Monday 6 September 2010

The book diet - a bit of a relapse

A few things turned up today in the post. Oh dear.

Rose Dougall's Without Why, which I think will be a fine album. She was in The Pipettes, you know.
Dr Johnson's Dictionary of Modern Life - a DAMN'd superior Stocking Filler based on his very fine Twitter polemics.
Decline and Fall, the second volume of Chris Mullin's political diaries. Like all the best diarists, he's intelligent, disgruntled and didn't quite make it to the top.
Terry Pratchett's new one, I Shall Wear Midnight. I don't care what you think, he's Britain's finest lefty pro-feminist comic novelist and if a generation of children and geeks vote Labour or further left in a few years' time, he'll be responsible. All other books will be ignored until I've read this one (once I've finished Stephenson's philosophy'n'quantumphysics monster Anathem - only 450 pages to go)
Rob Young's Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music, a history of folk and the weird turns it took. Zoot Horn says it's very good. It should, however, be Unearthing England's…, as the other nations don't get much of a look-in.
Finally, a new (old) copy of Ralph Miliband's Parliamentary Socialism. The Labour Party is hardly of the left now - RM always knew it was a shaky vehicle for true socialism.

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