31 Songs - Nick Hornby

This is a really smug and self-indulgent little book. I've enjoyed Nick Hornby a lot in the past but this is unfocussed and trite. It doesn't help that most of his musical taste is pretty dubious too. I'm with him on Teenage Fanclub and Springsteen (though he misstates the appeal of both) but Nelly Furtado? Santana? Aimee Mann? Pfffhhh...

The Last Party - Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock by John Harris

I was hoping that this would be a good study of the Britpop/New Labour nexus but what we really get is a history of Britpop with a smattering of politics to further its appeal. The focus stays tightly on Suede, Blur, Elastica, Pulp and Oasis which was slightly frustrating too - I'm a big fan of Primal Scream, The Boo Radleys, My Bloody Valentine etc. For a wider overview I suggest My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize - The Creation Records Story by David Cavanagh.

John Harris knows his stuff, though, and he's an engaging writer as I remember from the period he's talking about. The most revelatory new material here is the influence of heroin on the decline of Britpop. You'd think pop stars would have learned by now, wouldn't you?

The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde

“I’ve got most of the office reading “Jane Eyre” at the moment in case something unusual happens. Nothing so far."

There’s a very high quirk factor in The Eyre Affair, and a few too many ideas too, but I was won over thanks to the fact that most of the gags are rotten puns and/or literary allusions that flatter the reader into laughing at their own cleverness. The world is a whimsical alternative reality, strikingly similar to that in Aberystwyth Mon Amour, involving slippage between literature and reality, a never-ending Crimean War and the Socialist Republic of Wales.

I like the central gag: that in this reality, proper literature has the status of celebrity or sport. Hence gangs of Marlovians riot against Baconites in the streets and teenagers swap Fielding stickers in the stairwells of council flats. If only…

Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I like Dostoyevsky a lot, but this one didn't quite have the same impact for me as The Brothers Karamazov or the amazingly amazing Crime and Punishment. Maybe it was a length issue - it felt too short - or perhaps it's my growing suspicion that guy couldn't do women.

There's still some great stuff here, and the opening is superb:

I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine,anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though.

London Orbital – Iain Sinclair

I grew up right on the M25 (London’s ring road) and I’ve been a fan of Sinclair’s for years, so I was really looking forward to this record of a circular walk around the motorway. Thankfully, it lived up to my expectations. Sinclair is a shameless self-mythologiser, depicting his travel as an act of “psychogeography”, a kind of occult-historical-literary quest, clashing creatively with the ephemera of the modern world. He is constantly allusive, and many of his cultural touchstones are ones that I share – William Blake, Werner Herzog, Bill Drummond.

The other thing that needs mentioning is that the book is a very funny one. The chapter in which Bluewater shopping centre gets a well-deserved kicking is a particular pleasure.