A Field Guide To The English

Sarah Lyall
2009

There is a surprisingly popular and populous sub-genre of non-fiction that attempts to analyse and categorise the English. Some represent a serious attempt to understand the unique cultural and sociological factors that distinguish Englishness. Some use the excuse of defining "the English" as a way of pedalling their own prejudices. Still others are happy to play off stereotypes for comic effect.

Despite its almost serious title, A Field Guide To The English fits firmly in the last category. Notwithstanding occasional references to the "research" she has conducted for various New York Times pieces, Sarah Lyall - an American journalist - has clearly used the standard journalist practice of using her friends and other people within easy reach to support her own preconceived ideas. Accordingly, English people are afraid of intimacy and sex (the men are all borderline homosexual, apparently), we all have bad teeth, the aristocracy are completely mad (and ludicrously mean with money), we have incomprehensible enthusiasms about trivial things like hedgehogs ... and so on.

This portrait is of course unrecognisable to any real English person - or, at least, only recognisable as a small but prominent part of our society. What is obvious to anyone is that Sarah Lyall has married into a comfortably upper-middle class English family (she lives in Kensington and weekends with Earls, for goodness sake) and has been happy to draw over-broad generalisations from the narrow section of society she has been exposed to. Her observations are generally shallow and cover surface manifestations only. This is all the more odd when you consider that she mentions (and has therefore hopefully read) Kate Fox's peerless Watching The English and should therefore have acquired some understanding of the deeper causes.

To be sure, she manages to score a few points against the more obvious targets: yes, the conduct of politicians in an out of the Houses of Parliament is just embarassing; of course our tabloid "news" papers are a disgrace to journalism. No-one with any sense disputes this. No country is without its peculiarities. Lyall is a good writer and the book is amusing in places. I just would have liked more observation and fewer stereotypes.

How To Be A Woman

Caitlin Moran
2012

The book is partly an autobiography, but Caitlin Moran uses the stages of her life as jumping-off points for discussions about issues affecting modern women. For example, the onset of puberty leads into a discussion of why it is now considered necessary for women to shave all pubic hair. Ageing sparks a debate about why so many women attempt to stall their years at the late thirties with extensive cosmetic surgery.

The whole thing is both very entertaining and thought-provoking. As a fellow left-ish liberal, I find little here to disagree with or anything that doesn't just seem like common sense. One of Moran's central observations (I think) is that modern "feminism" seems to have split into a dichotomy of extremist man-haters and the successors to the "new ladettes", for whom freedom is the freedom to flash their knickers or knockers at whoever they want. Her point is that, inevitably, the truth lies somewhere in between; her repeated question is "are the men doing this too?" - and, if not, why not?

The only thing that doesn't strike quite true is the way that she describes "all women" as being subject to a series of pressures - to look young, to get a Brazilian, to slim down, to get married. Now, obviously I am a man in his forties and so miss much of what pressures are applied to teenage or young women (although I expect to find out in about three years when my daughter reaches that age). However, I really don't get the sense from the women my age that they feel the pressures mentioned here to that degree. All of them are well able to distinguish between the simplistic, sensationalist and stupid attitudes of the media ("Get this season's must-have trousers! Don't let your man see your wrinkles!") and real life. I'll have to get one of them to read it and comment.

Anyway, very enjoyable and only made slightly disconcerting by the fact that in her picture on the cover Caitlin looks exactly like my friend Ruth.

The Demon-Haunted World

Science As A Candle In The Dark
Carl Sagan
1995

I am so relieved to have finally finished this book - it's taken me over twelve years. I have started it regularly about once a year, but never made it past the first few chapters. It's not that I don't agree with the subject matter: I couldn't agree with it more; the absolute necessity of continued investment in science and scientific approaches, not just to technology but to life, religion, politics, education and everything else. It's vitally important that we equip our people and our children with the ability to distinguish between science and pseudo-science, between fact and fiction, and to question what they are told.

