Tag: Sunday Times

Broadsword Calling Danny Boy

Geoff Dyer

It’s a long time since I last saw the film Where Eagles Dare – it was probably a rainy Sunday afternoon in the 1980s – but Geoff Dyer’s new book made me want to watch it all over again. His love for the film, formed when he first saw it as a boy, is everywhere evident in his scene-by-scene description, though he doesn’t take it too seriously. He admits that the plot is at times preposterous, with the rucksacks carried by the main characters seemingly bottomless and carrying endless supplies of explosives. He’s very funny too on the two lead actors, Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton, describing the trademark Eastwood squint as he lays waste to hordes of Nazis, and quoting Burton’s diaries, in which he wonders why he agreed to appear in such blockbusters when he could be winning Oscars instead. Read my Sunday Times review here

Matt Haig

 

At the age of twenty-four, suffering from depression, novelist Matt Haig stood at the edge of a cliff and almost threw himself over. Although he pulled back from suicide the episode heralded years of mental illness. Depression is, he wrote in Reasons to Stay Alive, ‘total exposure. A red-raw naked mind. A skinned personality.’

Haig has written perceptively about mental illness, and both Reasons to Stay Alive and his new book, Notes on a Nervous Planet, have been bestsellers. I reviewed Reasons to Stay Alive when it came out in 2015 (you can read that review here) and I recently reviewed Notes on a Nervous Planet for the Sunday Times – you can read the review here.

A Couple of Reviews

Rock and Roll is Life

D. J. Taylor’s new novel follows the fortunes and misfortunes of fictional band the Helium Kids, who in the 60s were ‘only marginally less successful than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones’. It’s a funny, vibrant novel and you can read my review in the Literary Review here.

 

Ten Arguments

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now: Jaron Lanier was one of the pioneers of virtual reality technology, but now he spends much of his time railing against the dangers of the internet and, in this book, social media. I have a lot of sympathy for his viewpoint, as I have always been ambivalent about social media: I have no Facebook or Instagram account and came to Twitter very late. However, his book has not quite convinced me to delete my Twitter account. You can read my Sunday Times review here.

Reviews round-up

It occasionally happens that my reading for work pushes my reading for pleasure into the background. Recently I realised that I had inadvertently abandoned The Evenings by Gerard Reve. It had been moved some months ago from my to-be-read pile and shoved in a cupboard while other books took precedence. It was only when I saw a review of it in the Guardian the other day that I remembered I was halfway through it. Having picked it up again, I’m now trying to figure out who all the characters are and what on earth is going on in the plot.

evenings

Anyway, in between times I’ve reviewed the following books:

AffluenceGuernica

 

AscentMother Land

Affluence Without Abundance by James Suzman – a study of the San or Bushman tribes of Namibia, in which I learned that the San believe that white people’s hair makes them look like goats and that warthogs are ‘clever, sociable, and vengeful’. Review here

Guernica: Painting the End of the World – James Attlee’s account of Picasso’s monumental painting. Apparently, Jackson Pollock was so impressed by the painting that when he overheard a fellow artist criticising it he suggested they ‘step outside and fight it out’. Review here

Ascent: A Life Spent Climbing on the Edge by Chris Bonington, in which the great British mountaineer recounts peaks climbed and comrades lost. Review here

Fifty years after publishing his first novel, Paul Theroux has just published his 31st. Mother Land is a very funny book about a feuding Cape Cod family ruled by a monstrous matriarch. This review appears in the latest edition of the Literary Review here

Right, now back to The Evenings …

My Father’s Wake

My Father's Wake

 

In this powerful memoir, Kevin Toolis contends that the Anglo-Saxon world has lost the art of mourning the dead, and that we should look to the way the Irish do it. Open caskets, touching the dead body, sitting in vigil by the coffin, playing sexually charged ‘wake games’ – all would help us come to terms with our mortality. You can read my Sunday Times review here

RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR

Philip Hoare

Philip Hoare writes about the sea. A lot. He won the Samuel Johnson prize for his book Leviathan, about his fascination with whales and Moby-Dick, and followed it up with The Sea Inside, which I reviewed here. His latest book ranges from memories of childhood trips to the seaside to accounts of how various cultural figures, from Shelley and Byron to Wilfred Owen and David Bowie, have loved and loathed water. It’s a really terrific book, full of great stories and a tremendous feel for the power and thrill of the sea. Here’s my Sunday Times review

Reviews round-up

OK, so I’ve been a bit slack in updating this these past few weeks, but I’ve done a number of reviews recently, as follows:

 

Andrew O'Hagan

Andrew O’Hagan’s book of essays (previously published in the London Review of Books) includes a brilliant account of his abortive attempt to ghostwrite a memoir by Julian Assange. Here’s my Sunday Times review

 

Brenda Maddox

I’ve spent a lot of time on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, but have never found a dinosaur skeleton, as Mary Anning did in 1811. Brenda Maddox’s book is about the Victorian geologists like Anning who changed the way we looked at the world – proving for example that it is much older than anyone thought and thus challenging Christian orthodoxy. My Sunday Times review is here

 

Amanda Craig

 

And finally, I very much enjoyed Amanda Craig’s latest novel and reviewed it here for the Literary Review.

The Seabird’s Cry

Nicolson

I’m not much of a fan of the seaside (too windy, too cold, too exposed) and one of my few interactions with seabirds was when a seagull swooped to steal my sandwich, but Adam Nicolson’s new book is a great read, full of interesting details about things such as fratricidal kittiwakes and cannibalistic gulls. You can read my Sunday Times review here

Between Them

Richard Ford

Book reviewing might seem like a gentle occupation, but occasionally it can tip over into viciousness. After I wrote my review of Richard Ford’s new book, I read that he spat at Colson Whitehead because of a negative review Whitehead had written of a Ford book – in fact, Ford had waited many years to take his revenge. You can make your own minds up about whether I am likely to be on the receiving end of a Ford attack: my Sunday Times review is here