The author was familiar with the late 1960s scene but not the original early 1960s genuine "Nashville Sound" period. Coverage of that first period is minimal, which was what the Nashville Sound is really supposed to be about. He talks about the winds of change, people like Glen Campbell, and how country music was turning to Countrypolitan.

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Well researched story of why teenagers in austere after the war Britain took to music to brighten their existence.
Ken Colyer's and Chris Barbers Trad Jazz..Lonnie Donegans breakaway skiffle..Tommy Steele into Marty Wilde, Vince Eager... Six five special..Boy Meets Girl
A good 490 page read

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This was a disappointment. Really a book for those who don't know a thing about Rock&Roll and haven't got any concentration span to read pages of text unless there are lots of pictures
The whole story is told in the first 28 pages with plenty of references to much better books on the subject.
"Nobody knows when Rock & Roll really began"....."Black music was segregated until white teenagers discovered that it was better than the watered down white versions"...."Bandstand "Southern singers sang something called Rockabilly"

After about 25 pages of this, the rest of this quite thick book is devoted to "lists"..for example "Songs about Boy's Names" "Songs about the American West".
And finally comes the obligatory alphabetical list of well known singers and groups with a brief description of what they did.

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Alanna isn't a rabid Country fan but is interested to meet the people behind some of the larger-than-life personnas that they trade behind.
A set of intelligent well-researched face-to-face interviews with many big names in Country Music-many of whom are no longer with us- making this doubly interesting as she got to talk to people that you don't hear too much about

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A great entry point for anyone looking to get into Arthurian Legend, as it's written in a modern style, as opposed to some of the "Canonical" mediaeval Arthurian texts, which can be a sticky read, with all that dense old English, such as Malory... or has read Tolkien and C.S Lewis, who White was contemporary with, and who work this should be considered as being in the same vein.

...White however, is a better writer than either of them!

Some absolutely breath-taking passages, and brilliant devices (talking animals!) to illustrate liberal ideas that the ethos that "Might Is Right" is untrue, and true justice, through a system of laws and good governance is how the human race ought to live (And share this world with other life in the world).

Arthur is taught this by being transformed by Merlin on several occasions into various animals, among whom he has to live, in order to understand the different social structures, including the disturbing transformation into a mindless ant in a colony.

One device does seem to get the better of White though in that Merlin lives backwards through time from the future to the past, getting younger as the story progresses as it follows the story moving forward in time, and I think he bit off a little more than he could chew working out the logic of this on a couple of occasions.

There is always the sticky subject of Lancelot and Guinevere in this story, which will raise uncomfortable questions in younger reader's minds, but it is lightly handled here...

But one Scene involving The Orkney boys (Gareth, Gaheris, Mordred) and the slaughter of a Unicorn is graphic, and so potently conjured in the mind by White's descriptive powers that it would disturb a younger reader greatly I think.... and for that reason, this edition would probably be suited to early teens, with versions I believe being available for younger readers in edited form.

All in all, a brilliant book.

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A must for all of a certain age who remember the days before the "Singer-Songwriter".
When teams of young songwriters churned out tune after tune hoping to have it recorded and reap the rewards of a "hit"
New Yorks Brill Building was a warren of tiny offices for record companies and publishers so it was possible then to write a tune, run up the corridors and sell it..if you were lucky!

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From the first recording with Norman Petty and hit parade days with Roulette..through to the early days of The Nashville music scene and Reprise Records with Frank Sinatra.
An interesting biology of the music industry from so many sides

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A collection of short head-to-head interviews with the artists as listed on the cover . All about the art of songwriting.
Any interview with Chuck Berry is always interesting

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A pretty ordinary autobiography by a very good footballer.

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Earlyish cyberpunk potboiler in which humans and robots struggle for dominance whilst speaking hipster jive on the moon (and then on Earth). Quite knowing, contains nods to Thomas Pynchon, and I suspect, many more I didn't notice. Closer though, in its deranged energy, to Philip K Dick - and appropriately, it's a winner of the Philip K Dick award.

