Book: Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Y’know, it’s only in comics that Gaiman could be considered even slightly challenging. The more I read his books, that more I think that he’s extremely lightweight. Sub-Pratchett lightweight. Now, that’s not to say that this is a bad thing, but I expected more from this New York Times bestseller, about the sons of Anansi, the trickster spider god. Don’t get me wrong – I had a hard time putting this book down, because it is very engaging – a blurb the back cover calls it Wodehouse-esque, or something like, which is quite over the top, but it does have the sort of gentle english mildly amusing humour in it (without ever approaching Wodehouse’s gift for laugh-out-loud language and metaphor). But still, I think it took me maybe three or four hours total to read this novel. It’s very light, and not even the suggested book club questions at the back could fool me into feel like I was reading something deep or complex.

I’m really damning this with faint praise, aren’t I? Look, it’s good. I liked it. It’s a lot lighter than American Gods (or even Sandman), but on the other hand, it has a protagonist that actaully wants things, and does something about them. If you like Gaiman, or you like stories about Anansi, then go for it.

Album: Grinderman by Grinderman

I’m still making my mind up. Which isn’t terribly helpful in a review, I know. I think it’d probably help if I heard a lot of this live – it’s fast, loud-sounding stuff. But it too, feels very light compared to earlier works. Which is sort of the point of Grinderman as I understand it – a bunch of musicians just having fun rattling this stuff at high speed out without trying to be too clever – an attempt to reach back to their more raucous youth. But aside from the singles – “Get It On” and “No Pussy Blues”, there’s nothing that really jumps out on a first couple of listens.

But y’know, it’s Cave. Even light, he’s still one of the finest songwriters around. Honestly, I don’t think it’s really reaching that far back – Cave’s lyrics are in his more recent style, rather than the expressionist styles of the Birthday Party, and while the music is heavy on the guitars, it lacks the menace of the like of The Mercy Seat.

And yet, as I write this, cutting back and forth between Grinderman and early Bad Seeds (I don’t have any Birthday Party to hand), I hear more commonality in the music than I might have thought, from the overall impression. Maybe it’s just the change in Cave’s lyric writing.

I suspect that this one will grow on me. Even over the course of writing this review, I can feel some of the other tracks on the album making more of an impact. And I remain convinced that some of them will really come into their own live.

So that was no help at all, right?

Book: World War Z by Max Brooks

Optioned to be made into a movie by Brad Pitt’s production company if memory serves, this is a the story of how (some of) humanity survived a Romero-esque zombie apocalypse, and begins to reclaim the planet. The narrative is a presented as a series of interviews with people who survived the “Zombie War”, a collection of linked short stories set against the same background. Not exactly great literature, but very entertaining and hard to put down.

Book: Blood, Sweat and Tea: Real Life Adventures in an Inner-city Ambulance by Tom Reynolds

Taken from the Random Acts of Reality blog, this exactly what it says – excerpts from the the life of a London EMT. If you’ve read the blog, you’ll know what you’re going to get. If you haven’t, then you should, because it’s very good. If I have an criticism of this, it’s only that I don’t think the book contains much if anything that wasn’t on the blog.

Book: I Was Bono’s Doppelganger by Neil McCormick

An extra book, just because I was slack in writing them up. Not actually a U2 biography although they turn up a fair amount, because this is the autobiography of their less successful schoolmate. The book is extremely entertaining in it’s own right, as much because the author is quite willing to admit to his failings, so this does feel like an honest account of what it’s like to have your mates succeed on a staggering scale while your own career goes nowhere. (Well, not nowhere – he’s done alright as a journo, after all, but it’s not what he started out aiming for.)

U2 and Bono come out of it quite well, although there’s enough about their failings (their brief dalliance with a really bizarre Irish Christian cult, for example) to make me think that it’s actually quite accurate about them, and it’s interesting to see that Bono may be rather more self aware than he generally appears in the media.

I got this one free off Dave when he headed off to parts Amerikan, and to be quite honest, as much as I enjoyed it, I’m not sure I’d have felt it was worth it had I paid money for it. Amusing, but *very* light.

Music: At San Quentin / At Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash

Well, yeah. Two classic Johnny Cash albums, that are very deservedly classics. Should have bought them a lot sooner. Don’t know what else there is to say – you probably know yourself whether you like Cash or not already. If you don’t, well, get these and make your mind up.

