Review: 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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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

by C. Day-Lewis

tagged: read-in-2019

Shazam!

by Geoff Johns

tagged: read-in-2019

The Case for Easter: A Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection

by Lee Strobel

tagged: read-in-2019

Captain Britain: A Crooked World

by Alan Moore

tagged: read-in-2019

The Affair

by Lee Child

tagged: read-in-2019

Review: 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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Review: A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It was Christmas time, so it was time to re-read "A Christmas Carol". Why is it worth re-reading? Here are three reasons...

One of the greatest opening sentences ever: "Marley was dead: to begin with."

So many memorable (and funny) passages:

“Why do you doubt your senses?” “Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

And, sadly, still relevant in places:

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy...

Worth reading every Christmas. God bless us, every one!

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Review: Marvel Ironman: The Gauntlet

Marvel Ironman: The Gauntlet by Eoin Colfer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book had a lyric from a Rush song as a preface. He had me at hello.

Trouble is, it went a bit downhill from there. Too many easy fixes for what should have been stupidly difficult problems. There was no sense of jeopardy. The thing that annoyed me most though was it read like an advert from the Irish Tourist Board. So, here is a review of the book sponsored by Visit Scotland...

I was thinking about "Marvel Ironman: The Gauntlet" as I walked past the traditional Christmas market in Glasgow's George Square. I decide to read a bit more as I stop for a gastronomic treat, a warming glass of festive cheer and a unique festive gift. As I sat enjoying the warm welcome and the festive atmosphere I contemplated the destruction described in the book. I was reminded of the many examples of world class architecture in Scotland. I hope Ironman and the Mandarin don't destroy the Forth Bridge, Rosslyn Chapel or, worst of all, Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Hill House in Helensburgh, I thought. What a loss it would be to the world if Mackintosh's visually arresting mix of Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau, Scottish Baronial and Japonisme architecture and design as well as the beautifully restored garden, was demolished in a dust up between Tony and the Mandarin's minions. However, I was reassured by the thought that Tony Stark, that great inventor, would feel at home in the birthplace of inventors like John Logie Baird, James Watt and John Boyd Dunlop. I enjoy reading about Ironman's trip to Ireland but couldn't help think of Bonnie Scotland - there's no place like home!

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Review: Siege

Siege by Brian Michael Bendis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I buy most of my books from charity shops. In general, this is not a problem but it is trickier with graphic novels where I usually struggle to get the whole story. With Siege, I am coming in at the end of a story and knew nothing about the build up and crossover elements. It took me a while to work out what was going on. For example, what was with the Avengers? Who were these people that were not the people they said they were? I didn't realise at first that Osborne's Avengers were not the Avengers I knew and loved.

Anyway, I got there eventually and mostly enjoyed the story. Some of the artwork was a bit scrappy but there was enough that was good to keep me on board I especially like the sequence of panels that work down the page where you see, from above, the Iron Patriot looking up. As the panels progress, you notice that a spot in the first panel is a reflection of something getting closer and closer until in the final panel, it is clearly about to smack hm on the head. (I won't spoil it completely by saying what was getting closer, but it made me smile when I recognised it.) No dialogue, just a great idea well rendered.

My main concern with it was the "too many heroes" problem. The thinking seems to be: if less is more, just think how much more "more" will be! You like one hero? You'll like two heroes twice as much. And if you like two heroes, get a load of this story with two-hundred and two! My problem is that it is impossible to do justice to everyone involved so, inevitably, some of my favourite characters just get lost in the background.

That said, I enjoyed the story: Osborne was suitably unhinged; Loki was deliciously malicious and some of Earth's (and Asgard's) mightiest heroes were well and truly slapped!

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Review: Neverwhere

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'd heard the radio adaptation of this book a year or two ago and really enjoyed it. I was surprised to discover though that the book was based on a BBC TV series that Gaiman wrote... what was I doing in the mid nineties that I missed that completely!?

Despite having heard it on the radio, I had forgotten the end and thoroughly enjoyed finding out what happened again. (Crumbs. I just looked it up. I must have heard the radio shows five years ago! No wonder I'd forgotten most of it.) I enjoyed the way Gaiman reused and repurposed London place names: the way some things were taken literally (e.g. Earls Court) and how places became people (Old Bailey being my favourite - I couldn't help but hear Bernard Cribbins voice in my head when I read his lines).

As with the radio programme, the bit that worked least well for me was the character of Richard Mayhew, which is unfortunate since he is arguably the main character. He was so (unbelievably) slow on the uptake, he was clearly supposed to be a messiah type character but it was never clear why and the resolution to his story arc was easily guessable.

Despite that, I still enjoyed this book. Gaiman delivers some nice lines, for example, when describing London he says: "It was a city in which the very old and the awkwardly new jostled each other, not uncomfortably, but without respect..." and I, although I didn't laugh out loud while reading it, I often sniggered quietly. And if that's not a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is!

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