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In which a flock of sheep, in Ireland, attempt to discover who murdered their shepherd. The sheep point of view is well done throughout, and this is easily the best Schafskrimi (sheep crime novel) that I've read. (The follow-up awaits though).

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Just like Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch don't let the subject matter put you off. You may loathe heavy metal as much as football but you can still enjoy this book on a human level. It's pretty much about growing up thinking that all the excitement is happening somewhere else. A teenage mind confused by girls, hormones, small-town boredom and the 80s could find solace in the mindless fun of heavy metal. I expect the same novel will be written about Minecraft in ten years time…..

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Peerless! 10/10! :thumbsup:

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Very interesting insight into pre and early punk times in NYC. Author is not sympathetic, which is disappointing (at least to someone who loves his music)

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The correspondence between a Florida librarian, and his SE Asian wife, in search of a 15th century treasure. Two unreliable narrators, one with an impressionistic take on the English language. Very clever - it improves with rereading.

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I bought this partly because of its title - I hoped for a Dylan version of "Revolution In The Head". It's not quite that, but it is a song-by-song study of the genesis and development of each of Dylan's known songs, including many obscure to me, and not on his albums ("Gates of Hate"; "Troubled And I Don't Know Why"; "Phantom Engineer" and so on). It's fascinating to read, and the author has an entertaining style. However, he does seem to have some odd views here and there - for example describing "When the Ship Comes In" as a sister song to "The Times They Are A-Changin'" - there's no clear link to this listener's ears, let alone such a close one.

Also, he is quite pedantic about factual matters in Dylan's true-life songs, such as "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol", for example taking pains to castigate Dylan for the fact that the real Hattie Carrol was not "killed by a blow, lain slain by a cane", but died of a coronary, and that Dylan missed a T out of William Zantzinger's name.

This pattern repeats too often and is a little irritating - in volume 2 for example, he explains (with song lyric quotes to prove the point) how Dylan's version of events in the song "Hurricane" is inaccurate, since when the boxer was stopped by the police, they initially let him go on his way. He makes no allowance for the deliberate creativity or drama in Dylan's narrative, which is a pity.

Make allowances for these quirks, and this book plus volume 2 are fascinating documents, detailing Dylan's songbook not just in the 60s but bang up to date. Four out of five for me.

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A good overview of the Britpop era by the bass player of Blur.

The book flies along at a good pace and is enjoyable and funny view of the ups and downs of being in a (successful) band during the Cool Britainna period of the 1990s.

It documents his excesses (he estimates to have spent £1m on cocaine and booze before sobering up) and the music scene around that time with references to his social circle that included the likes of Damien Hirst and Keith Allen.

He comes across as, rather than a rock star rebel, an intelligent man with good taste making the most of what his money can buy before slowing down and becoming a family man (with cheese!)

Worth a read whether you are a Blur fan or not.

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this is the edition yr hmbl srppnt. first read - in 1967 - it kept the teenage me up all night reading it in one go - and yes, it was written to be a work of propaganda°, and an educational work†, as well as a thunderingly fine, truly gripping novel. i have read it again since - a couple of times, over the decades.

yr hmbl srppnt. does not like leon uris' altering some parts of known & fully-documented historical events, such as the children & crew of the blockade-running ship were in fact returned by the british authorities to a/ displaced persons' camp/s in europe: i can appreciate he did this to improve the novel as a work of fiction, "but..."; however, his portrayal of racist characters and the language these characters use does not make this a work advocating racism nor racist behaviour: such criticism is ill-founded, no matter how sincere.

"exodus" remains a major novel, a gripping "must-read" - and one that does not excuse nor justify violence & murder by anyone at all - including by modern israelis possessed of racist opinions & beliefs. - not that all by any means are (clarifying to forestall charges...).

° - promoting several causes, not simply zionism (in the sense of arguing for both the movement to further creation of a modern jewish state, historically, and supporting its continued existence in the form of the country of israel)
† - detailing much of the history of jewish people, and of judaism, through snapshots and more extended chapters in characters' lives, as well as enlightening people about the existence of the holocaust that the nazi regime had inflicted upon so many millions including many of the peoples of eastern europe, and upon homosexual men, and upon others - but so overwhelmingly against the jewish population of europe (and anyone "tainted" with "jewish blood") - about which many people - and most people in the usa - were totally ignorant.

