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Aug 2020
9:48pm, 22 Aug 2020
20,168 posts
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Columba
Still laughing over McG’s version of Danny Boy.
I can’t believe The Sea The Sea was written as late as 1978. I read a lot of Iris Murdoch when I was a student in the 60s, and I thought that was among them.
Finished God’s Secret Agents (and very good it was too, - but it’s history, not fiction). So I can start A Stitch In Time.
(A Single Thread).
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Aug 2020
11:20pm, 22 Aug 2020
12,693 posts
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Badger
I've read a few Peter James books. They aren't up to much. Doesn't help, for me, that the detective believes in mind-reading and gets help from psychics; if I want UF I'll buy UF.
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Aug 2020
11:31pm, 22 Aug 2020
34,378 posts
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Night-owl
I startedca Peter James book but never finished, didn't consciously give up on it, it just got abandoned
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Aug 2020
9:11am, 24 Aug 2020
52,379 posts
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Diogenes
So, we need Westmoors to choose the new choosinator, or is there only McG left in this round? I’m conchoosed.
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Aug 2020
9:35am, 24 Aug 2020
16,463 posts
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Chrisull
Finished Utopia Avenue - David Mitchell, which was fun but definitely have quite a lot of reservations about it.
First and foremost, as a music fan, it was always going to be an easy sell to me, but people who aren't interested in the a band making their way through late 60s Britain and its wiles and tropes, there won't be much else for them.
Second, it's a simulacrum of a music fan's fantasy, the band characters are all too nice and too gifted - there's no tensions between them, they don't live and breathe -and anyone who has played in a band will tell you, you can fall out with best mates within a session or two. I've felt since Cloud Atlas than Mitchell prefers ideas and modernism (literary tricksiness?) to character development. So there you had the book within a book within a book and it didn't really matter because you weren't hanging around in the universe with those characters long enough, but here it does. While they are individual and well drawn, they never quite rise above the level of stereotype. The bass player "East end" (yes I know Gravesend is out in Essex) boy made good, but still dogged by his old connections, the autistic guitar hero, the sensitive folk singer songer writer discovering her sexuality. Then the overriding concept, 3 songwriters and each book chapter a song (written by that person) on the band's lp. The book seems design to meet the latter rather than expand on the former.
Third - there is a pretty odd sci-fi digression in one of the character's story lines (no spoilers), whose resolution many will find unsatisfactory and also it references at least two other Mitchell books. We're not talk BS Johnson/Phillip K Dick here of a meta-reality, or even a detective series (a la Dublin Murders or Wallander), it feels un-necessarily self referential.
Fourth, thee is a lot of cameos from famous 60s music stars which I don't buy, they become almost like film nerds equivalents of spot the film reference. After a while you go, so Bowie, Hendrix, Joplin, Cohen, Crosby, Nash, Grateful Dead and Brian Jones were all fans? Yeah right. (also it's a very white rock music fantasy, Hendrix and the Supremes and Nina Simone are about the only 3 non white music refs/characters) And as for all the mutual inter band love - I mean has Mitchell experienced the "rats in a bag" jealousy that most music scenes have? Any respect/acclamation arrives long after the fact. Bands hate each other even when they like/respect the other's music and often use that to go one better themselves
Fifth, the acknowledgements mention "loads of missed deadlines" and it is notable, that the book ends almost without warning in the last 20 or so pages, which is kind of like he was having too much fun writing it and had to rein it in suddenly when the last deadline was blown. So yeah, apart from all of the above I liked it, and stayed the course of its 540 pages, and kind of miss it, but it's kind of my idea of a comfort/easy read,
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Aug 2020
9:49am, 24 Aug 2020
46,580 posts
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McGoohan
There's a similar (though more) critical review in this week's Private Eye. I find Mitchell to be quite a frustrating writer - big ideas and fun to read, but sometimes a bit lacking in one or more departments.
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Aug 2020
9:50am, 24 Aug 2020
46,581 posts
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McGoohan
I'll have a look at the remaining choosinators. There's more than just me, I'm fairly sure.
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Aug 2020
9:55am, 24 Aug 2020
46,582 posts
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McGoohan
Right, westmoors has not one, not two, not four but three, yes THREE possible choosinators for September:
Bazoaxe, McGoohan, Lorraine
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Aug 2020
10:58am, 24 Aug 2020
40,026 posts
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LindsD
Have you read Powder by Kevin Sampson, Chris? I read it in my 30s and loved the atmosphere of it, though some the writing is iffy (and the female characters). I was never in a band, so can't comment on the veracity, but the description of the recording of their single has stayed with me ever since.
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Aug 2020
11:03am, 24 Aug 2020
46,583 posts
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McGoohan
Sampson also wrote Extra Time about his football supporting experiences.
Here's Amazon's listing for that. See a small error?
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