May Books

[slemslempike]

May
Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler - Joe Queenan
Bullet at the Ballet - Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon
Painting Water - Teresa Waugh
Which Lie Did I Tell? - William Goldman
Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
On the Road - Frank Skinner
The Cock-House at Fellsgarth - Talbot Baines Reed

Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler was actually last month, but is here for reasons of completeness. I enjoyed it a lot, particularly the failed attempt to watch all the Merchant Ivory films, and reimbursing people's ticket prices when they'd seen a truly awful film. I saw Alien V Predator Requiem once.

I cannot remember where I read that Bullet at the Ballet was very funny (apologies if it was on your journal, and you stand by your remark), but it wasn't. Possibly if I liked ballet more? Though the breathless quotes on the cover claim otherwise. It was mostly quite dull.

Painting Water was rather like several of the less depressing Persephone books. Though it says something about the lack of cheer in many Persephone books that I can say this about a book where it is clear from the very start of the book that the main character is dying. It is the story of a woman's life, from her sort of twenties, meeting her husband, having children, with the rest of her family in various backgrounds as well. It is much less dull than I made it sounds. Her husband is obsessed with his garden, and she becomes obsessed with the deep freeze. Her eldest daughter marries a vicar, her youngest daughter takes up with a weird man and her son has his heart broken after painting houses in France. This is mostly what I remember.

I finished all my books just before going to Stratford, and terriem kindly lent me Which Lie Did I Tell?, which is his further adventures in the screenwriting trade. My favourite part was that at the end he includes a script he has written, and then gets various other writers to comment on what's wrong with it and what they would change instead. (Mostly they hate the names, and think that he's written the main female character absolutely horribly.)

Then I finished that, and nerdcakes lent me Bad Science, which I liked, though if you have read any of his columns, or indeed much of any science criticism at all, then it is mostly not very new. I was slightly annoyed by several points in the book. The first is that, when he's talking about beauty companies presenting science as a difficult, unknowable source, he says that attractive young women are "disappointingly underrepresented in science". And then later on, he says that if you have a microscope, you should look at your sperm. Not if you have sperm of your own, just something that very much came across as that I am not the audience he wants for the book. They are all the more irritating because they come in amongst his switching between male and female pronouns for doctors etc, and general goodness. But those stood out for me.

I'd read and fairly enjoyed Frank Skinner's autobiography a few years ago, and liked the first chapters of this enough when I was killing time in a bookshop to buy it when I was browsing the campus charity shop. It's about his return to actual stand-up instead of TV stuff, and full of his personal neuroses as well as more kind of technical stuff about writing his jokes, gauging audience reaction and structuring his set. He does also talk about porn and sex, but I found the parts about religion and art worth rolling my eyes through the other bits.

The Cock-house at Fellsgarth! Lovely. Classics v Moderns, Seniors v Juniors, Gentlemen v Charity case upstarts, an incompetent treasurer, false accusations, unexpected brickery, saving the day on the playing field and a brother who, when questioned about his minor, says "I don't really know him. They tell me at home that he's a nice boy". :)

This was a month unusually full of non-fiction for me. I am currently read the Mitford sisters' letters collection, so it looks like that might continue.

Comments

[netgirl-y2k.livejournal.com]

And then later on, he says that if you have a microscope, you should look at your sperm.

That bothered me too. Especially as up until that point he'd sold me on the idea that I should buy a cheap microscope and look at stuff. (stuff=technical term.)

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I had a microscope when I was little, and I really liked looking at bits of my body. If I'd had sperm I'd have definitely looked at it, but I don't.