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january 2017 the fifteenth home about jump to navigation review shine on marquee moon by zoe howe january 2 2017 posted by sjroby in book reviews tags zoe howe add a comment shine on marquee moon by zoe howe another netgalley review this is an odd book i m not sure it knows what it wants to be and i m not sure what the author was trying to do and i m not sure how much of the author s initial vision made it to the finished product was it an expose of the rock band lifestyle a romance chicklit novel set in the music world a parodic take on people in the music biz a suspenseful tale of the kinds of madness fame and the loss of it can generate a postmodern exercise in violating the norms of novelistic storytelling all of the above probably depends which page you re on the plot the narrator works for an 80s band having a successful comeback and she s in a relationship with one of the band members spoilers just as they re planning their wedding he goes back on heroin putting their relationship at risk at the same time that a new guy comes into her life and other events threaten the band as a whole will she stay with her emotionally crippled junkie or go for the wholesome open nice new guy will the manager keep the band together will there be any explanation of how the first person narrator can describe not only events she s not present for but even view events from other characters perspectives sometimes switching from her own perspective to another character s viewpoint in the space of a paragraph for the last one at least no zoe howe has mainly written nonfiction before which may be the source of the shifting pov problems i have her book on the jesus and mary chain but haven t read it yet my only concern about reading other books by her is her openness to flakiness which at times looked like it was going to lead the book in a supernatural direction as if there wasn t enough going on already the other issue howe starts the book talking about the importance of shared musical taste in a very nick hornby high fidelityesque manner with her narrator being almost insistent that a potential partner who doesn t love television s marquee moon as much as she does is probably not worth continuing with but her fiance who supposedly loves the album as much as she does plays in a cartoonish duran duran style band not quite the same kind of music as television and the potential new love interest i think there may be one mention that he likes the album but that s about it in the afterword howe mentions wanting to do more in the book relating to marquee moon but it didn t happen partly due to the cost of getting clearance to quote lyrics it might have been a good idea to drop it entirely because it probably doesn t mean anything to a lot of the book s possible audience while those who recognize the reference and know the album are going to wonder why they re reading about an over the top british new romantic band a little personal context i loved high fidelity i quite like marquee moon and i liked some of the new romantic bands a lot too though this lot come across much more duran duran than ultravox or visage i had some high hopes for this book because i remember how the bridget jones diaries books were promoted in some places as being like a woman s version of high fidelity or fever pitch but what helen fielding failed to do was give her flawed and unlucky in love protagonist any great passion any kind of interests or hobbies beyond drinking and whingeing so shine on marquee moon looked like what i was looking for back then and now for that matter i haven t found much of hornby s output after high fidelity particularly enjoyable i didn t hate the book it kept me reading and aside from pov issues the prose was readable but too many characters were one dimensional and neither the humour and suspense really paid off i d call it a somewhat fun but seriously flawed first try goodbye johnny thunders by tania kindersley edited a bit later so i m on the living room floor hanging out with katie cat in front of one of the bookcases hardcovers and trade paperbacks literary mainstream historical authors a l and i notice something i d forgotten the book goodbye johnny thunders by tania kindersley woman in london romance music hipster new york music reference there are definite connections to be made kindersley s book based on my dim memories of reading it twenty years ago was a bit more coherently written than howe s book if as should be obvious from its not being mentioned above not necessarily very memorable but at the very least the two books are linked by richard hell who spent time in a band with members of television and another with johnny thunders he s also written novels of his own go now for example come to think of it i think i ve read that too but i digress howe isn t the first to explore this kind of territory and i hope she won t be the last because the book i m waiting for hasn t really been written yet review the lovecraft squad all hallows horror by john llewellyn probert january 2 2017 posted by sjroby in book reviews lovecraft tags john llewellyn probert add a comment another netgalley free read in exchange for a review with opinions and spoilers lovecraft squad misleading advertising it seems to me this is supposed to be the first of a series of books inspired by the works of hp lovecraft you could probably delete no more than a hundred words and no one reading it then would make a connection