film Archives - The Quick and the Read

Book Review: ‘Shot with Crimson’ by Nicola Upson

This is a brilliant new instalment in Nicola Upson’s ‘Golden Age’ crime series featuring Josephine Tey as detective. It’s a genius idea to have an actual crime writer as a detective, something that Upson has sustained beautifully over 11 books – ‘Shot with Crimson’ being the latest.

I’ve followed this series from the start and was delighted to be granted a copy of ‘Shot with Crimson’ for review by NetGalley. As always, opinions are entirely my own.

Blog Tour: ’42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams’, edited by Kevin Jon Davies

Thanks to Random Things Tours for inviting me onto the blog tour for this book and for the beautiful copy for review. The book is out now and published by the fabulous people at Unbound.

As always, opinions are entirely my own.

From the Publisher:

-A full-colour compendium of hundreds of never-before-published artefacts from Adams’ archive, including diary entries, notes and musings, letters, photographs, scripts, poems and more.

– Authorised by the estate of Douglas Adams, it includes personal memorabilia from his family.

– Features a foreword from Stephen Fry and letters written after Adams’ death from friends and fans: Neil Gaiman, Margo Buchanan, Dirk Maggs, Robbie Stamp, Arvind David.

When Douglas Adams died in 2001, he left behind 60 boxes full of notebooks, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches and even poems. In 42, compiled by Douglas’s long-time collaborator Kevin Jon Davies, hundreds of these personal artefacts appear in print for the very first time.

Douglas was as much a thinker as he was a writer, and his artefacts reveal how his deep fascination with technology led to ideas which were far ahead of their time: a convention speech envisioning the modern smartphone, with all the information in the world living at our fingertips; sheets of notes predicting the advent of electronic books; journal entries from his forays into home computing – it is a matter of legend that Douglas bought the very first Mac in the UK; musings on how the internet would disrupt the CD-Rom industry, among others.

42 also features archival material charting Douglas’s school days through Cambridge, Footlights, collaborations with Graham Chapman, and early scribbles from the development of Doctor Who, Hitchhiker’s and Dirk Gently.

Alongside details of his most celebrated works are projects that never came to fruition, including the pilot for radio programme They’ll Never Play That on the Radio and a space-inspired theme park ride.

Douglas’s personal papers prove that the greatest ideas come from the fleeting thoughts that collide in our own imagination, and offer a captivating insight into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers and most enduring storytellers.

My Review:

Book Review: ‘The Hotel’ by Louise Mumford

I’ll admit I totally judged a book by its cover with this one – a spooky hotel with a maze in front of it? Yeah, I’m in! I hadn’t read any books by Louise Mumford before but I’d definitely read more.

Book Review: ‘Queer Heroes of Myth and Legend’ by Dan Jones

The tagline for this book totally won me over – who doesn’t want to read about ‘gay gods, Sapphic saints and queerness through the ages’? Add in a back-cover mention of Lestat and Louis from ‘Interview with a Vampire’, Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’ and (more classical and more what I expected from the book) Achilles and Patroclus from Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and I’m sold. Sign me up!

My Top 10 Non-Fiction Books of 2020

I read a lot of non-fiction books this year – regular visitors to the blog will know that I love history, popular culture, books about books, feminism and biography in particular.

So while I cannot possibly say I’ve read a huge variety of the fabulous non-fiction books published this year, I have found some real gems. In true ‘Top of the Pops’ style (yes, I am of that vintage!), here’s my countdown of the best in 2020’s non-fiction books from number 10 to 1…

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10 – ‘The Gran Tour: Travels with my Elders’ by Ben Aitken

If someone had told me that one of my favourite books of the year would be about a young man going on Shearings coach tours, I’m not sure I’d have believed you! Still, this is a witty, warm and wise story about Aitken’s travels with the older generation and is more focused on interesting people-watching than any real travel narrative. You can read my full review here.

I also read Aitken’s ‘A Chip Shop in Poznan’, an engaging tale of his year in Poland just as Brexit-fever took hold of Britain.

9 – ‘Practically Perfect: Life Lessons from Mary Poppins’ by Katy Brand

Having been raised on the glorious 1964 film of ‘Mary Poppins’, this book was a fabulously comfortable and engaging read. Brand is clearly a Poppins-obsessive and it is something I both recognise and respect! This book is packed with nostalgia, interesting facts and witty analysis. You can read my review here.

