Got in plenty of reading on holiday this last week, though several books were lugged back again untouched.
Stephen King - 11/22/63
I'm not sure what happened on the eleventh of Februfebruary 1963, but there's a man who seems determined to stop it. An easy, barrelling read as you'd expect from King - suspend your sci-fi "but but but..." kneejerk reaction to all the time travel stuff and there's an effective and affecting story underneath. A bit uneven - is it a time-travel romp? a "what if?" alternative history? a nostalgic romance? it can't seem to decide - but just right as a poolside page-turner.
Douglas Coupland - Player One
I'm not sure what happened on the ninth of November 2001, but Coupland seems to think it's the only thing of importance in the last decade and a bit. The book? It's Coupland, innit, same as ever, you either like/get/tolerate it or you don't. I appreciate it insofar as I bounced off it at an admiring angle without really engaging with it. Some cute insights, often way too cute for its own good, but ultimately the fact that the word count is (by definition) limited helps it come across more sharply than most of his recent output. A reasonable diversion.
Jonathan Wilson - Inverting The Pyramid
Eduardo Galeano - Football In Sun And Shadow
Two of the four football books that Lewisham Library furnished me with for the trip (the Glanville World Cup history and I Am The Secret Footballer will have to wait), and both well worth the effort. I've been meaning to get round to the Wilson for ages, and for all I like his football writing generally, for some reason I was worried it would become too technical and stat-/theory-heavy when paired with the topic of pure tactics. Nonsense, of course - Pyramid could scarcely be more readable and deserves the plaudits it's received over the last few years. Galeano is a Uruguayan football purist with a very clear sense of what he likes and doesn't like, and Sun and Shadow is basically a collection of short essays on the theory, history, practice and standout figures from a century of the game. When the prose flows, it really flows - but there are a few horrible translation bloopers that I struggled to get past. Hire a proofreader who knos a thing or two about football, for heaven's sake! (I'm not saying it has to be me.)
Robert Wringham - You Are Nothing
Intriguing little book detailing the near-misses of the near-epic comedy troupe Cluub Zarathustra. Rather like that book on Chris Morris from a few years back, it suffers from a certain distance from its subject and is probably closer to an extended university dissertation than a Serious Intellectual Tome, but it'll be of interest to fans of 90s post-alternative comedy and its various strands and offshoots.
