Tag: books

Book review: Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music

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Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded MusicPerfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg Milner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first came to this book because of Jarvis Cocker’s reading of an excerpt about how, physiologically, you perceive the drums in Led Zeppelin’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’. It was an excerpt – edited, as I’ve discovered, though not greatly – that ropes physics with the excitement that particular Foot-Of-God drum phrase invokes in a way which makes even non-Zep fans a bit excited.

You can hear it here. I’ll wait. Continue reading “Book review: Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music” →

Book review: Don’t Look Now

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Don't Look NowDon’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I must admit my purchase of this book was dictated by the knowledge that its titular short story was the basis for Nic Roeg’s film Don’t Look Now – a favourite and one of the best weird films of the ’70s.

This title has been given to a number of du Maurier collections featuring variant stories, so it’s worth noting that my version contained ‘Don’t Look Now’, ‘Not After Midnight’, A Border-Line Case’, ‘The Way of the Cross’ and ‘The Breakthrough’.

The good news is that the stories that follow the first are all as good – or better, in the case of ‘Not After Midnight’ – than the most famous entry.

The bad news is that if you’ve come looking for the text version of Roeg’s film, you’ll probably be disappointed. Continue reading “Book review: Don’t Look Now” →

Review: Sun Music: Journeys And Reflections From A Composer’s Life

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Sun Music: Journeys And Reflections From A Composer's LifeSun Music: Journeys And Reflections From A Composer’s Life by Peter Sculthorpe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’d owned this book for a while but it took Sculthorpe’s recent death to spur me towards it. It was always my intention to read it, but I suppose now is as fitting a time as any, given the amount of obituaries and memorials which have been printed of late.

The work is interesting, though the product of later-life reflection rather than at-the-time recollection. It definitely helps to be aware of musical form and conventions, and reading stave better than I do would bring more enjoyment from the musical excerpts printed throughout the text. It’s pleasingly broken into sections detailing either parts of Sculthorpe’s life (youth, schooling) or musical development (Bali, Japan, Kakadu) and it’s the latter which prove most interesting. The development of Sculthorpe’s language, especially in early years is interesting, as is his move to synthesise Australian and Asian ideas and music into a music of this land.

He’s described somewhere as doing for Australia what Copland did for parts of the US, something not too far from the mark, I think. But I must admit Continue reading “Review: Sun Music: Journeys And Reflections From A Composer’s Life” →

Book review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

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Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage: A novelColorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage: A novel by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A caveat, before we begin: Murakami is one of my favourite authors. So chances are I was bound to dig this anyway. But I must confess – when I begin every new work of his, I find myself questioning whether I really like what I’m reading. Whether I understand it. I’ve read his stuff so long I feel that liking it out of the gate is almost a default setting – but I was happy to feel slightly conflicted, at least, with this new one.

I’ve yet to slog my way through IQ84 so I can’t say exactly how Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His years of Pilgrimage compares to its predecessor. But if we divide the author’s work into “weird” and “normal”, then this falls into the latter. If anything, it reminded me of a variation on some of the themes touched on in Norwegian Wood – though “love, loss and youth” is a pretty wide remit.

Some claim Murakami is a one-trick pony, but I don’t really buy it. Continue reading “Book review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage” →

Book review: A Dance with Dragons

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A Dance with DragonsA Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Five down, two more to go. Well, assuming they’re ever finished, that is. But it does feel pretty good to have reached this point – that’s a lot of dragons, noseless dwarves and creepy sex scenes to go through. But it must be testament to the strength of the story that I’m still here … and a walk-up start for six and seven when they arrive.

The same criticisms I had for A Feast for Crows apply to this one. It’s still pretty obviously half-and-a-bit-more of one text too long for publication on its own, and the absence (or much-reduced presence) of the characters who drove the previous book sometimes leaves the reader with a feeling of isolation or amnesia. It’s easy to lose track of what’s happening where when certain people don’t turn up for a thousand pages or so. Continue reading “Book review: A Dance with Dragons” →

Write what you know and read what you like

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My university years.

A story on Slate has sparked a bit of commentary about reading and snobbery. I suppose it’s easy clickbait – nobody wants to feel inferior about their choice of pastime – but once you read the sell, there’s really not a lot more to it:

Read whatever you want. But you should feel embarrassed when what you’re reading was written for children.

Hm. Throughout there’s more of this looking-down-the-nose kind of thing, somehow suggesting that eye-rolling and enjoyment of what may be crap-lit are mutually exclusive. What I don’t understand is where speculation like this

These are the books that could plausibly be said to be replacing literary fiction in the lives of their adult readers. And that’s a shame.

or

But if they are substituting maudlin teen dramas for the complexity of great adult literature, then they are missing something.

comes from. I mean, aside from hanging the whole thing on what adults might be doing.

Continue reading “Write what you know and read what you like” →

Book review: A Game of Thrones

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A Game of Thrones A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So, knee deep in the fourth season of the HBO adaptation of the cycle, I decided to read the source: George R.R. Martin’s books. And it’s the good choice: having seen the shows I’m already given a mental Cliff’s Notes to the tale, and I’m not likely to be disappointed by how the shows had dumbed-down the books; rather, I’m left in the position of learning how much the show leaves out. Continue reading “Book review: A Game of Thrones” →

Book review: Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked

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Two book reviews for the price of one. Read before a re-watch of David Fincher’s Zodiac because these were instrumental in its creation. My advice? Stick with the film. There’s a little repetition in the reviews because REPETITION IS WHAT YOU GET FROM READING THESE BOOKS, BUCKO.

ZodiacZodiac by Robert Graysmith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cartoonist-cum-chronicle Robert Graysmith has a pretty decent retelling of the Zodiac killer story here. As well he should, given he was working at one of the newspapers to receive ciphers and cheery letters from the murderous astrology fan. Continue reading “Book review: Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked” →

Book review: The Fool’s Journey

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The Fool's Journey: the History, Art, & Symbolism of the TarotThe Fool’s Journey: the History, Art, & Symbolism of the Tarot by Robert Michael Place
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Published to coincide with an exhibition of tarot art curated by the author, The Fool’s Journey sits in a weird position. It’s a little too complex to be just an exhibition catalogue, but it’s also too slender to be a fully-considered work on the tarot. (Place is a respected artist, tarot scholar and has written more lengthy works on the cards, lest it be thought I impugn his credentials as a well-researched writer.)

Part of the difficulty with the book is that I think it’s a little user-unfriendly, at least as far as the layout goes. It’s a larger-format book, which is excellent for the graphics, but the text pages are one-column and stretch the whole page, making navigation difficult and reading a little tiring. I believe it’s a self-published work – the publisher’s address appears to be the author’s – so that explains some of the errant typos that appear through the work. It’s not a deal-breaker, though it does knock the faith in the work a little.

The good, though, is the amount of graphical reproduction on hand. Continue reading “Book review: The Fool’s Journey” →

Book review: Living Dolls

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Living Dolls: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical LifeLiving Dolls: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life by Gaby Wood
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Gaby Wood’s book seemed to have been the perfect tome for me: for years I’ve been entranced by its major topics – Jacques de Vaucanson’s writing automata and digesting duck and Wolfgang von Kempelen’s ‘The Turk’ chess playing robot. I suppose like any young boy, clockwork, robots and artificial humans had become an abiding interest.

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t live up to its title. It’s portraiture, not history. And it’s certainly not as rigorous as I’d have liked.

Continue reading “Book review: Living Dolls” →