Week #04 - Marry Me ¦ Rave Tapes

Marry Me by Dan Rhodes is a collection of writings about the ups, downs and downs of married life. There are funny and in some cases almost poetic. The writing in sharp and concise, a manual for a stand-up comic if ever i read one.

Here' one, Fuss
"In the run up to our wedding day, my fiancee  told me to be quiet. 'Can't you change the subject?' she snapped. 'All I've been hearing lately is "I love you so much" , and "We have such a wonderful future ahead of us", and "I can't believe I'm going to marry the girl of my dreams".' She closed her eyes and shook her head. 'It's a legal procedure; let's just get through it with the minimum of fuss.'

I have been a fan of Rhodes since I first read Anthropology and a hundred other stories, which Marry Me is a somewhat follow-up too. I have followed his career through highlights like the bizarre yet brilliant Timoleon Vieta Come Home, Gold and The Little White Car by Danuta de Rhodes.

Read it if you are married or getting married or thinking of jacking the whole wedding game in, it's short and very funny.

4/5

Rave Tapes, a soundtrack to a movie not yet made. Like all of Mogwai's work that I have heard it is wonderful and light. Nothing new but then again who wants that when this is so good.

This is my first Mogwai album I have listened too all the way through. Bar (Repelish) it is very unobtrusive and a great sound scape for a day at work when nothing is urgent and all will be fine in the end.

The beautiful Remurdered is a standout track, so is Blues Hour. Nice

3/5

Week #03 - Raising Steam ¦ Warpaint

Raising Steam is the 40th Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett and the 40th Discworld novel have I read. You don't need to have read the previous ones to understand this but it helps. It helps a lot.

The railway comes to the Discworld and Moist (or Slightly Damp) Von Lipwig is at the helm with the ever vigilant and ever vengeful Lord Vetinari watching every step.

The sub-plots are just as gripping and nearly overtake the railway in importance during the novel. There are terrorist attacks by fundamentalists dwarfs. Clacks towers are burnt and railway workers murdered. The Low King of the Dwarfs is unseated from his throne. Tensions between dwarfs, trolls, golems, humans are still simmering.

Vetinari has always been my favourite of all Discworld characters (Death a close second), but Moist Von Lipwig has been such a great addition to the cast of Discworld.

"Moist waited. Lord Vetinari could out stare a statue and make even a statue start to feel nervous and confess. Moist's counter was a fetching grin, which he know annoyed Vetinari beyond measure, and there was absolute silence in the Oblong Office while blank stare and cheery grin battled it out for supremacy ..."

It's a wonderful book. Different in so many ways to early Discworld novels but Pratchett's style and detail, humour and characters are so beautiful in this book. Pratchett is a master storyteller, who is likely to never get the credit he deserves because of the genre he writes in (see Stephen King).

4/5

I have never listened to Warpaint before this so I am light on their history. A quick search, however, tells me they are an all female band from California formed in 2004. Wikipedia also offers this

Warpaint have been compared to Cocteau Twins, Joni Mitchell, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

I loved Intro. A simple and yet luscious track to open with. The drums, oh the drums. The record proceeded like this. I was waiting for the 'rock' tracks to come, that Wikipedia lead me to believe Warpaint where all about. That never happened. Disco/Very one of the few tracks that differed throughout the album from it's "dream pop" status and is one  of my favourites, along with Teese and Go in which had an almost Grizzly Bear feel to it.

From my listening I couldn't find any of the comparisons mentioned by Wikipedia to be correct. They are very light indie! Before reading about them I would have sworn they were an English band, more in line with The Xx, London Grammar, Daughter even Bat for Lashes.

They are good, great musicians and the vocals a standout. I listened to this for a week and gave it a rest. At that time I thought good, not great, nothing new and a bit full of itself. I revisited it with a week break and I find I am liking it much more. It's cohesive, fresh and altogether a wonderful record. It's early in the year but so far so good. Give Warpaint the time it needs and deserves and I am sure you will fall in love with it too.

7/10

Week #02 - The Boy ¦ High Hopes

This weeks book, The Boy by Lara Santoro. I like the book. Nothing especially new but a good story with an ending, thank god. Anna is trying to to get her life back on track, after a failed marriage, alcoholism, little work and a child she basically didn't like. Anna tries in her 'new life' to make everything better but the problem was that Anna brought back herself which was the reason she disappeared in the first place. It is a brave novel. Issues of trust, selfishness, abandonment. Lara Santoro gives us a flawed woman in Anna, a woman who wants it all but doesn't know her boundaries, her responsibilities. When she does have it all she destroys it. We never find out why!