to lovecraft after some strange experiences including experiencing visions of swarms of the undead and encountering magically powerful pages of a lost chaucer manuscript a group of people find themselves investigating an allegedly haunted church strange and evil things happen and before you know it three of the surviving characters find themselves undertaking a long and arduous journey through dante s inferno at the end of which lies the anarch a giant insectoid servant of hell there are a few passing references to lovecraftian story elements that don t really work here they feel more like they were grafted on at the last minute there s none of lovecraft s cosmic horror this is coming out of a much more generically judeo christian worldview than lovecraft ever had so looking at it as a horror novel rather than a lovecraftian one how does it work well there are spooky and suspenseful moments especially earlier on but once the long journey through hell begins it s just one thing after another with no real suspense enter an area of hell that s based on one of dante s nine circles of hell struggle to find the way through to the next circle repeat all that to find out what s actually going on a protagonist actually asks one of the antagonists isn t this an overly complicated way to get what you want well no one said this kind of thing was easy is the response there s an afterword that puts the book into a slightly different context it s sort of a prequel to some zombie apocalypse stories i ve never heard of still not terribly lovecraftian overall a bit of a slog with some good moments but not much actual plot at a time when so many writers are taking lovecraft seriously and doing interesting things with his life and work using his name for this series seems like marketing more than anything else more bowie books january 2 2017 posted by sjroby in book reviews music tags david bowie paolo hewitt woody woodmansey add a comment thanks to netgalley i read a couple of books about david bowie as free advance e reading copies in exchange for reviews i think both were reprints with a bit of new material added some comments spider from mars my life with bowie by woody woodmansey this one s due out right about now as the title suggests it s a memoir by one of the spiders from mars there have been many books written about david bowie and this is one of them it s an inside story of the band who played with bowie from the man who sold the world through aladdin sane woody woodmansey begins with his days as a youth discovering the joys of rock and roll playing in small local bands and gradually moving up playing with mick ronson and then being called to work with ronson and bowie it s a time of many changes in society and music and woodmansey presents it from the perspective of a northern small town lad who manages to stay away from most of the craziness either he kept an unmentioned diary or he has a phenomenal memory there are details about clothes and instruments and things that i d never remember but i never lived through that kind of experience so you get a lot of the day to day life of being a rising rock drummer playing in a popular band being dropped just as things get huge and keeping a life going as a professional musician with occasional encounters with interesting people along the way what you don t get is much insight into david bowie why did things change between bowie and the spiders must have been the drugs there s not much insight into anything really it s not a deep book or a gem of well crafted prose it s a conversation with a geezer telling you stories of what happened enjoyable enough but unless you re a bowie obsessive who reads every book about him not me i don t think i ve read more than seven or eight or someone really interested in the glam period of bowie s career you may not need this though i suppose it could serve as a counterpoint of sorts to the recent simon reynolds book on glam showing how all that looked to those who lived it and then there s bowie album by album by rock critic paolo hewitt out for a couple of months now also what it says on the tin this is an excellent choice for the casual fan who wants something that puts bowie s albums into context that has some good discography and chronology info and that has a lot of photos making it something you can browse or read through hewitt goes through bowie s life album by album providing some context on the making and reception of each one along with the occasional critique bowie fans who already have several books in their collections may not learn a lot that s new here but even so it s worth browsing for the photos not much to add really highly recommended for anyone who wants a solid introduction to david bowie s career from the early albums through blackstar search recent posts kranky multimedia foxx shetland university days well nights mainly space 1999 nerdity so many audios so what else is new bass cadet writers matter have to catch up one of these days categories audio reviews beer blake s 7 book reviews canadian content doctor who life in general lovecraft movies music space 1999 star trek stuff from old blogs tv uncategorized archive may 2023 january 2023 march 2022 october 2021 september 2021 april 2021 december 2020 november 2020 december 2019 february 2019 july 2017 june 2017 may 2017 february 2017 january 2017 october 2016 august 2016 july 2016 june 2016 may 2016 april 2016 march 2016 february 2016 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