Look, I know it’s been a while, and I’m sorry. I was super-ill, and then I was out in the countryside, and TBH I lost track of which blog I was supposed to be posting which Sunday. I’m back now, though. Naturally, I’m back on Valentine’s Day and also the much-awaited release of Kanye’s new album day (listening to it now innit). So if you’re reading this today I’m questioning your decisions on a number of levels. That said, thanks for your loyalty and that.
Song of the week* should be off The Life of Pablo really, but it’s exclusive on Tidal (fuming I actually subscribed [for a free trial]) and I haven’t quite absorbed it (good so far imo). So instead, blast from the (my) past. I don’t think Mando Diao ever really made it to the UK, but they were big for me around 17/18. This song has two separate chord changes that still get me and some absolutely nonsense lyrics.
Bonus! The only video on Youtube is from their super-weird MTV Unplugged DVD that I almost bought for a birthday gift until I realised that it was like £25 and no crush is worth that much. Good jackets though.
*I know I don’t normally do one with these posts, I’m not quite sure why I created that precedent
What a Carve Up! ~ Jonathan Coe
I wavered on this book for about a hundred words in the middle (mostly because I had just bought a war book in a Kindle sale and it was pressing on my mind – more to follow) and then was ultimately gripped through to the end.
An early 1990s satire of the UK’s elites, born into money and taking over the various fields they choose to go into, Coe’s Carve-Up is amusing enough, but I think it might have been a lot funnier when it was written. Reading it now, it feels like the jokes are stale and all of the new absurdities he’s highlighting are just reality as I know it, if not well out-dated. The book is set just before the outbreak of the First Gulf War, and much like in Iain Banks’ work, as a child of the Second Gulf War, I’m always slightly perplexed at the dramatics early 90s authors manage to cram into Desert Storm. Coe also takes aim at bankers (ooooh), the media (aaaaah) and …. art dealers and industrial farmers. The last two aside, it’s very much “any episode of Mock the Week you find on Dave”. The farming chapter is genuinely upsetting, though in the same way “living with vegetarians(vegans for a month)” was, so I was slightly impervious.
The actual plot centres on a slightly damaged author chap, and he’s charming enough, although it took me a fair while to care about him, and then he’s rudely Farewell to Arms-ed. Essentially, he’s hired to write the story of a nasty rich family, the afore-mentioned elites the book takes aim at, and the book jumps around chronologically through his life, their lives, and the lives of others their paths have crossed.
It’s alright if your Dad buys it in a charity shop and gives it to you to read on the train, I guess. That’s the score I’d give it.
Between the World and Me ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates
It’s very hard to write anything of interest about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World And Me. Partly because the dust has settled on the thinkpiece back-and-forth that met its release, so there’s not so much of a ready-made debate to plug into. Partly because I’m a white English bloke, so there are limits as to what I have to offer in the way of useful commentary.
It’s beautiful and powerful stuff. Much more lyrical than most of his work at The Atlantic, it occasionally seems to try and move you beyond what the simple evocation of horrible facts would do. This is likely down to the framing device – Coates writes the book as a letter to his son. As well as his searing critique of structural racism in the States, there is memoir, and meditations on fatherhood, and more poetry than usual.
While it’s not a long book, I think it’s one that could probably benefit from re-reading, as it’s dense and heavy going. I’ve linked to excerpts in the blog before, I can’t imagine you’ll dislike it if you’ve liked his previous work.
Why The Allies Won ~ Richard Overy
When will I learn that good books don’t have Niall Ferguson quotes on the cover?
Richard Overy’s Why The Allies Won isn’t bad, to be fair. Presented as a sort of myth-buster, taking an overall view of the Second World War to challenge conventional wisdom on the factors behind Allied victory. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to think it was inevitable, and I think one of the great successes of the book is essentially being a long “Actually…” but in a very valuable way. Popular mono-causal explanations for the outcome of WW2 are challenged with simple historical logic – if Hitler’s bad decisions were what lost the war, why did they bring victory for the first two years? If simple production capacity was what made victory inevitable, why wasn’t the Axis able to capitalise on the period where it had almost all of Europe’s production at its disposal? It occasionally strays into strawman territory, but the explanations he’s challenging are widespread enough that I don’t think he’s ever too unfair.
The main issue, I think, is a general repetitiveness. In part due to a tendency to over-summarise in a very “in the previous part we have seen x, we will now look at y.” kind of way, and in part just because everything he’s talking about is interconnected, there’s a slight tendency to cover similar ground several times in each part. Coupled with a fairly boring writing style, and it just became a bit of a drag.
Nevertheless, I’m quite glad I read it, I think, just because it soothes my general contrarian nature to be able to think “nah mate that’s a widespread misconception based on faulty reasoning” whenever I hear someone being wrong, and this fed that. It was just a bit boring.
And I know, I know, I can hear you, my girlfriend, my parents, and my librarian saying the same thing – “have you considered reading books that aren’t about WW2 you sound like you’re getting sick of them tbh mate”. First off, no. Second, tanks are good*. Third, I’m currently writing a standalone review post of a World War Two book series which was excellent, so there.
On the other hand, I’m now reading a book on the Eastern Front that is honestly sapping my will to live. Swings and roundabouts I guess.
*found out Airfix models of tanks are really cheap so that’s a dangerous discovery, especially as Amazon algorithms are now chasing me around the internet with £6 Sherman offers
Too Much Time 