(I’m cheating a little with the music – I actually went two weeks without buying any new music, but then I fell into Fopp by mistake, and bought 4 CDs the other day.)

Very short reviews this week.

Book : Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works by Erik Spiekermann

A book on typography. Not really easy to review, but if, like me, you want a basic primer on type, you could do a lot worse. Short, clear and to the point.

Music: O2 by Son Of Dave

Mutant blues and beatboxing. It worked for Tom Waits, and it works here for Son of Dave. Really enjoying this one. It’s not Waits – it’s much closer to traditinoal blues, and lacks Wait’s voice and songwriting, but I’d still suggest that if you liked Real Gone, you give this a listen. (Available via Emusic, for those with accounts.)

This week’s book: Emergency Sex (and Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone by Kenneth Cain , Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson

One I nicked of Dave when the AOL mothership took him to parts strange and alien. I loved this, bleak and depressing though it was. By the end of the first section of the book, I was ready to quit my job, and go off and do something worthwhile to improve people’s live in some godforsaken part of the world.

By the end of it, I just couldn’t imagine being able to go through the kind of stuff that the book’s three authors did. There’s still the nagging sebnse that I ought to try anyway, but my sense of enthusiasm for it is completely gone. It’s a stinging crtique of US foreign policy in the final years of (and post) Clinton’s presidency – an account of a moment where it looked like the world’s only superpower was going to step up to it’s responsibilities, only to turn tail and run from an armed streetgang that got lucky. It’s an indictment of UN beauacracy and incompetence.

It’s well worth the time it takes to read it.

This week’s music: Some Loud Thunder by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

I seem to be doing a one-week-hit, one-week-miss with these reviews. I quite liked this one, but I don’t seem myself listening to it a lot. Lots of bits of tracks I liked quite a lot, but as whole it didn’t really make that much impact on me. Dunno. Maybe it’ll grow on me, it kind of has that “maybe I haven’t approached it in the right frame of mind” feeling to it. Doesn’t help that I find the singer’s voice a bit annoying, though.

This week’s book: Wall and Piece by Banksy

I keep meaning to write something about Banksy for Black Ink, but I haven’t got around to it yet. So, this is his book. Well, you know what to expect. A load of photos of graffiti and other acts of “vandalism”. Some of it is quite witty. Look you know who he is. You either like him, or you don’t. If you like his work, this is a nice book.

This week’s music: Memento Mori by The Bastard Faries
A friend recommended this at the start of the week. It is available in it’s entirety for free at the link above. They sort of feel like what you’d get if you crossed The Paradise Motel with The Dresden Dolls. Yes, I know that almost all of you are saying “who?” to one, if not both of those bands. The deficiency is in you, not me, that’s all I’m saying.

Look, you can get the whole album for free. I think it’s quite good, especially for a free thing. Download it yourself, and make you own mind up.

Running a little late here, so a couple of very short reviews for last week’s stuff.

This week’s book(s): Still Life / Havock Junction / Shrike all by Joe Donelly

Donelly does a sort of celtic horror – the stories are generally set in Scotland, and rooted in (heavily fictionalised) myths and legends about ancient Druids and witchcraft. I still think his first book, Bane, that I read many years ago, is his best, but these three did manage to keep me nicely entertained for a week or so. While his books have common elements – he’s particularly fond of slapping a love story into them, and his works do tend to be written from a default position of of Decent Man looking after Capable-But-Still-In-Need-Of-Rescuing Woman – the books are different enough not not feel entirely like you’ve read the same thing from him before.

I would heartily recommend Bane to anyone, and of these three, I think Still Life was the strongest.

This week’s music: A to Z of Classical Music by Various Artists

Nope, still can’t do it. I do like this stuff, but it completely fails to command even a fraction of my attention. Were I buy classical music in a serious manner, I’d need to buy it, and sit doing nothing but listening to it. Which isn’t unreasonable, except that that’s not how I listen to music – I’m almost always doing something else with music playing, but I do like to be aware of the music, and with this, I’m just not – I might as well be sitting silence. Once in a blue moon, I’ll lie in bed and just listen, but even then, I want something that’s not going to let me drift into thinking about other stuff. I feel like a bit of a philistine, but there you go. Anyway, I’ve always got the jazz collection to prove that I do in fact listen to music for grown ups when the mood takes me.