If this one floats your boat, Brand’s book about Dirty Dancing is also well worth a read (‘I Carried a Watermelon’).

8 – ‘Essex Girls: For Profane and Opinionated Women Everywhere’ by Sarah Perry

This is a brilliant re-evaluation of the stereotype of the Essex girl and a celebration of ‘profane and opinionated women’ through history. As a Southend-born and long-term Chelmsford resident, this one struck a chord with me. You can read my full review here.

7 – ‘This is Shakespeare’ by Emma Smith

I love a book about Shakespeare and I’ve read a lot! What I loved about this one was the fact that it contained so many new things that I hadn’t really thought about before, even for the plays that I consider that I know really well. You can read my review here.

If this is your thing, I can also recommend Kathryn Harkup’s ‘Death by Shakespeare’, a fascinating look at the deaths in Shakespeare from a scientific perspective. Dark but absolutely engrossing! (review here)

6 – ‘How Love Actually Ruined Christmas (or Colourful Narcotics)’ by Gary Raymond

A late entry into my favourites list but this one is hilarious! I am really not a fan of the film ‘Love Actually’ at all and I really enjoyed Raymond’s scene-by-scene evisceration of it. Thoughtfully-written and genuinely enlightening…and did I mention very, very funny?! You can read my full review here.

5 – ‘Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen’ by Greg Jenner

This is a thoroughly enjoyable jaunt through the culture of celebrity. Jenner, who was historian for the BBC’s excellent ‘Horrible Histories’ TV series, is an engaging guide and brings together stories that are funny, interesting and also occasionally tragic. You can read my review here.

If you like the look of this, I can also recommend Jenner’s first book, ‘A Million Years in A Day’, a book focusing on the history of the things we do every day.

4 – ‘Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights’ by Helen Lewis

This is a history of feminism, but with a difference – it focused on the lesser-known figures and events so that it really feels fresh and engaging. You can read my full review here.

3 – ‘A Curious History of Sex’ by Kate Lister

I supported this book on the crowd-funded publishing site, Unbound, after following Dr Kate Lister on Twitter for a while. Her take on social (sexual) history is funny, feminist and always interesting. The book itself is eye-opening and fascinating, plus Lister donated a proportion of her profits to a sex worker charity. You can read my full review here.

2 – ‘More Than A Woman’ by Caitlin Moran

Moran’s books are always worth a read, but this take on what it means to be a middle-aged woman is brilliant. She is funny and confessional, relatable and quick with her razor-sharp observations. My review can be read here.

Moran’s earlier book, ‘How to be a Woman’, about being a younger woman, is also eminently readable:

1 – ‘A Tomb With a View’ by Peter Ross

OK, so a book ostensibly about graveyards and death might be a bit of an odd choice for my non-fiction book of the year, but hear me out! This is the book that I have talked about to people more than any other this year and it is an absolute treasure.

More than anything, it celebrates life and the people associated with graveyards and burial grounds and ossuaries: the historians, the mourners and the grave-tenders and those who carry out burial rites, as well as the departed. It is strangely comforting and absolutely compelling. Although sometimes sad, it isn’t depressing at all.

This is a brilliant book and one I strongly recommend. You can read my full review here.

Header photo by Rahul Pandit from Burst.

Blog Tour: ‘How Love Actually Ruined Christmas (or Colourful Narcotics)’ by Gary Raymond

Welcome to my stop on the tour for Gary Raymond’s hilarious book, ‘How Love Actually Ruined Christmas (or Colourful Narcotics)’.

This is a blog tour organised by Emma at Damp Pebbles and I’m grateful to her, Gary Raymond and Parthian Books for the chance to be involved in the tour and for my free copy of the book for review.

From the Publisher:

RARELY HAS THE POWER OF CINEMA BEEN FELT BY SO MANY, IN SUCH OPPOSING WAYS…

“Love Actually dulls the critical senses, making those susceptible to its hallucinogenic powers think they’ve seen a funny, warm-hearted, romantic film about the many complex manifestations of love. Colourful Narcotics. A perfect description of a bafflingly popular film.”

By any reasonable measurement, Love Actually is a bad movie. There are plenty of bad movies out there, but what gets under Gary Raymond’s skin here is that it seems to have tricked so many people into thinking it’s a good movie. In this hilarious, scene-by-scene analysis of the Christmas monolith that is Love Actually, Gary Raymond takes us through a suffocating quagmire of badly drawn characters, nonsensical plotlines, and open bigotry, to a climax of ill-conceived schmaltz.