Unfortunately, the book itself is much, much too long and needlessly repetitive. It's audience is not - or shouldn't be - people like me. I don't need Sagan telling me, at length, that there are a host of plausible, rational, earthly explanations for the host of "alien abduction" claims. It needs to grab the doubters of science, the gullible, the blinkered. They're not going to read such a long book. It's arguable whether they would pick up anything that challenges their preconceptions, but if they do it needs to be short and to the point.

Build Your Own Electric Guitar

Martin Oakham
2006

Contrary to the identically titled Haynes manual, this book really does cover building your guitar from raw blocks of wood (although it does assume someone else has cut the tree down for you). From that point it has detailed steps of just about everything you need to do, including clear, colour photos nearly all of them. In this respect it would be, I expect, an extremely valuable guide to have around.

I have only a couple of minor gripes: firstly, it goes from start to finish with one guitar, a bolt-on (neck) with two humbuckers, and although there a couple of pages on different construction methods, it isn't much. Secondly, it makes a tiny, passing reference to finishing the body and neck. Granted this is a fairly specialised subject but you can't leave the wood untreated. Still, a superb companion piece to the other books I already have.

Build Your Own Electric Guitar

Paul Balmer
2013

I've been planning on building my own electric for over a decade now. I still haven't managed it, but I feel like I'm getting closer to having the time and space. So I've been stocking up on some more books about guitars. Plus I like books about guitars anyway.

I've read the Haynes Fender Stratocaster Manual and I really like the format - nicely bound, good quality pages, plenty of big, colour pictures. I also love the way that Haynes have so imaginatively branched out from automative manuals (there's even a Wallace & Gromit Cracking Contraptions Manual!)

The format hasn't changed here, and there's lots of interesting detail. I particularly like the in-depth look at "Red Special", the guitar made by the godfather of all home builders, the awesome Brian May (who also provides a foreword). There's a section on installing a piezo bridge - not that I expect to do this ever, but it's nice to know. The book is well structured and the illustrations are very clear - always a bonus, since I've seen too many fuzzy, monochromatic pictures that tell you nothing.

However, this book is not really about building an electric guitar. It's about assembling a Strat. No other types of guitars are covered, and in any case the sample guitars are assembled from ready made bodies and necks. Now, this is an excellent way of starting, and I'm sure my first guitar will be made like this, so in that respect this is a very useful book. But there's a lot more to building an electric guitar than that. So this doesn't really replace the classic of the genre, Melvyn Hiscock's "Make Your Own Electric Guitar" (which also has an introduction from Dr. May).

Other gripes? The binding, while excellent quality, means that the book doesn't stay open by itself, which would be a pain if you wanted both hands free to actually do some work on a guitar. And finally, why oh why does it persistently refer to "S-type" guitars throughout? Myriad other books have no problem referring to Strats, Stratocasters, Teles and many other trademarked instruments without having to resort to such footling around. Call a spade a spade and a Strat a Strat! A minor but persistently annoying aspect of a generally good book.

Get Fit Running

Owen Barder
2005

This is a short version of a longer book, Running For Fitness, which is rather nicely available for free online. I'm not even a beginner yet, but this strikes me as a good guide for a beginner. It's short and easy to digest; it has detailed suggested training programmes, including a "getting started from nothing" that covers the first six months; and it discusses elements of training programmes and nutrition.

I could have used more detail on some aspects, particularly how to combine running with other activities; for example, I would like to include swimming in my routine rather than just running, and so some information about how that might affect the routines would be useful. However, I'm sure I can work this out for myself over time.

100 Great Guitars

Owen Bailey (editor)
2013

A Guitarist special edition, this occupies a curious position half way between a magazine and a book. It's more of a keeper than the monthly version (not that I throw mine away, ever) but still has adverts.

I rather like the fact that it's titled as a selection of great guitars rather than claiming to be a definitive list, which is of course impossible. All the usual suspects are present, plus a few more recent and unusual choices. Obviously we'd expect to see several versions of Strats, Teles and Les Pauls, but I was pleased to see it includes those as functional as my main guitar, a Gordon Smith GS2-60, as well as some more outlandish choices, like the astonishing Gus G1 Purple Special.

The photography is superb throughout and really has made me think of which guitars I still "need": possibly a Gibson 339, ideally and Explorer, possibly a Dan Armstrong Plexi ... hmmm ...

