30/04/2019

Reading - April 2019

The Guitar Magazine (May 2019 / Issue 368)
Sound Man by Glyn Johns (2014)
Glyn Johns is obviously a legendary producer, but I found his book less interesting that other accounts from the front-line of music engineering that I have read recently (notably, Glenn Berger and Phill Brown's books). The writing style is a little jarring, with too many short sentences that should have been joined together (although that does mean he wrote it himself, because no professional writer would have done this - in fact, I'm surprised his editor let it past), and although there are loads of good stories about the many famous people he's worked with, there's very little technical detail. Possibly that's more appropriate for a general audience, of course.
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away by Christopher Brookmyre (2001)
I've almost read this too many times. It's clearly a fantasy in many ways and yet wonderfully believable and grounded in reality, like all of his books (or at least, the earlier ones; I don't like the "Chris" Brookmyre books - sadly, since it doesn't look like "Christopher" is coming back).
A Snowball In Hell by Christopher Brookmyre (2008)
The next book to feature Simon Darcourt - blackly comic, of course, but quite gruesome in places. But, as Cher in Clueless so memorably points out: "until mankind is peaceful enough not to have violence on the news, there’s no point in taking it out of shows that need it for entertainment value."