Reading - May 2017

The Week (29 April 2017 / Issue 1122)

Guitarist (June 2017 / Issue 420)

I've been buying Guitarist since the mid-80s, apart from a break in the early 90s, and I've been a subscriber since the late 90s. I still have all of the issues - over 20 years worth of reviews, interviews and general guitar porn. I hate to think or calculate how much I've spent on the magazines. But this is my last one - I cancelled the subscription. I don't need two guitar-related titles a month, and Guitar & Bass is more interesting, varied and in-depth. I'm also going through the back issues prior to recycling them. It's kind of sad (possibly in both meanings).

Guitar & Bass (June 2017 / Vol 28 No 09)

The Week (6 May 2017 / Issue 1123)

It's Not What You Think by Chris Evans (2009)

I'm not a big fan of autobiographies (or biographies, for that matter), and one of the reasons is that too many of the subjects are long on their own magnificence and short on their sheer luck. Chris Evans' first volume is refreshingly different in this respect. Without selling himself short, he's quick to acknowledge how fortunate he's been - in his friends, his timing, and his talents. He's clearly worked hard and long to achieve what he has, and it hasn't been without sacrifices; he's a study in the truth of the maxim "the harder you work, the luckier you get". An enjoyable read, made more so for me by the fact that he clearly wrote it himself.

The Week (13 May 2017 / Issue 1124)

The Week (20 May 2017 / Issue 1125)

The Time Traveller's Guide To Medieval England by Ian Mortimer (2009)

This seems to me to be a genuinely innovative approach to history (not that I've investigated this extensively), and one that makes it a lot more accessible. There's an amazing amount of historical detail and research here, but by wrapping in the approximate form of a guide book, Mortimer has made it much easier to digest.

The Week (27 May 2017 / Issue 1126)