Wonder

R.J. Palacio
2012

B was given this by his reading group at the local library; he enjoyed it and I thought I'd find out what he was reading. I was slightly concerned, because a (somewhat lazy) review on the cover compares it with Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time, which I don't consider to be a children's book. However, this is; older children, certainly, but still simplistic enough to be understood.

That's not to say it's a simple book, or even that it's been written down. It's a good story, well told. I thought the use of different view points was excellent, and I cared about the characters. The turnaround is a little sudden and the ending somewhat clichéd, but it's a happy ending and I like those.

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

Robert Dimery (editor)
2008

You could argue that the best writing about music - whether your preference is for the academic analysis of Ian MacDonald (Revolution In The Head), the cultural collation of Charles Shaar Murray (Crosstown Traffic) or the scattershot impressionism of Lester Bangs (Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung) - transcends its source and becomes valid art in itself. Irrelevant, I say; if I am not inspired to listen to the song, album or artist described, then it can only be deemed a failure.

This book has many flaws but it has unquestionably brought new music to me, and so can only be judged a success. It has taken me over a year to finish, but it has been worth it. I already owned about 350 of the albums in here, but clearly that has left many more waiting to be heard, and for every one of these for which the description was off-putting, there were five that I was keen to find. I've already made a start, albeit a slow one.

That said, it's not perfect. I'm not going to criticise the album choices; this is subjective and therefore argument is pointless. Of course I would have included some and discarded others. I also think that you need to leave at least ten years before you can really judge an album place in history, so all inclusions after 1998 are suspect (Klaxons? purlease). But that's just my opinion.

No, there are other issues with the book. For one thing, the lavish illustrations and quality printing come at a price, and that price is a weight that means I'm constantly worrying about the damage it would do if I dropped it on my foot. I would have swapped the full colour album covers for something that was easier to actually lift.

Clearly a massive undertaking like this is too much for one man, but having almost one hundred contributors leads inevitably to a woeful inconsistency. I consider myself reasonably well-read in the field of music journalism and criticism, but I have only heard of three of these writers. That doesn't bode well, and so it proves. The real problem with this book is the quality of the writing. There are silly proofing errors, like billing Fever To Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs as Forever To Tell. There are illiterate mistakes, like the dogs on the front of Blur's Parklife being described as "toothsome" (which doesn't actually mean "possessing lots of teeth", I'm afraid). There are factual mistakes, like crediting Richard Oakes with the guitar on Suede's Dog Man Star (he joined after the album had been recorded).

Worst of all, there are reams of low-grade inkie-speak, the kind I thought I'd left behind when I discarded NME and Melody Maker. Here's the first paragraph from the piece about U2's The Joshua Tree:

The Joshua Tree marks the point in U2's long and gloriously inconsistent career at which they woke up to the possibilities of studio technology, expanded their sounds from a post-punk chug and found grandeur, abstraction and finesse. Many in U2's enormous fanbase were converted to the cause by the arch wit of their post-Achtung Baby reawakening, but an older, possibly less sophisticated stratum of followers were grabbed by the landscaped songs of The Joshua Tree.

Bear in mind that, given its inclusion in the book, this is supposed to be explaining why this is a good album. Witness the classic third-rate music writer's tricks:

• random impressive-sounding adjectives - music can be abstract, but this isn't;
• implicit elevation of one's self above the hoi polloi - pity those poor "less sophisticated" losers who were dumb enough to like U2 following this album;
• lazy received wisdom - Achtung Baby is always described as witty, ironic or post-modern, when a casual listen easily disproves this;
• ignorant assertion masquerading as superior knowledge - describing, say, War as a post-punk chug just proves this writer hasn't listened to it; U2 really discovered the studio an album earlier, on The Unforgettable Fire; and they always aspired to grandeur, so to say they only discovered it now is plain wrong.

I think we can surmise from this that the writer - one Joel McIver - doesn't like U2, has never listened to their earlier albums and generally considers himself above such mass-market dross. What a snob. I'm not cross because it's one of my favourite albums, I'm cross because it's a stupid, inaccurate, lazy article.

