Books, Non-fiction

A quiet life

13 Nov 2008

It would seem that we’ve all become a little wary of silence. The sizeable majority of British society who own mobile phones may agree. Plug in, jump online, talk in libraries, and you’re doing OK. Withdraw however, and you have issues. Accomplished…

Noam Chomsky - The Essential Chomsky

13 Nov 2008

(Bodley Head) For over 40 years, ‘the world’s greatest public intellectual’ has been not so much a thorn in the side of the West’s establishment structures as a battering ram to everything held dear by liberals and conservatives alike. Now fast…

Also released - 5 Poetry Books

13 Nov 2008

● Vera Brittain Because You Died A collection of poems and prose from the author of Testament of Youth, all about the men she loved who perished in the First World War. Virago . ● Dennis O’Donnell Stepping Stones This one features interviews with…

Chris Addison - It Wasn’t Me

13 Nov 2008

One grotesquely amusing aspect of the current economic crisis has been the sight of our beloved PM desperately trying to hammer home the notion that the predicament should be blamed on ‘global’ factors and is absolutely nothing to do with him, mate. You…

Hitlist-Books

13 Nov 2008

● Alastair Campbell New Labour’s arch doctor of spin tackles matters concerning real health with his debut novel, All in the Mind, based on his own mental breakdown back in the 1980s. Waterstone’s, Glasgow, Wed 19 Nov. ● Alexei Sayle In the not too…

Jim Holt - Stop Me If You've Heard This

30 Oct 2008

If there is one art form often deemed to be beyond analysis, it's comedy. You hear, see or read something funny and then you laugh. End of. Right? Anyone who seeks to go beneath the skin of stand-up and explain the mechanics only succeeds in killing the…

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain

4 Sep 2008

Ziauddin Sardar - Balti Britain (Granta) Balti Britain is a comprehensive and startling exploration into how Britain and India have shaped each other's fates. Ziauddin Sardar, an academic and cultural commentator, admits to his own ignorance of…

Janice Galloway interview: full transcript

4 Sep 2008

Transcript of an interview that took place in the residence drawing room of the Scotsman Hotel in Edinburgh on Friday the 22nd of August. Janice Galloway is interviewed about the first volume of her memoirs, This Is Not About Me, which covers her life…

Sean Connery & Murray Grigor - Being a Scot

4 Sep 2008

Many Scots cynics, upon seeing the title of this new coffee table volume by our most famous actor, might be inspired to enquire just how much research on the subject can be done by an ex-pat who hasn't lived in the country for decades. It's an…

Barbara Ehrenreich - Going To Extremes: Notes From a Divided Nation

17 Jul 2008

POLITICAL NON-FICTION (Granta) Although any balanced reader might browse the political essays and features of left-wing American commentator Barbara Ehrenreich and get a vague sense of agitprop being deployed, perhaps that’s just the author’s bold…

Bob Levin - Most Outrageous

3 Jul 2008

NON-FICTION/BIOG (Fantagraphics) Looking for a suitable subject for the follow-up to his book The Pirates and the Mouse – a wickedly funny account of a gang of comic book creators who satirised themselves into court with the Disney Corporation, Bob…

Taylor Clark

28 Feb 2008

Full fat? Half fat? Skinny? A shot of eggnog syrup maybe? Since the coffee house revolution of the 1990s, your morning cup comes in an endless myriad of permutations. It wasn’t always like this of course, there was a time PS (Pre Starbucks) that coffee…

Mark Everett interview

Family plot

31 Jan 2008

When Mark Oliver Everett was nine years old and home alone, a plane crashed in his neighbourhood. Stumbling outside, he wandered through the carnage of burning wreckage and body parts before returning to his house. ‘Just another day in my weird life,…

Virgins

Anke Bernau

20 Sep 2007

In these enlightened days, discussions about virginity are spread freely across many areas of life from the school playgrounds of the world to the policy departments of the Republican Party. But it wasn’t always this way. In this lively book from Anke…

Neil Boorman

6 Sep 2007

LIFESTYLE TALE Your response to this book by London lifestyle journalist and publisher Neil Boorman is likely to correspond directly with your attachment to the very thing it challenges: brands, and the emotionally loaded consumerist machinery that…

Sid Waddell

6 Sep 2007

SPORTS MEMOIR Certainly among the most quixotic sports memoirs to have been published in recent times, this trip down memory lane from the iconic Geordie darts commentator Sid Waddell is a blessing for fans of the man and the sport (although it’s…

Andrew Marr

16 Aug 2007

Andrew Marr has always used his vast intellect with such wit and verve that he has always come across as a political pundit real people could enjoy. It’s hard to imagine David Frost interviewing Gordon Brown on a Sunday morning, as Marr did last month…

Germaine Greer

16 Aug 2007

Writer, academic, critic and commentator Germaine Greer has been a particularly bristly thorn in establishment sides for the best part of 40 years. A native of Melbourne, she sprang fully-formed onto the global literary stage with The Female Eunuch, her…

Julian Baggini

16 Aug 2007

Julian Baggini is certainly not afraid to engage with popular culture. He recently wrote this on BBC online: ‘Matt Groening is the true heir of Plato, Aristotle and Kant’. Although this article landed Baggini a mention in Private Eye, he talks of the…

Lavinia Greenlaw

16 Aug 2007

Lavinia Greenlaw’s latest book, The Importance of Music to Girls, is a memoir recalling her girlhood rendered through music. Beginning with her first musical memory of waltzing on her father’s feet, it meanders through the musicals and recorder practice…

Matthew Collin

16 Aug 2007

At the turn of the 21st century, uprisings against undemocratic governments in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine benefited from a prominent youth resistance, with groups using humour and satire to undermine the authorities. ‘After Otpor in Serbia, similar…

Richard Dawkins

16 Aug 2007

These are combative times to be a God-denier. It’s not only loopy Christians who are trying to make us believe the world was made in a week, now certain Muslims are jumping on the creationist bandwagon. Turkey’s Adnan Oktar, writing as Harun Yahya, has…

Anthony Holden

Old school poker shark

9 Aug 2007

As a biographer of the Royals, Shakespeare and Tchaikovsky, as well being the classical music critic of the Observer, Anthony Holden has always been a respected writer but it is the less respectable subject of poker that has given him his biggest sales.

Frank Muir

9 Aug 2007

If Festival visitors were asked where they expect Scottish crime novels to be set, a fair few would probably think of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh first, or Denise Mina’s Glasgow.

Get Smashed

(Hodder & Stoughton)

9 Aug 2007

MEDIA HISTORY This is the story of the 1960s advertising revolution that led to the shedding of jingles and rigid formulae in favour of a certain whimsy, spurred on by the visions of a handful of people who made a tidy fortune. Sam Delaney chronicles…