book of the Zombie Apocalypse by Jason Hazeley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is going to be a short review, which is fitting as the book is short. An amuse l’œil, if you like.

It pretty much does what you’d expect from the title: it’s a pisstake of the Ladybird books, a series of books aimed at improving kids’ reading abilities. Widely used in the ’60s and ’70s, these books covered all sorts of topics and were illustrated in a very painterly manner. Continue reading “Book review: The Ladybird Book of the Zombie Apocalypse” →

Book review: Discovering Scarfolk

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Discovering ScarfolkDiscovering Scarfolk by Richard Littler

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Scarfolk. That name! One to be uttered alongside Derry, Maine. Or R’lyeh. A place where that creepy clown from the television test pattern lives. A place where brutalist architecture never died, where clothing is all artificial material, everything has a fried egg in it, and the world is viewed through builders’ tea, smeared glasses and an obsidian doorway into another world. Continue reading “Book review: Discovering Scarfolk” →

Book review: Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts

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Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of GhostsBabbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts by Grafton Tanner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Vaporwave! It’s a thing, still, even though it’s supposed to have been dead for a couple of years now.

What is vaporwave? If you don’t know, have some smooth, iconic jams. Essentially, it’s elevator music for some weirdly capitalist hellscape, and Grafton Tanner’s book exists to provide a bit of context with fewer bong-hits than you’d fine in online discussions of same. Continue reading “Book review: Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts” →

Book review: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

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Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show BusinessAmusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

Well, this is all a bit depressing.

I mean, we’re all fairly acutely aware of the way the internet makes us all a little stupider, right? There was a lot of hoo-ha about Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic article “Is Google Making Us Stoopid? but in this brief book, Postman makes the same claims about television, something which by now appears benign in comparison to the dizzying chasm of timesink that defines most of our modern lives.

And he did it in 1985.

And then Roger Waters wrote an album about it.

I know, right?

Right. Continue reading “Book review: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” →

Book review: The Golem and the Jinni

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The Golem and the JinniThe Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You really don’t need to read this review. It’s probably better if you don’t. If you think you’re even slightly interested in this book based on the title – which let’s face it, tells you pretty much all you need to know -then go and read it.

I’m serious. If you’ve a passing interest, even, in golems, in jinns, in magic and myth, just go.

And people who bypass the book because they think it’s going to be all magickque and twee? Well, fuck ’em, because they’ll miss out. Because, yes, there is magic in here – and I’m someone who normally can’t handle dreamcatcher, velvet-pantsed horseshittery, which is odd given my intense interest in esoterica – but it’s not really what The Golem and the Jinni is about. Continue reading “Book review: The Golem and the Jinni” →

2016 consumption: a look at some stuff I liked

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WELL HERE IT IS. Once more it’s time for a recap on what I did during the year, stuffwise. Previous versions are here, here and here, if you need an origin story.

Once more, I’m unsure who would actually read this all the way through, given the self-indulgence herein, but don’t worry – I’ve found an image that reflects both the world’s 2016 and my thoughts on writing the thing.

giphy
Take that, ya lousy fuckin’ year. And you too, ya lousy fuckin’ typing guy.

Continue reading “2016 consumption: a look at some stuff I liked” →