This drop in standard starts to really kick in when we get to the nineties. My guess is that most of the writers are too young to have experienced the classic albums of earlier decades for themselves, and so their opinions are more balanced. Come 1990, the pieces start to become more shrill and overloaded with pointless adjectives. There are too many occurrences of the phrase "it really is that good" - a typical indication of over-enthusiasm and inarticulacy, usually evoked right before moving onto the next big thing. Reviewers start to assume that they have unique insight into the artist's motives. Then there's the sniffy dismissal of commercial music.

In summary, I'm glad I've read it and I'm really looking forward to hearing the albums mentioned, but if all you really want is some suggestions for music to listen to, do your brain a favour, save some money and just work from the list.

For Richer, For Poorer

Victoria Coren
2009

For some reason, this seems to be the second in an unintentional sequence of books I've read about subjects I have no interest in.  First I read one about whisky, now this, about poker and gambling.  I don't understand poker and can't remotely be bothered to put the effort into working it out - mainly because, if I understand correctly, it's not worth playing without gambling.  And gambling is something I really just don't get.

Anyway, I doubt I would have picked this book up if it wasn't written by Victoria Coren.  My dad was a long time subscriber to Punch and I always enjoyed Alan Coren's writing.  When I first came across his daughter's book Once More, With Feeling I was intriuged, and then amused.  Since then I've always enjoyed seeing her on telly.  So this book definitely seemed worth a shot.

In fact, although the book is very much about poker, it's not just about poker.  Victoria Coren is engaging and very frank about her likely reasons for playing, and what it's taken her from and to.  Maybe it's not just about risking money on the turn of a card, but about community and friends, about finding your own paths.  I can't say I'm much the wiser about how poker works after reading the book, but that didn't stop me enjoying it very much.

Raw Spirit

Iain Banks
2003

I like a lot of Iain Banks's books - and those by Iain M. Banks, come to that.  Enough to name two of them in my top ten favourites.  But although I'd vaguely heard that he'd written a book about whisky, I'd never felt the urge to find it.  I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it's mostly to do with the fact that I can't stand whisky and cannot even understand the appeal.  So what would a book about something I'm not vaguely interested in do for me?  Still, £1.40 in a charity shop and it was mine - I'm a sucker for a cheap book.

And it was very interesting.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.  Along with, I'm sure, many other non-football fans, I really enjoyed Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch despite knowing little and caring less about the game.  A good writer can really animate a subject, and no-one's doubting Iain Banks is a superb author.  After reading about the complexities involved in producing the stuff and the varieties available, I'm  definitely wondering about trying some of the whiskies named in the book.  Maybe I've just never had a good one.

It's not just about whisky though - there's plenty of personal history in there, most of it pretty entertaining.  The book does start to drag towards the end, but there's plenty to enjoy before that.  It doesn't answer one question though: he was commissioned to write a book about whisky, and presumably by a person or organisation connected with the industry.  But who?

In Celebration Of Dead Trees

I saw a post at the Big Green Bookshop (via my friend Paul), which I thought was a nice idea.  Take a photo of one of your bookshelves and write a short paragraph about the book, what it means to you and how it came to be there.

I have lots of books but most of them are now in the loft because we don't have the space to have them all out on bookshelves.  Every few months I take a box out of the loft and swap the books I have out on a shelf for some that I haven't looked at for a few years.  Although I'd rather have all my books out, this system works quite well because it's a bit like having new stuff and I like re-reading books anyway.

Here's what my shelf contains at the moment.  (In fact, it holds another row of books behind those in the photograph, but I'll only mention the ones you can see.)

1. Making The World Work Better by Kevin Maney, Steve Hamm & Jeffrey O'Brien (2011)
I'm a little annoyed to have this hagiography of IBM be my first book on this shelf.  It was the only one here that I didn't select myself; all IBMers got one as part of the company's centennial celebration, whether or not they wanted it.  It's also the only book here I haven't read.  I tried, but it's not very interesting.  Could I return it and just have the money please?

