Tag: music books

Book of the Week, non-fiction

Book of the Week: Reach for the Stars

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A non-fiction pick today, just to make a change…

I was very much buying pop music through a lot of this era, so it was fascinating to read the story behind the music, as told by (most of) the people who were there. The majority of this book takes the form of quotes from the people involved – with comments and context from the author inserted where necessary. Michael Cragg is a music writer, who works (or has worked) for a lot of major UK publications – so if he hasn’t interviewed the people specifically for this book, he has interviews that he’s done with them in the past that he can draw on. So you have four of the five Spice Girls (you can guess which one isn’t in this) and members from pretty much every band that is mentioned.

As someone who was a young person at the time that a lot of this was happening, I found it really interesting to read about what was going on behind the scenes and the press coverage and see how that affected my perception of the various bands and band members involved. And of course the other thing that’s really fascinating is how the spotlight of fame affected the people in the bands. Many of them were very young when they joined the bands – and you get to see an array of different ways that fame – or being in a band can mess your life up. But in the early stages of this period, a lot of it was going on behind closed doors – as the book hurtles towards the mid 00s, you see the arrival of TV talent shows and people learning how to be in a band whilst on camera and making their mistakes in public.

As you may remember – I went to an event for this book where Michael Cragg interviewed Nicola Roberts from Girls Aloud – and it was absolutely fascinating (and sort of horrifying) to hear her talking about her own experiences, now she has the benefit of distance (and I suspect some counselling/therapy) to analyse what was going on and how it affected her. She also talked about how the era of the adverts in the stage, open auditions and TV talent shows provided a gateway for people without connections in the industry to get their big breaks – even if they didn’t have the advice and support that they needed to navigate the world that they found themselves in – and that the pendulum has now swung the other way and that music is the poorer for it.

This is really good – but it’s a big old book – so it took me a while to read just because you can’t heft a 500 page hardback around with you. It is however broken up into nice chapters so you can pick it up and put it down as you need to. But if you have an e-reader, it might be worth considering buying it on that for ease of reading! It is available on Kindle and Kobo although the prices reflect the fact that it’s currently a hardback release – the paperback is due out in October, in time for Christmas.

Happy Reading!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: March 2021 Mini Reviews

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So we made it to the end of a year of the quarantimes. And despite the fact being back in March meant it felt like we’d never left March at all and the world had ground to a halt in 2020 and given us endless March, itwas actually quite a good month in my reading life. Here are a few books I enjoyed that I haven’t told you about yet.

Women vs Hollywood by Helen O’Hara

Hardback copy of Women vs Hollywood

Empire Magazine’s Helen O’Hara’s new book is an examination of pioneering women through Hollywood history and the ways in which they’ve been left out of the history of the silver screen. It also examines what could be done to help redress the balance and for films to tell some different stories from some different points of view. It’s impeccably researched and well argued and will left me wanting to go out and spend some money at the cinema on female-centric films. As the cinemas are still closed, I contented myself by watching Lady Bird and Emma. and a couple of Katherine Hepburn films.

The Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear

Cover of the Consequences of Fear

I’ve written about the Maisie Dobbs series here before. And this is another engrossing and twisty instalment in the series. With long running series it’s always a challenge writing a review that doesn’t give away too much of the plot – or spoil earlier books in the series. But what I can say is that now the books have reached World War Two, Jacqueline Winspear is consistently finding interesting aspects of the conflict to entangle Maisie in, and if a few liberties are taken with the timeline, they are minor and you forgive them because it’s so page-turning and engrossing. This also sees some really interesting developments in Maisie’s personal life too – so all around this is a really good read.

You’re History by Leslie Chow*

Cover of You're History

What’s not to love about a book with a cover as gorgeous as this and I did enjoy it, but that comes with a few caveats. I think I was missing some of the background on some of the songs to get the most out of it. Although the names listed in the blurb are all people you will have heard of – Kate Bush, Nikki Minaj,  Janet Jackson, Taylor Swift and TLC – in quite a lot of cases it’s actually taking quite a deep, in depth dive into their musical back catalogues. Really I think it needs to come with a playlist so you can listen to the songs that are being talked about as you read the book, because unless you’re really, really into music you may get lost here unless you’ve done some prep work. I used to work at radio stations as well as watching a fair few music documentaries both general and artist specific, so I consider myself fairly well across music, and I still had to do a fair bit of googling. I have a goal to try and read more books about music and musicians – because when I do I invariably enjoy that – and this fits in to that but it’s not my favourite of the genre.

Happy Singles Day by Ann Marie Walker

Cover of Happy Singles Day

This is a sweet, fluffy holiday (by which I mean vacation not Christmas!) romance set on an island off North Carolina, with a widowed hero with a B&B he can’t face running since the death of his wife and the professional organiser who visits for an out of season holiday. Lucas is focussed on raising his daughter and ignoring the bills that are coming due – so his sister relists the B7B without telling him – until Paige is booked and on the way. When Paige arrives, she finds that her accomodation doesn’t quite match the online brochure and decides to return home. But bad weather means the ferry isn’t running and she’s stuck on the island… Nothing revelatory or surprising, but a nice fun weekend read featuring a grumpy hero, a sunny heroine, a bit of forced proximity, a cute kid and some puppies.

Flake by Matthew Dooley

Hardback copy of Flake

So this is a really genuinely charming graphic novel about an ice cream seller and his van and the rivalries and challenges he faces. Low key but remarkably emotional. It had been sat on my shelf for a few months – my friendly local comic book shop had managed to get me a copy just before her last lockdown started again and I had been saving it for a treat. And I was right that it was a treat because it was really, really good.

In case you missed any of them, the Books of the Week posts in March were Wild Rain, Act Your Age, Eve Brown, Mrs Tim of the Regiment and Heroes are my Weakness. And here are the links to the mini reviews from January and February.

Happy Reading!