Author:Nick Banks

Subtitled From Punk to Pulp, this is the autobiography, written during Lockdown, of the band’s drummer going all the way from his early family life in Rotherham through to hitting the big time (after a very long wait) with Pulp. It’s always enjoyable to read something about the area you grew up in. as there are so many familiar places name checked, be they schools, pubs, clubs or even local record shops. Indeed, the whole feel of the early parts of this book evokes so many great memories of times and people and places, so many of them now long gone. I found the first half of the book the most interesting, growing up in South Yorkshire, playing in a few local bands before eventually joining Pulp – tales of their early struggles and a long, long period in the wilderness make particularly good reading, and are by far the best part of the book. I was less enamoured of the latter sections where, once the band finally broke through in a big way, it’s a treadmill of record an album, tour, record another album, tour, split up, reform etc, you get the picture. There are though some » Continue Reading.

Author:Kevin Jon Davies

It’s been over twenty years now since Douglas Adams passed. As Stephen Fry points out in his introduction, it’s odd to think someone so invested in the technology of the future never saw a smartphone or a tablet, never used Facebook or Twitter and never even got to say Hi to Alexa. When I think of him, I think of the Hitchhiker books (oddly I never got into the TV and radio adaptations), the Dirk Gently novels, the book he did with naturalist Mark Carwardine and the Starship Titanic computer game that I played to death at the time. Happily all these aspects and more are covered in what is effectively a scrapbook complied from the treasure trove of notes, drafts, letters and memorabilia that was left behind after his untimely premature passing in 2001. These range from his earliest attempts at comedy sketches, his work on Dr Who, early drafts of Hitchhiker material and on to his later work on new technologies and The Digital Village. There’s a frustratingly brief section on Pink Floyd’s Division Bell album, comprising a letter to David Gilmour giving his reactions and suggestions after hearing an advance tape of the record » Continue Reading.

Author:Kevin Mulryne

Sporting an introduction by Oliver Wakeman, this excellent book, written by the producer of the Yes Music podcast, takes an in depth look at the 1978 Yes album, Tormato, their final studio effort of the seventies. This may not seem an obvious choice to examine in such a detailed fashion – it certainly doesn’t rank that highly among my favourite albums by the band, not helped by the poor sound, and consequently it’s not one that gets much listening time. If I had to choose the stand out tracks I suppose I would go for Don’t Kill The Whale and On The Silent Wings of Freedom, but that’s by the by really. I have to say though that this is one of the most comprehensive, detailed and meticulously researched books I’ve ever read on a particular album. You want to know about the construction of the songs themselves, the individual instruments and set ups used, the recording studios, the artwork, the press reviews, the subsequent tours – well, it’s all here for your delectation, running to almost three hundred pages in fact. There’s even a separate colour supplement containing some great rare photos from that period. This whole » Continue Reading.

Author:Richard Osman

The elderly amateur sleuths that comprise the Thursday Murder Club return for a fourth outing in this thoroughly entertaining murder mystery. There’s something quietly reassuring about these novels, the plotting of which has got tighter and tighter as the series has progressed. Here, an old friend is murdered and a package that was in his possession has gone missing. As the team investigate, they encounter art forgers, drug dealers and online fraudsters, and all the while the body count rises in this utterly engaging and engrossing read. The short snappy chapters keep the (fairly outlandish) plot rolling along at a swift pace, and you just have to suspend disbelief for a while and go along for the ride. The book is in turn thrilling, funny and poignant, and reading it is as comforting as a cosy cup of tea by the fire on a cold winter’s day – and by the way, it will undoubtedly be one of the year’s biggest sellers.

Length of Read:Long

Might appeal to people who enjoyed…

The previous books in he series, gentle unthreatening thrillers.

One thing you’ve learned

This is the last we’ll read of the Thursday Murder Club for a while » Continue Reading.

Author:Mick Herron

Although this isn’t a Slough House novel as such, it does have many links to that superb series. The Monochrome enquiry, set up by an unsympathetic government to look into possible Secret Service overreach and misconduct, is busy going nowhere, spinning its wheels due to lack of cooperation, its progress blocked at every turn, when suddenly it anonymously receives a vital file that threatens to blow apart a whole can of worms. Meanwhile, a long retired agent living in obscurity is subject to an abduction attempt in the leafy lanes of Devon. Are the two events connected? I don’t want to give away too much of the plot here, but suffice to say that although this is a stand alone novel, it also acts as a secret history of one of the main Slough House characters and explains their relationship with another character – the names differ but it quickly becomes apparent who they are in this tale told partly in the present day and partly in flashback to the Berlin of the mid nineties. This is a superb book, one where I absolutely relished every single page – laced with the author’s trademark mix of tension, intrigue, » Continue Reading.