2. The Dilbert Future by Scott Adams (1997)
I bought this from a charity shop a few weeks ago, although I'd read it before.  It's mostly light and amusing, but right at the end, Scott Adams takes a break from his usual sarcasm and offers a genuine suggestion for bettering yourself, called "Affirmations".  From what I can tell, it's a kind of new-age, NLP type thinking.  I generally hold such beliefs in contempt, but I do have to admit to trying affirmations once, a long time ago, and they kind of worked.  I couldn't remember what Adams had said about them, so I got the book to remind myself.

3. River Cottage Handbook No. 3: Bread by Daniel Stevens (2008)
I started making bread a few years ago when I bought a breadmaker, and although it was OK, the results never really impressed me much.  So about six months ago, for some reason, I decided to make it completely by hand.  And as far as I'm concerned, if you want to do something properly then you need a book about it.  I borrowed several from the library and most of them were just compendiums of one page recipes, with a little fluff at the beginning about how to knead the dough.  This is different: it goes into deep detail about each step of making the bread.  I love this kind of detail.  I've enjoyed making the bread too and now I make about two loaves a week.  I'll be buying a copy of this if no-one gets it for me for Christmas (hint hint).

4. The Oxford Concise English Dictionary (1982)
In my third year of secondary school (what is now year 8, I think), we were told we had to have a dictionary.  This is what I got.  The custom binding is by me, age 13.  It's now being used by my eldest son, occasionally, which is why it's out.

5. The Penguin Dictionary Of Quotations edited by J.M. Cohen (1975)
On the other hand, I'm not quite sure why this is out on the shelf, since I never use it.  Actually, I think it originally belonged to my parents.  It's fascinating to dip into it though.  And I've always been intruiged by the way it's indexed and catalogued.  That must have taken a lot of work.  And now you can do it so easily on a computer.  This is a bit of a relic, really.

6. The Princess Diaries: Take Two by Meg Cabot (2001)
7. The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot (2000)
I bought these from the library for 10p each because K (who was 6 at the time) was enjoying the films.  I quickly realised that they weren't suitable for her just yet.  On the other hand, my wife enjoyed them very much and worked her way through the whole series.  Just to be sure.  Anyway, they're being saved for when K is a bit older.

8. New Toddler Taming by Dr. Christopher Green (2001)
Babies don't come with manuals, but of course that makes the aftermarket particularly, uh, fertile.  I think we started with Babygruppenführer Gina Ford, on the advice of my sister, but we didn't really get on with it (and don't get me started about how rubbish it is if you have more than one kid).  So we looked around and found Christopher Green.  He's done three books: this one, Babies and Beyond Toddlerdom.  They're all filled with eminently sensible, down-to-earth advice rather than unachievable timetables and we still use them (except the one about babies, obviously).

9. You Never Give Me Your Money by Peter Doggett (2010)
I bought this book on the recommendation of David Hepworth (via The Word magazine, to which I subscribe).  It's a history of The Beatles, after The Beatles, specifically focussing (I think) on their business affairs.  I've just started reading it, so I can't offer much opinion on it.

10. Clive James On Television by Clive James (1991)
This reminds me of a girl I knew when I was 18.  She was several years older than me; she may have had designs on my person but I was utterly clueless with girls at that age.  She lent me Visions Before Midnight, the first of the three books collected in this omnibus edition.  They contain the TV review columns he wrote for The Observer during the seventies.  I can just about remember some of the later programmes he discusses.  This doesn't stop the reviews being learned, relevant and very, very entertaining.  What he's got to say about the Olympic coverage and (in particular) commentary of 1972 is still true today.  Highly recommended.  (Ruth, I still have your book, btw ...)

11. ABBA: The Name Of The Game by Andrew Oldham, Tony Calder & Colin Irwin
I've loved ABBA since I was six.  My Dad was doing some work at EMI and brought me the first Greatest Hits collection and Arrival.  So this book, which starts with the premise that Benny and Bjorn were two of the finest songwriters - ever! - is obviously right up my street.  It's a very entertaining read too, but for all the humour and obsession with Agnetha's bottom, it has serious points to make about their achievements and history.  Of course, if you're one of those people still in denial about ABBA's place in music history, this may pass you by.  We'll see who's proved right in thirty years time, mark my words.