Getting these in early this week.

This Week’s Book: The Penguin of Death by Edward Monkton

Things you need to know about The Penguin of Death:

• He is strangely attractive because of his enigmatic smile.
• He can kill you in any 1 of 412 different ways.

Someone (and I apologise for forgetting exactly who) gave me a birthday card with this on it a year or two back. It’s one of the few birthday cards I have kept, because really, what’s not to love about a card with an enigmatic penguin of death on it?

And then the other day while risking life and wallet in a bookstore in January (Fatal. Fatal, I tell you.), I ran across this book, which is an illustrated short poem about said Antarctic bird, beauty and death.

I’m not really sure how to describe it, except to say that I loved it.

(I feel a bit like I’m cheating talking about a short book like this. I’m also reading “Still Life” by Joe Donnelly, but since I just got a jbo lot of his books second hand the other day, I think the odds are reasonable that I’ll be talking about one of them next week, hence the penguin this week.)

This Week’s Album: Gutters and Pews by Preacher Boy

I can feel this one growing on me. I picked this up via Emusic’s recommendations engine, where it drew comparisons to Tom Waits and Louis Armstrong. And on first listen, it’s perfectly acceptable middle-of-the-road blues rock, that I wouldn’t be sorry to hear when it comes up on the random shuffle, but I didn’t see myself seeking it out a lot, either. But I’ve listened to it a couple more times, and I find it a little more appealing now – while the musical arrangements are, like I say, a bit straightforward, there’s a bit more to the lyrics. On the strength of this, I might give one of his more recent albums a try.

The week’s book: In Search of Perfection by Heston Blumenthal

“What’s this, Alasdair?” you cry, “A cookbook? Are you changing your ways? Surely if you want to try learning to cook again, you could try something simpler than dishes created by one of the most finicky chefs in the world?”

No. I still can’t cook, and this isn’t a cookbook. It’s a 320 page book that happens to contain 8 recipes and some general tips about making food.

If you saw the BBC series, well, you probably know most of it, but it’s quite nice to have it flip through. If you didn’t, but you’ve heard of Blumenthal and are thinking “why the hell would anyone want his cookbook? Who needs to cook snail porridge, for god’s sake?” I should point out that the recipes are for traditional ordinary dishes. Roast Chicken. Spag Bol. Steak and Salad. The book is about how to produce the absolute best version of them that’s possible. This is a book about farming, about the role of food in society, about the ways in which science and technology are changing the way we do things. It’s entertaining and informative, and is very, very clearly the work of a man of passion.

This week’s music: Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys by Various Artists

Recommended by burge and stu_n among others. Ace. Utterly Ace. I could go on at length about the relationships between chanties, worksongs, folk and blues music, but there’s no point. There’s not a bad track on this, and some of the people you’d expect to be less than exciting are suddenly stellar – I mean, I like U2, but I’ve never enjoyed Bono’s singing like I have on this album. And likewise, suddenly Sting has produced stuff I really enjoy for the first time in years.

And y’know, a lot of it is complete filth, too. Which is always nice.

Highly recommended.

The week’s book: The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster by Bobby Henderson

The Question: Will Bobby Henderson’s ID spoof sustain a whole book?

The Answer: Just about, but it’s a good thing it’s not any longer – the new material is indeed as funny as the site, but it’s essentially just playing on the same theme, rather than anything new. This was a gift, so it’s a little hard to assess if it was worth the money, but honestly, I’ve got enough entertainment out of pastafarianism as a whole to think that Henderson deserves some financial recompense for it. If you like venganza.org, you’ll be entertained by the book.

This week’s music: The Power of Pussy by Bongwater

I got one of the tracks off this from a friend in a compliation CD a year or two back, and loved it, since it sounded like very little else I’d ever heard, so when Emusic recommended them at me, I thought I’d grab an album’s worth. On the strength of it, I’ll be getting more.

I suppose you’d have to call this psychedelia, but I don’t like the term. This is bitter, sleazy, nasty stuff, collaging together spoken word, laid back guitars, samples and more normal singing, as they talk about porn and sexuality and exploitation. You might have heard their classic “Folk Song” before, a long bitter rant about well, almost everything. Like I say, they sound like very little else that I can think of, and they’re fairly clever. This is more than enough recommendation for me.