Sunday 27 January 2019

Review: How Does It Feel?: A Life of Musical Misadventures

How Does It Feel?: A Life of Musical Misadventures How Does It Feel?: A Life of Musical Misadventures by Mark Kermode
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I tried self-deprecating humour... but I wasn't very good at it. Mark Kermode, on the other hand, is a master.

If you listen to the award-winning podcast, Kermode and Mayo's Film Review, you will know how he speaks; with enthusiasm, wit and a deep knowledge of his subject. If you want a preview of how this book reads, listen to the podcast. He writes the way he speaks.

His passion for music shines through the pages of this book and while I do not understand his obsession with The Comsat Angels, I recognise the same obsession in my own life with the band Rush. Where we differ is in what he does with that obsesion. I must admit to some jealousy when I read where his obsessions have taken him; the people he has met and the things he has experienced. Perhaps it helps when you go to school with people like David Baddiel and Jason Isaacs (a quick Google suggest nobody famous went to my secondary school) but it is almost certainly true that interesting things happen to interesting people... and a lot of interesting things are described in this book.

I have a signed copy because I went to hear him speak on one of the dates where he was promoting this book. At the Q&A, someone asked him why he watched movies and thought, "I could write about that!", but listened to music and thought, "I could do that!". It was an interesting question but he was unable to fully explain the difference. For me, I enjoy watching films but music hits me at much deeper level. Mark feels the power of both and can talk eloquently about both. This book, however focuses on music and I love the way he describes it, especially the music you hear as a teenager:
"…I felt like I was in an episode of Doctor Who; as if I had somehow created a warp in the time-space continuum and was being sucked back into the past at a speed of thirty-three-and-a-third revolutions per minute.

If you want proof that time travel is possible, just listen to a record you first heard as a teenager. If that's not a time machine, I don't know what is."
If that doesn't make you want to read this book, I don't know what will.

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Saturday 26 January 2019

Read in 2019

This post will automatically update every time I finish a book in 2019. I managed thirty-one books in 2018.  Will I manage more than thirty-one in 2019? Only time will tell.


Mr Muir's bookshelf: read-in-2019

The Otterbury Incident
really liked it
tagged: read-in-2019
Shazam!
liked it
tagged: read-in-2019
The Affair
really liked it
tagged: read-in-2019

goodreads.com

Thursday 3 January 2019

Review: Miracleman, Book One: A Dream of Flying

Miracleman, Book One: A Dream of Flying Miracleman, Book One: A Dream of Flying by Alan Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first encountered this story when the character was known as Marvelman rather than Miracleman and the author was called Alan Moore rather than "The Original Author". When I read it in the pages of Warrior magazine in 1982, it was printed in black and white and when I first saw it in colour in the American reprints, I didn't like it as much. But with this edition, with its hardback cover and gorgeously glossy pages, the colourising seems to work.

Back in the 80s, I hadn't encountered the literary term "bookending" but I remember being hugely impressed with the way end of Marvelman Book 1 tied back to the very first page. Re-reading it for the first time in ages, I am still impressed. Also, the placing of a superhero in the real world where there are real world repercussions for their actions seemed fresh and exciting ("They played catch with my baby - mother of injured child speaks."). This book more than deserves it legendary status.

As well as collecting together the Marvelman: Book 1 stories, this edition also includes three Warpsmith stories and a bucketload of sketches, alternative versions of cover art and "original artwork" pages from Warrior magazine. Some of the extra artwork was interesting but muck of it (in particular the pages from Warrior) felt like padding. The Warpsmith stories, on the other hand, I very much enjoyed. I like the glimpses into the larger universe that Marvelman inhabits. I was especially impressed with the section in "Cold War, Cold Warrior" where where a Warpsmith faces off against a foe. There is a double page spread with a sequence of sixteen panels flipping backwards and forward between the antagonists; long shot to close up and back again. The sixteen panels show a battle of wills rather than a physical fight so pairs of drawings are almost identical until we get to panels seventeen and eighteen, each getting about half a page, where we see the outcome of the fight. Brilliant.

Finally, nothing to do with this book, but I want to finish with a moan about my collection of Warrior Magazines. I had a complete collection because I bought each one as it was published but they were destroyed when my roof leaked. I had started to rebuild my collection, buying them secondhand, and had most of the run (including a couple signed by Dez Skinn) but they were stolen from my office at work. I've not had the heart to start again. Scunner!

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