12. The Kingdom By The Sea by Paul Theroux (1983)
During 1999 and 2000, I spent about 11 months working in Edinburgh.  This was long enough to make friends in the city, but I still ended up alone a lot.  I spent much of that time in bookshops, of which there were many.  I quickly ran out of titles I definitely wanted to read and started taking chances on books that sounded vaguely familiar.  This was one of them.  It's a classic travel book, but I have never managed to finish it.  I can admire its qualities while still finding it a bit of grind.  I'm not sure why.

13. Watching The English by Kate Fox (2004)
This is one of my favourite books.  Unfortunately, repeated reads, while very enjoyable, have resulted in me completely forgetting how I discovered it.  It's like listening to your favourite song again and again; eventually, any memories it had for you are drowned in micro-memories of the other times you listened to it and eventually it reduces any meaning it once had to almost zero.  Nevertheless, I would highly recommend this entertaining study of English manners and habits - in fact, I have recommended it, many times.

14. 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die edited by Robert Dimery (2008)
Bought as part of my grand project to listen to more music.

15. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland & Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (1865 & 1871)
This book accompanied C & me on our holiday to Florida way back in 2000.  I remember reading it while sitting by the pool at the Holiday Inn on Key Largo.  The juxtaposition of location and story was a little jarring and lent a certain sense of surrealism to the holiday.  It's out on shelf now because the kids are enjoying the Disney film, and K likes the ballet that was on telly a while back.  She doesn't seem to like the book though.

16. Friends Like These by Danny Wallace (2008)
I like Danny Wallace - or, at least, I like the persona in his books, where he has a kind of wide-eyed naivety and innocence.  It may be close to his real personality, of course, or not - who can tell?  But the books are jolly good fun.  He's another author I discovered while I was working in Edinburgh.

17. Good Wood: Joints by Albert Jackson & David Day (1995)
18. Good Wood: Basic Woodworking by Albert Jackson & David Day (2001)
One of my long term ambitions is to make an electric guitar.  As I said before, my instinctive approach is to buy a book about it.  In this case, I already have books about making guitars, but I need basic woodworking skills before I can do that.  So even though I'm several years away from being able to start my project, I'm starting to collect the books.  I might even do a course.  These books were excellent value secondhand.

19. Complete Prints 1962 - 2010 by Bridget Riley (2010)
I first saw Bridget Riley's wonderful patterns at an exhibition at The Barbican in the early nineties and I was immediately smitten.  Since then I've wanted to have some in the house, but I'm hampered by two things: firstly, finding large prints of her work is quite hard; and secondly, C won't have it, because she's not that keen and thinks it wouldn't really work on our walls.  So it's lovely of her to have bought this for my birthday.  The book contains copies of her prints, so it's not the big famous pictures, but it's very interesting nonetheless.

20. Words and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson (2008)
This is another birthday present from C - and, unfortunately, another book that has been somewhat superseded by the internet.  It's much more convenient to refer to than a computer though, but it is rather heavy!


The people who wrote that original post are absolutely correct.  You couldn't write a post like this about your Kindle.

The Day Of The Jackal

Frederick Forsyth

1971

Obviously a classic.  And according to an article in this month's Word magazine, Forsyth just sat down and wrote it, at 30 pages a day or something.  I'm sure it wasn't that easy, because the amount of detail in the book is astonishing.  Of course, as a journalist he gathered info all the time, but surely it took some research?

Anyway, it's a good read - not too long, a satisfying plot of sufficient complexity and an aura of reality so convincing that apparently many people have to be reminded that it is, in fact, fiction.

I have little interest in history and, generally, almost none in that of countries other than my own.  In this I judge myself similar to most people.  In some respects, the book's greatest achievement may be to be of interest to people like me despite being about another country.

Watching The English

Kate Fox
2004

I like recommending books to people and there are two that I think I have suggested to people more than any others.  The first is William Goldman's Adventures In The Screen Trade, and I'm now on my third copy because the previous two haven't been returned.