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this is the edition first read by yr hmbl srppnt. sometime in the early-to-mid sixties, when my elder bother° borrowed it from church end public library, and the sub-teenage me glommed onto it, devoured it, and has never forgotten it since - despite having only had time to read it the once before he returned it - and couldn't remember the author, its title - nor even having read the book from my memory of the key word, ''rhiannon'', detailed description of the set-up, and the bones of the story!

° - the russian for ''brother'' is ''brat'' - and rightly so!

a superb, technically "sub-burroughsian", "planet stories"-style exotic science fiction adventure story, a true gem of its kind, with the accent almost as heavily upon the powerfully exotic setting, as upon the adventure that pits matthew carse, a low-life chancer of a man, a would-be tomb-robber, against an actual, veritable god - and against the cruel, conscienceless saurian race that rules their thalassocracy on mars of yore - exercising their dominion over all other races - including lowly humanity - upon the planet through their fawning worship of this god, and their apparent obedience of him, and his kin, and studying his technological teachings, and wielding the great powers they gain thereby without any shred of compassion, no achilles heel of any inclination towards mercy - thousands of years before our would-be tomb-robber was born. . .

- against such inhuman and uncaring, overbearing and unfeelingly callously cruel overlords, what chance does one, very far from heroic - let alone perfect - and utterly out of his depth chancer-on-the-run have ?

- this gripped the young ppint.'s imagination, as it has enthralled so many readers in the decades since first it saw the light of day.

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not all of the stories manage quite the same combination of fantasy, eccentricity, surrealism, and poetic justice of vance's own dying earth stories; but they all of them evince a blending of at least some of these characteristics: and it's a worthy addition to the dying earth canon - as well as having been a recognition jack vance could and did enjoy in his lifetime.

(n.b. merkin editions lose the "u" from the sub-title.)

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a novel of a relationship under pressure as a couple decide to abstain from sex during a countryside stay as the rich, dilletante husband attempts to write a novel; things are complicated when the wife reveals that her husband's barber has tried to molest her sexually...

- definitely not ''a romance category'' novel in the mills & boon/harlequin romance tradition.

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Meer! Meer! Meer! (More, More, More) is a book about us: collectors, crate-diggers, hoarders, archivists, completists but above all about music lovers and record (cd, cassettes, 78's, vinyl) cabinets.
Compiled from over 200 articles that were issued in Dutch music magazine "Platenblad" (Recordmagazine) it gives us a rare view in basements, lofts, annexes, sheds and man caves of other persons and at the same time holds a mirror to the reader him/herself. And yes there is also an interview with three Dutch moderators of 45Cat from more than 10 years ago. How we've grown....
A very pleasant read.

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unremarkable milsf; there's a reliable market for ''the merkin army in space'' fiction.

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somewhat delayed sequel to ''the ship that sailed the time stream'' (1965), q.v.

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thirty-one letters, thirty of advice; one.... not, from a senior devil to his nephew, wormwood, a junior devil, on how best and most easily to tempt the mortal in his charge, ''the patient'', into sin, pitfalls to be avoided along the way that might afford the soul entrusted to his care the chance to avoid eventual eternal damnation, and suggestions for how to recover from setbacks to his shepherding his charge down the slippery slope to hell - with occasional expressions of shock and horror at wormwood's naïvety and/or downright negligence at having allowed his charge to regain some measure of grace.

if in the right mood, ''the screwtape letters'' is a good read - the humour is incisive, but mayn't lead to too much self-criticism - as well as at least potentially conducive of self-improvement...


though c. s. lewis stated the letters were hard work, not fun to write, and that he was resolved to not write any further such, he did compose a further lengthy essay, ''screwtape proposes a toast'' in the form of an after-dinner speech, that was published in 1959 and appeared in omnibus edition together with the letters, as ''the screwtape letters & screwtape proposes a toast'' in 1961, q.v

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this work of journalism is not fiction, and this mis-categorisation should^W has been deleted.