As I said I liked it but there are so many things wrong. Firstly, none of the characters outside Anna feel real and Anna is a most horrible person. There is Eva, Anna's 8-year-old daughter. She was basically abandoned by Anna during her infant years as Anna was too self-absorbed to care for her.  With Anna gone, Eva had to grow up fast but not so that she has the mind of an eighteen-year old. She flies to different sides of the world by herself. She says things like

"Everyone has a first memory".
"It's like me going out with a four-year old."
"He's Richard's son and Richard's your friend"

She is her mother's daughter and will grow up to be a mess like her, which is sad.

Second. Anna's friends, Mia and Ree are just as terrible and so shallow they wouldn't leave a shadow in the midday Australian sun. These characters may be real. I'm just glad I never met any of them in my life thus far.

Third. There should be laws against these sort of blurbs on books. You should be able to go back to the store and demand a refund as none of them bare any resemblance to the actual novel. Words like witty, sensuous, a coming-of-age story, masterful are misplaced in all the reviews here.

Esperanza, the gambling, drunken, street-fighting maid in the house is the only woman who's life we get any  glimpse into and understand why she is who she is. The drunken voice of reason.

As for the boy. Well men just out of their teens could be like this but again the confidence and conviction he has in himself is never explored. Anna falling for him is simply a case of the raging hormones in us all. Why is the Boy the focus of the novel I do not know. It's all about the women.

My favourite line.

"He's not mean, he's English. They have their hearts taken out at birth." 

3/5

I like Bruce Springsteen, but don't think of him as the god a lot of people do.Springsteen is very American. What he sings about is not matters of the global village but rather the US, more precisely a small part of the US, New Jersey. On one hand it can be wonderful, on the other boring and insular. With that said a review of High Hopes.

The first two tracks are outstanding, High Hopes and Harry's Place, and there are some other excellent tracks, The Ghost of Tom Joad, and some filler album tracks, that would appeal to the more fanatical of Springsteen followers, Hunter of Invisible Game. High Hopes, according to Wikipedia, is "a collection of cover songs, out-takes and re-imagined versions of tracks from past albums, EPs and tours." Springsteen himself said that the new music was "some of our best unreleased material from the past decade" and among the best of his writing and deserved a proper studio recording.

As I said I am not a big fan, although I have loved and still do, his stadium rock of the 70's and 80's. All told a good album but other than replaying the ones I like I don't think there are any 'high hopes' I will play this album in full again. But who knows what tomorrow brings ...

He does sound a bit like Chris Rea (or Chris Rea sounds a bit like Springsteen) on some especially Harry's Place and American Skin. This is not a criticise of either by the way. He may have sounded like this all his career.

Week #01 - The Spinning Heart ¦ Disco

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan originally published in 2012 is my first book of 2014. If truth by told it wasn't actually my first. I started to read Shall We Gather At The River by Peter Murphy and had to put it down after 20 pages for fear I would do damage to it. It's the kind of book that could ruin the fun and beauty of reading for a "normal" reader. I digress ...

Review: The Spinning Heart is Donal Ryan's debut novel and there is a lot to like about it. It is the story of Bobby Mahon and how he adjusts to the death of the 'Celtic Dragon". The book starts off with Bobby's short story, and continues to introduce a new character in each chapter with the one constant of Bobby in all bar one of the stories. Most of the character short stories are wonderfully written and most add to the story. There is death, kidnapping and lots of tortured souls along the journey. Even a voice from 'beyond the grave'!

As I started reading I thought I was going to love this book, but as each new player was introduced I started to feel it was stretching the concept of the story too far. Although the book is only 156 pages long, half-way through reading it I could feel my resolve wain. Lloyd - "Opacity has trumped clarity again." - was ridiculous, most of the females weak and then when the recently murdered Frank spoke from the dead I just went through the motions to the end. Frank's part could have been introduced earlier, before his killing. The less said about Triona the better.

This is a story about the collapse of the Irish economy and the effects it has on people, but these short sketches of those most touched by it left me not caring and dreading the ending that should have been more in line with the events it spoke about.           

I picked this book as I saw it mentioned in a number of tweets after it won the Guardian First Book Award. It was also longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and won the Irish Book Awards: Best Irish Newcomer in 2012.

2/5

Since before Christmas I dived deep into some 70's disco. Starting off of course with Donna Summer which lead onto others. I then downloaded The Best Disco In Town [Box Set] by various and oh what a joy! There's Chic, The Trammps, Sister Sledge, Earth Wind and Fire, Chaka Chan,  Gloria Gaynor, Diana Ross and so much more. Oh and of course the Queen herself Donna Summers.

Disco is not just for dancing. I love it and can not dance one step without looking like a mountain of jelly during an earthquake. Disco is for making a day in the office seem like the funnest place to be.