Author:Ethan Roy, Barry Wood, Andy McArthur, Stephen Lambe

I think everyone would agree that 1972 – 86 captures Lou Reed’s best work. I remember buying the Transformer album, mainly due to Walk on the Wild Side and the Bowie connection. I still dig out the Berlin album too, even though it’s not an easy listen, and the Rock n Roll Animal live set has my favourite version of Sweet Jane. His masterwork for me though is the epic title track to the Street Hassle album – just stunning. Of course, there were also quite a few duds during the period, so for me it’s very much a case of cherry picking with his back catalogue, and listening to the wheat rather than the chaff. This is an interesting read though, ideal for the newcomer to Reed’s music, and it got me digging into albums I’d not heard in a long time.

I am partial to Metallica so it was a real pleasure to read this book while rejoicing in the likes of Master of Puppets and For Whom The Bell Tolls. The run of albums up to the Black Album is still essential listening, although over the years their sound » Continue Reading.

Author:John Connolly

Once upon a time John Connolly wrote a novel titled The Book of Lost Things. While this isn’t a sequel as such, this standalone work does use the same overall conceit, a story of good versus evil set in a fairy tale world that may or may not be real. A woman finds herself drawn into this mysterious place where she hopes to find a cure to return her comatose daughter back to consciousness. She is aided on her quest by The Woodcutter, a figure who reminded me a little of The Gunslinger from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and is pursued by a Gollum like creature, while the sinister Crooked Man looms large over this world, seeking with his new found allies to thwart her mission at every turn and become ruler of the land. In more general terms, this is a book about hopes and dreams, about yearning and loss, and about the power of love and the place books and folklore tales still have in our lives. This is a dark but beautifully crafted fable that explores loyalty and the sacrifices a parent is prepared to make for their child, and even though it’s rather » Continue Reading.

Author:Stephen King

Private eye Holly Gibney seems to have developed a life of her own. Originally just a walk on character in the Mr Mercedes trilogy, she also appeared in The Outsider, then once more in the novella If It Bleeds, and now here she is again as the lead character in this new crime thriller set in the Mid West during the Covid years. It’s a novel that finds King at his gruesome best, in a tale of horrific events happening in a most unlikely and mundane domestic setting in the affluent suburbs of a small university town. The disappearance of a young woman is the thread that soon unravels a number of other suspicious incidents that occurred in the same area, hinting that perhaps a serial killer may be at large. Surely the pair of retired academics, both octogenarians, are beyond suspicion, or is their veneer of devotion and respectability hiding a terrible secret that lurks just beneath the surface of their seemingly ordinary life? This rather grisly novel marks a sea change from last year’s fantasy based Fairy Tale, but illustrates what a master technician King is, as he seamlessly slips back into a different and perhaps » Continue Reading.

Author:Opher Goodwin, Richard James , Lisa Torem

The sixties isn’t my favourite run of Dylan albums – I’m more of a seventies sort of guy – but it does contain some of my favourite Dylan songs – Visions of Johanna, Chimes of Freedom, It’s Alright Ma, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue to pluck out a few – in fact I’d forgotten just how many there are, and a good best of compilation or Spotify playlist covering these years is essential listening while reading this book.. Of course, there have been plenty of books analysing every word of Dylan’s lyrics, but this does a fine job of providing a potted history of the songs written in that period without getting bogged down in too much detail and interpretation. One thing the book has done is made me relisten to those albums again. I really enjoyed this one, well written and put together and ideal for the more casual fan of Dylan.

Horslips are one of those bands where I heard parts of their first few albums but never fully got into or investigated in any great depth – indeed there are people on here who know far far more on » Continue Reading.

Author:Robert Day-Webb, Brian J Robb, Nic Ransome, Steve Parry

I mainly know Humble Pie from the Eat It and Smokin’ albums, but for me their 1971 Rockin’ The Fillmore set captures the classic Marriott Frampton line up at their best – one of those bands where the live shows surpassed the studio albums. Steve Marriott had a great voice and they achieved some decent success in the early years of the seventies, before eventually disbanding in 1975. Inevitably this was followed by a number of reformations, with ever diminishing returns, in subsequent years, but the original magic had long since departed by then, not helped by Marriott’s well-documented personal problems, and the band was a shadow of its former self. This book takes a long lingering look at the early glory days when they seemed to have the world at their feet, the break ups and make-ups over the years, and most importantly examines the albums, essential and otherwise, on a track by track basis. Although the band was too often overshadowed by their more successful contemporaries and frequently seemed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, they certainly produced some memorable music on their day, and fans will » Continue Reading.