How Love Actually Ruined Christmas (or Colourful Narcotics) is the definitive case against a terrible movie. With a foreword by Lisa Smithstead.

My Review:

Surely everyone likes ‘Love Actually’, the 2003 Richard Curtis comedy?

Who could not enjoy the sight of Hugh Grant (as the Prime Minister) sashaying around Number 10 Downing Street to a Girls Aloud tune? Who doesn’t love a film packed with national treasures – Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Bill Nighy (to name just a few)? Who could fail to have their heart warmed by the various entwined stories of love in the build-up to a gloriously perfect Christmas?

Gary Raymond, it turns out. And me.

I’ve never really liked this film. While I really enjoyed ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ and ‘Notting Hill’, this one didn’t hit the spot for me. Given that I saw it on my honeymoon in a packed cinema in Florida – an idealised slice of Britishness being serves for an applauding American audience and a young honeymooning couple – that takes some saying. It should have been a winner. I never even knew clapping at a movie was a thing, but I’ve never felt further from applause.

While I was absolutely on board for Hugh Grant’s shimmying and I can’t wholly condemn anything either Colin Firth or Emma Thompson are in, I just couldn’t get my head round what I’d seen. It was altogether TOO MUCH – too many stories, too much sentimentalism (even for a Curtis film), too many awful characters, too much wasting of the impressive cast list, too much sadness in something marketed as jolly…I could go on forever.

This book brilliantly explores all the reasons I had for not loving the film and a whole lot I hadn’t even thought of (as I have deliberately avoided too much repeated exposure to this movie!) Gary Raymond has clearly spent a long time watching and thinking about this film and this book is the outcome – a gloriously funny and (I think) fantastically accurate diatribe.

The book takes us through the whole film, scene-by-scene. Here, laid bare, is the entire movie in all its horrific wonder. I’d actually forgotten some of the strands of the narrative which is absolutely understandable – as I’d thought, there are just too many and some are pretty pointless.

Raymond perfectly skewers each scene with wit and razor-sharp observation. Yes, Liam Neeson’s character seems like a wildly inappropriate parent figure. Yes, Emma Thompson proves to be the worst friend ever. Yes, Kris Marshall’s character is essentially a deluded sex pest. And yes – the romance strand with the 11 year-old child feels horribly inappropriate and weird. And what on earth is going on with the timeline?!

That’s not to say this book is all ‘bah, humbug’! In fact, it is the opposite. Raymond has no beef with Christmas or love or any of the people involved with the film, but merely points out that its messages are a bit off-beam. He is right – Christmas isn’t celebrated for being a festival of truth (‘What lovely novelty socks, Auntie Jean! How did you know what I wanted?’) and this film has some iffy ideas on class and gender too.

The strength of the book is the humour. There were many points where I laughed out loud, either at Raymond’s descriptions of the cast grappling with weird scenarios and terrible dialogue or the analysis of these. The description of Mia’s attempt at a seductive pose for Alan Rickman’s character (and his subsequent response) is worth the price of the book alone! The detail with which Raymond takes apart these scenes is to be commended – it is forensic and obsessive, but also hilarious.

I really cannot recommend this book highly enough – it is a light, humorous read that does have some serious messages in there under all the funny bits. As someone who feels very similar to Raymond about ‘Love Actually’, I was extremely receptive to his arguments. However, I think even lovers of the film (who perhaps know it better than me) would find something fun and interesting in this book – it is a well-argued and witty take that I think most people could appreciate.

As a postscript, I also love the fact that Raymond wanted to call the book ‘Colourful Narcotics’. It’s all explained within the pages, but I think it is absolutely spot-on as a description!

About the Author:

Gary Raymond is a novelist, critic, editor, and broadcaster. He is presenter of The Review Show for BBC Radio Wales and editor of Wales Arts Review. He is a regular writer on film, music, literature, and theatre, and can often be heard on BBC Radio 3 and 4 as an arts commentator and reviewer. His novels include For Those Who Come After (Parthian, 2015), The Golden Orphans (Parthian, 2018), and the upcoming Angels of Cairo (Parthian, 2021).