The second is this.  Subtitled "The Hidden Rules Of English Behaviour", it covers the oddities, idiosyncrasies and eccentricities of English behaviour from the point of view of a professional anthropologist.  In this it differs from previous, well-known analyses of the English character by such luminaries as Jeremy Paxman (The English), Bill Bryson (Notes From A Small Island) and Jilly Cooper (Class).  Entertaining as these all are, they all struggle to escape the cliches; and intelligent and insightful as the authors are, they are not looking for the same things as an anthropologist.

This becomes clear when Kate Fox examines some of the most often cited aspects of the English character.  For example, most people comment on the politeness so common in England - all the pleases and thank-yous, the after-yous, and so on - but she identifies it as arising from a deep-seated unease about how to interact with people.  She calls this a "social dis-ease" (ho ho) and points out that the flip side of it is a tendency to go too far the other way in certain situations and become loud and obnoxious.

Despite being a serious book of anthropology, this is nevertheless a highly entertaining book that not only identifies the rules of behaviour (e.g. the "hidden queue" at a pub bar) but does a good job of putting it into a context.  If in some places it resembles observation-based comedy ("have you ever noticed how everyone does this ...?" type routines), it's because it's based on the same sort of material.  And to be fair Kate Fox acknowledges this herself.  But she goes further by analysing the reasons behind it.

Liar's Poker

Michael Lewis
1989

Last week a video was doing the rounds on Facebook and twitter of a trader who flabbergasted the BBC interviewers by claiming to be looking forward to the oncoming recession because he was going to make loads of money from it.

He was subsequently revealed to be a fake and general attention seeker but one of the reasons he caused such widespread outrage was that he sounded so convincing.  How?  Well, I don't know, but I'm betting he's read Liar's Poker.

Many of the characters in the book are exactly like him - single minded, amoral (note: not immoral) and utterly unconcerned with the possible side-effects or wider issues caused by their behaviour.  They do what they are paid to do because they get a kick out of it and because they are paid very well.

Lewis's book dates from 1989 and so doesn't cover anything to do with our more recent mess but the basic causes are clearly the same.  He saw the change, roughly from the late 70s to the mid 80s,  from when traders were well paid to when they were obscenely well paid - and became one of them.  He discusses the reasons in a light, non-technical way (although some of the financial details still made my head hurt) and gives a good and entertaining overview of the way things have become - and, no doubt, still are in many respects.

I've never really looked into the financial culture, beyond a basic knowledge that some chancers get very lucky, but I have to say that the scale and effects of their activities really shocked me.  That's probably naive of me.  It's still depressing though.

Anyway, the book is a classic (it says so on the cover) and well worth reading.

Just My Type

A Book About Fonts
Simon Garfield
2010

A very interesting, layman's guide to the arcane and sometimes insanely detailed world of the typeface.

Despite the fact that we see many different fonts every day, and are affected by them, I suspect that most people know next to nothing about them.  For example, did you know that, for a "t" to look correct, it has to actually lean slightly to the right (or was it left)?  Or that the dot over the letter "i" is slightly to the left of the letter itself?  The minuscule changes and differences between fonts are all but invisible to me, but to aficionados they are glaring.

I can kind of understand this.  One of my passions is electric guitars and I can tell the difference between any two models very easily.  Most people can't - and, again, despite the electric guitar's centrality in modern music.  You have to be utterly immersed in something to see the details, but you don't need to be to appreciate the final effect.

Garfield covers the history of fonts and typefaces (no, I'm afraid I can't remember the difference) without making the book seem like a history lesson, and discusses many of the individual fonts in detail.  The first chapter covers why Comic Sans is so reviled, and later we find out why Arial provokes so much controversy (it's a near-copy of Helvetica, apparently).

The only thing I didn't like - and this occurred on one of the first pages, which nearly put me off - was when discussing the first computer to offer a range of fonts to users.  It was the original Apple Macintosh - and according to the book, it was "designed by Steve Jobs".  Jobs was certainly influential on its design but to credit him only is poor research.

"The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes" (1892)

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

When I'm ill I don't really want to be challenged or stimulated. I'd rather have something familiar or at least predictable. So during my latest cold I pulled the Sherlock Holmes books off the shelf. In fact, this is all five books of short stories in one large volume, so it wasn't a great choice - reading such a heavy book in bed probably wasn't ideal for someone feeling weakened anyway!

Still, the stories are always enjoyable and met my needs perfectly well. Given how old they are the stories are remarkably undated.

The Road To Gandolfo

Robert Ludlum
1975

Originally published under a pseudonym, The Road To Gandolfo is unusual for Ludlum in that it's a comedy novel.  And, as such, I find it much more appealing that his serious thrillers, and it's the book of his that I've re-read the most times.

The plot concerns an epic con undertaken by an ex-Army General.  It's not particularly intricate but there's lots of entertaining detail.  And it's not too heavyweight, either - unlike such back-breakers like the Jason Bourne novels.

All in all, one of his lesser known books but worth finding.

Don't You Know Who I Am?

Piers Morgan
(2007)

Pretty much everything I know about Piers Morgan repels me. Obviously, as an ex-editor of the News Of The World, he is already highly morally suspect (and, let's be honest, that would have been true even without the phone hacking revelations this year) and any reading of his activities, both as a newspaper editor and as a TV celebrity, does little to dispel this.

Given all this, I'm not sure why I bothered with the book.  It was cheap - about a quid at Oxfam - and I was curious.

It's a diary of his life and covers the period in his life between getting sacked as editor of The Daily Mirror and being appointed as a judge on America's Got Talent.  The same period also roughly - and presumably coincidentally - covers the time between separating from his first wife and starting a relationship with the woman who became his second.

The theme of the book is celebrity.  Morgan, casting around for a way of earning a living, decides that he would like to become a celebrity and work in television.  The book discusses the ways he attempts this.  This includes a flop current affairs programme, Morgan and Platell (which was modelled on those tiresome US-style programmes that pits opposing views).  I was surprised to read that Morgan was supposed to be the left-wing viewpoint in this setup.

Despite all of this, the book is an entertaining read.  Piers Morgan is clearly not a stupid man and neither is he devoid of self-knowledge.  What he chooses to do with that intelligence and self-awareness is a bit depressing but amusing to read about.

"How I Escaped My Certain Fate"

The Life And Deaths Of A Stand-Up Comedian by Stewart Lee

It seems like all comedians produce books now - I guess it's just another aspect of the revenue stream for them. I haven't read any because I'm not that interested in them as people and I don't really find many of them truly funny - at least, not the famous ones.

Stuart Lee doesn't find many of them funny either, although he is happy to admit that he used to find them funny before they became famous. One of the threads running through the book is about the unrecognised trailblazers who have fearlessly broken comedic ground in dives around the country. He thinks Johnny Vegas is a genius, for example; not for his television appearances but his live performances.

Anyway, what we have here is not a life history of Stuart Lee, although it does cover some of his recent past. At its core it is three of his recent shows/routines, transcribed and heavily annotated, and interspersed with lengthy and entertaining essays about what he was trying to do, the points he was trying to make and what effect he was trying to achieve.

The book starts with him attempting to reinvent his stage persona after he realised that he had become predictable (and also after he discovered that Ricky Gervais had essentially appropriated it for his own stage persona). He discusses the way comedy works - or how his comedy works - and goes back to some of his inspirations and heroes. It then covers the next several years of routines, visits to the Edinburgh fringe and his attempts to get something on telly (not his favourite medium, clearly, but one that pays a lot more than touring).

I haven't seen Stuart Lee live but a quick search on YouTube gives us plenty to look at (e.g. excerpts from his show "41st Best Standup", one of the routines in the book), and it hardly needs mentioning that the routines are a lot funnier to watch than written down on paper, but they're still pretty good to read.

He also discusses in detailed footnotes why he does something. Here he does a bit about Richard Littlejohn chiseling words on a gravestone; he does the sound effect of the chiseling by knocking the microphone on the stand. In the book he mentions that he would entertain himself by seeing how long he could draw out the sound effect without losing the crowd.

The book is a very interesting read from the perspective of the craft of comedy, and not just a funny book - even if it is a way of making more money from existing material. Although there's so much more in this book than the routines, so that's probably a little unfair. Recommended, and I'll take the time to look for more of his stuff.