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Phil James's Most Popular Reviews
Tom Sharpe wrote brilliant farces, David lodge writes campus novels, here frayn mixes them up and sets the result on a Greek Island. Very competent and readable , but light holiday matter.
I'm going to give up on this one. Life's too short to listen to all this foul-mouthed egotistical babble.
I get the point, the author inhabits the caricature of himself to play with your mind and undermine the foundations of “literature” and the publishing industry, but I just got bored.
If you read a quick synopsis of this, you might think it was a bit grim. Middle-age desperation and colon cancer among musical nostalgia.
But this isn't just a re-hash of the Commitments story, just aged, it's as if the characters have been living real lives all this time. So real I feel I knew them.
This book made me laugh and cry, and left me with a warm glow. I love it when I enjoy a book so much.
[ Lots of swearing, of course, it is Roddy Doyle]
Quote from TV comedy “Father Ted”
Father Dougal: I wouldn't know Ted, you big bollocks!
Father Ted: [astounded] I'm sorry!?
Father Dougal: I said I wouldn't know Ted, you big bollocks!
Father Ted: Have you been reading those Roddy Doyle books again, Dougal!?
Father Dougal: I have, yeah Ted, you big gobshite!
I was glad to win a copy of this book even though when I applied I didn't realise it was for kids or young adults.
Although I'm a long way from being a young adult the book immediately appealed to me. An overview of world history that avoids an overly Euro-centric view and yet doesn't become too PC. Illustrated with watercolour paintings that avoid most of the stereotypes too, I wondered whether it would attract the ipod generation. I needn't have worried. My 12 year old son and 16 year old daughter both asked to read it after I was finished.
Definitely good, ticks all the boxes, but it wasn't as good as I might have expected.
I really liked Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. They wrote together and continued in the Mythical-realist style but went in different directions.In this book he seems to take the whole, personification of mythical gods and forces, too seriously and it made me miss the humour of terry pratchett or even Christopher Moore.
For me there is one great mythical-realist book. Little Big by John Crowley. But, maybe coming to it from this book, one could find it long and winding and a little twee. Still, for me, it started the genre, and remains the best.