hersey interviewed many people who had - at least for a while - survived the immediate ''nuclear bombing'', or ''nuking'' of hiroshima - which, together with the similar destruction of nagasaki - was initially celebrated, and not only the cause of celebrations, but even made the topic of jokes in america and elsewhere (and probably in the uk and the british empire, too; though i do not know this). he also did follow-up interviews with many people.

following the experiences of six real people from just before the atomic bomb was detonated above hiroshima, this was thought to be so important a piece of journalism when it was received by the editor, that instead of its being broken into several episodes and published in consecutive issues, the whole article - all 31,000 words of it - was published in a single issue of the new yorker, on 31/8/1946.

it sold out at newsstands within a few hours.

it was published in hardcover by alfred a. knopf later on in 1946; the book of the month club sent its edition free of charge to all of its members, and it was read aloud on the american broadcasting company's network in four half-hour installments; it was also read out on the bbc on the home service, iiuc.

it is probably the single most important factor in the awakening of non-japanese people to the 'til then unimaginable magnitude of the horrors of the use of nuclear weapons, and the moral questions their existence raises.

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tales of an inadvertently intergalactic dentist -

- not entirely serious, and good fun & educational sf - as well as fully hygienic!

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Read this in a day!

Seen most, if not all the movies, so was pleased to find this in the charity shop, so I could go straight to the source at last.

It doesn't really start out that promising to be honest, as it reads in the early stages like it's going to be one of those aloof, colonial attitude pieces from the previous century or two, where the attitude of the author, expressed through his narrator might not have dated that well - more than a whiff of a kind of Shatnerian Kirk-ery:

"Captain's log... stardate _+_+_, Weeeeee've....GOT. To.... GEt, backtotheship!"

But as you read, you realise this is on purpose, as this, almost ultimate work of absolute deadpan satire, focused on just these attitudes, morals and values as expressed in those earlier kind of works are completely undermined...but again, absolutely deadpan.

...It... Apes, them :)

Some rather impressive expressions of then, recently discovered physics (albeit, the years after have rendered most. factually inaccurate).

But during the course of it's couple hundred pages of short punchy, and concise chapters, it lays out a plethora of fertile material for consideration and interpretation, so that you can see why movie makers keep going back to it...

(Remarkable, how much, although reconfigured for more modern purposes, from this original is revived even for the most recent movies - themes, names poits made etc.)

...Animal rights, psychology, sociology, social commentary, satire, allegory, metaphor, power structures, science (scientific attitudes), morality... it's all here, to be interpreted any way you like!

You could really read this a hundred times and always get something new to think about from it.

And very much like I Am Legend... nice final line! :)

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this seems to be the only book published by earthlight publishers - but what a book!

almost all the fiction tom reamy wrote - one remained unpublished by the editor to whom he'd submitted it for first publication, so couldn't be included without being withdrawn - excluding only two°, plus his only novel, ''blind voices'', which was published ''completed, but unfinished'' (he was still polishing it) posthumously, after the heart attack which killed him.°

beautifully-written, oftimes ominous, threatening, frequently horror-inducing, fantasy; earth-set but not earthbound, and well worthy of being published in such a beautiful edition.

° - missing are:

jenny's friends (short story) fantastic worlds (fanzine) vol.2 #2, spring 1954
sting! (short play) in ''six science fiction plays'' ed. roger elwood (1976), q.v.
m is for the million things (short story) in ''new voices 4: the john w. campbell award nominees'' ed. george r. r. martin (1981), q.v.
potiphee, petey and me (novelette) (sold to harlan ellison for ''the last dangerous visions'' (unpublished); eventually appeared in ''under the hollywood sign'' tom reamy (750-copy limited edition h/cvr 2023), q.v.°°

(°° - this 2023 collection is sfaik the complete novellas, novelettes, and short stories bar one (jenny's friends), compilation - it incorporates all of ''san diego lightfoot sue and other stories'' - but is considerably scarcer, and liable to be pricey - it bears a $50.00 cover price. . .)

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Very readable and enjoyable. Finished it in a day.

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