Social Media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GaryRaymond_

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/goldenorphans/

Purchase Links:

Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/35h5uPH

Amazon US: https://amzn.to/35i7hE4

Parthian Books: https://bit.ly/35sAs7z

WHSmith: https://bit.ly/2UcvsNZ

Publishing Information:

Published in paperback and digital format by Parthian Books on 2^nd November 2020

‘Practically Perfect: Life Lessons from Mary Poppins’ by Katy Brand

I’ve written before on the subject of my love of books about books. However, I also love books about films, and this one – by comedian Katy Brand – is brilliant and just what I needed to cheer me up as I enter a locked-down half term holiday.

This is one of the books that got me out of my reading slump – I read it in one sitting (which is miraculous in itself!)

Katy Brand takes – as her starting point – a life-long love of the film ‘Mary Poppins’. She presents this to the reader along with her thoughts on the characters, politics and messages of the film. For those sharing her love of ‘Mary Poppins’ (yup, me!), this is an absolute must-read.

It needs to be said up front that the majority of the book is about the 1964 film of ‘Mary Poppins’ with the marvellous Julie Andrews as the ‘practically perfect’ nanny and Dick Van Dyke as the chimney sweep (Bert) with the heart of gold and the accent of…something less than gold! Lovers of the books by P.L. Travers will not be quite so well served, although there is plenty on Travers’ relationship with the film and Walt Disney (who took 20 years to get her to sell the film rights). There isn’t much at all about the latest incarnation of Mary Poppins, the Emily Blunt film, but this wasn’t a problem for me – I was raised on the original film!

The book opens with Brand taking us through the film, reminding us of the plot, characters and some of the odder moments. All this is related through Brand’s comic lens, so it feels like watching the film with your funniest friend.

From here, Brand moves on to analyse some different aspects of the film in more detail. I was particularly impressed by the way in which the messages of the film were unpacked with loving care; ‘Sister Suffragette’ explores the feminist messages in the film (of which there are many) while the character of George Banks is analysed for Travers’/Disney’s attitudes to masculinity and commerce. In Brand’s view, the bird-feeding lady gives us a chance to explore what’s important in life, while Poppins herself gives us a template to live our lives by with her firm but fair approach to setting boundaries. Indeed, the whole film is given new relevance by the pandemic and the way our priorities have shifted during lockdown.

All this sounds a bit heavy, but it never feels so. Brand’s approach is light-touch and humorous, yet I still came away from the book with plenty of food for thought. The ‘serious’ bits are there, but surrounded by anecdotes about Brand’s own experiences and snippets of information about the film. I liked reading about the actors and filming as it really enhanced my understanding of what Disney achieved in making ‘Mary Poppins’ – the technical aspects seemed really quite advanced for their time (and so old-fashioned compared to now!)

The thing I love most about this book is the way that it is just so relatable. The lessons Brand takes from Mary Poppins, the issues she experiences with her own life (parenthood in particular), the feelings about the film…it’s all just so real. It honestly feels like a friend talking to you about her love of the film and it really helped that her thoughts chimed perfectly with mine. Love Mrs Banks even while seeing her flaws? Tick! Soft spot for Bert, despite the accent? Tick! Impressively encyclopaedic knowledge of lines and lyrics gained from repeated viewing? Tick! It’s all there and is both immensely comforting and gloriously readable.

I’d really recommend this to anyone who loves the 1964 film of ‘Mary Poppins’. If you were raised on this (as I was), it is a fascinating, nostalgic and strangely soothing read for troubled times.

If you’d like a copy of this absolute hug of a book, please use my affiliate link below – thank you for supporting my blog. This doesn’t cost you more but earns me a small commission.

If you’re still hungry for more books about films, I can absolutely recommend the following:

‘I Carried a Watermelon: Dirty Dancing and Me’ by Katy Brand – this is Brand’s first foray into writing about film and it is a lovely, nostalgic look at ‘Dirty Dancing’ and what it means to her.
‘Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons we Learned from Eighties Movies’ by Hadley Freeman – this is an absolutely brilliant look at life lessons from classic 1980s movies. If you loved such films as ‘Pretty in Pink’, ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘When Harry Met Sally’, this is for you. It’s interesting and insightful and – sorry to overuse this word – nostalgic; the films are written about with genuine affection by Freeman and it is a delight to read.
‘As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the making of The Princess Bride’ by Cary Elwes – at the risk of seeming obsessed with 1980s films, this is a great insight into the making of a classic by the leading man.

Affiliate links for these books are below: