Review: The Sanest Guy In The Room

The Sanest Guy in the Room: A Life in Lyrics by Don Black
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An unusual autobiography. By his own admission, Don Black doesn’t like reading biographies with loads of information about families and childhood; he would rather cut to the chase. As he says:

I have never been a fan of autobiographies. I find all of them way too long, full of boring pages about stuff I'm not at all interested in. I only want to know about the subject, not about the subject's grandparents who may have come from Lithuania, or the subject's aunt who may have been a Windmill girl.

The first thing you learn as a lyric writer is not to waste a syllable, and that you have to eliminate the unnecessary. Lyric writing is all about compression and getting to the nitty-gritty. I guess that's why I find it numbingly tedious when these books veer away from the reason I bought the book in the first place.

Fair enough. I don’t have a problem with that. But this philosophy lead to an autobiography that is arranged as a randomly organised collection of loosely themed sections. A pity because it was very good in parts.

Generally, the stories and observations in the book are really interesting. For example, many (but frustratingly, not all) of the sections start with an interesting quote:

"Youth is believing that some day you'll dance like Fred Astaire."
--Jacqueline Friedrich (Journalist)

There are some great anecdotes that make me think I'd rather sit and have a meal with him, listening to his reminiscences, rather than reading them. He ventures into grumpy old man territory at times but, I can forgive him that as often there is a really sharp observation buried in the grumpiness:

When I wrote 'Born Free' in the sixties around six hundred people recorded the song. When 'Skyfall' won the Oscar I don't think anyone recorded it apart from Adele. No one covers songs any more which means it's harder than ever to write a standard these days.

I did enjoy this book but somehow, it is less than the sum of its parts.

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Reading Challenge 2021

The widget below should automatically update every time I finish a book in 2021. 

 

2021 Reading Challenge

Mr Muir has read 9 books toward their goal of 50 books.

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9 of 50 (18%)

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I like the way Goodreads can be used to track what you read and I especially like the challenges - that it prompts me to keep reading and to move onto the next book, or finish the one I'm on. It makes it a bit like a game, and while the purist may despair at the gamification of reading, it works for me. I also like the sense of community that Goodreads supports. I don't interact with that community as much as I could but I must admit to being pleased whenever a like or a comment appears.

And while on the subject of community, I have written before about our school librarian's "Currently Reading" initiative (see Keeping Track). The posters that appear around the school create a sense that the school is a community that values reading. 

Over time, I have refined the poster I use to display what I'm currently reading. I now include a brief note about the book and a couple of QR codes that link to this blog... but perhaps that’s a subject for another post. 

What I want to mention here is what is happening at the moment because, during lockdown, the pupils can't see the posters... Our ever resourceful librarian, however, has gone digital. Every month, she sends out an email with thumbnails of what the staff are reading. I wouldn't like the posters around disappear, and I assume we'll start updating them again as pupils return, but I do like getting a list of what is being read all in the one place. I'm hoping that, post lockdown, we will see what is being read both in hard copy and electronically.

Review: Next

Next by Michael Crichton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book had some potentially very interesting ideas at its heart... but it didn’t quite come together for me. Lots of unconnected stories although some (but not all) came together (in a way that seemed ridiculously tenuous) at the end. Scientists that behaved in a way that wasn’t just unethical but, frankly, unbelievably stupid... and yet appeared to be rewarded at the end. A lawyer that was supposed to be smart but acted in ways that were exceptionally dumb. And don’t get me started on the parrot.

Having said that, I enjoyed it... mostly.

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