Every 14 Days...(15)

Clockers (Richard Price)

‘Clockers’, the 1995 Spike Lee film, is one I have not seen for a while. The book of the same name pre-dating it by 3 years is written by Richard Price, a regular contributing writer on ‘The Wire’. Since I have a liking for both, I decided to take it for a spin, a rather long spin.

Split in two halves, alternate chapters focus on ageing homicide detective, Rocco Klein, and drug dealing lieutenant, Strike. After being given the duty himself, Strike discusses with his estranged brother that a local restaurant manager and low-level drug dealer has ‘got to be got.’ But before Strike can fully whimper out of his murderous responsibility, he is shocked to find that the deed has already been done and that his brother has turned himself in.

Put on the case, Rocco finds himself at odds to explain why a decent, hard-working man would hand himself in over the murder. Believing his brother Strike has to be involved somehow, Rocco presses hard to put the young clocker under pressure to take responsibility for the murder and clean his brother’s name.

The bold David Simon quote on the front cover reads ‘The Wire wouldn’t exist without Clockers’ and is one that can be taken as true. Written at a similar time to Simon’s books, it has a similar vein running throughout, focusing on individuals and building up their character and traits slowly. Many ideas, themes and characters from this book feature in ‘The Wire’, which Price would later write on.

It’s a long read and an intense one, focusing largely on the two main characters, but is well written, engrossing and asks some interesting questions about what would drive a man to kill.

Days to read: 26

Days per book: 14.5

The Box Lady and Other Pesticles (Richard Herring)

Following on from where ‘Bye Bye Balham’ left off, this is the second instalment of paper publishing of the second longest online blog in the world.

Looking back at himself a decade down the line, he sees himself starting to set-up his new life in Shepherd’s Bush following having said ‘bye bye’ top Balham. It’s more of the same, showing regret and shame at some of his previous actions as an older, wiser and now married man.

Being that this blog has now made its mark on Mr Herring’s ‘Warming Up’ blog, I can’t wait to see my name in print in 20 years or so time.

Days to read: 15

Days per book: 14.6

Mao: The Unknown Story (Jung Chang and Jon Halliday)

Back in August, 2008, I bought and started to read ‘Mao: The Unknown Story’. But by September, only just over one hundred pages in, I got bored and chose to start something else instead. Ever since, the seemingly never-ending book has remained on floor piles or shelves in the various accommodation I have since inhabited. But, seeing as everything else on my bookshelves had already been read, I thought it about time that I finally finished the bastard.

At some 765 pages, if you remove all the appendices and index, and small print, this is a long old book. Upon starting it, I whizzed through the first hundred pages again on train journeys, but beyond that, found the book to be slow and plodding. The book starts off at a pace you feel you can keep up with, but when getting to The Long March, you feel like you might have actually been part of it, as it seems to read in a ‘and then this happened’ manner. Motivation to keep going, therefore, soon started to decrease.

Reading ‘Mao: The Unknown Story’ is a bit of an ordeal, struggling through a long-winded book, feeling less motivated and as if you aren’t intelligent enough to care about some thing that happened loads of years ago.

The book, however, does not always sit amazingly well with me. While a history book – looking into ‘facts’ – it feels written in a story-like manner, as if first-hand experience. While all sources, etc. are cited at the back of the book, they are not always linked to the text, and the little inflictions and adding of ‘our italics’ seem more like the authors painting the picture they want you to believe, rather than leaving you to conclude your own opinions based on evidence.

Much of the book is undoubtedly true and it uncovers some previously unknown information, but with the style in which it is written and the negative attitude towards the subject from the outset, it feels less an academic text, and more a biased television documentary. This is a book that will divide opinion, but one thing that is for certain is that this is not the most comfortable read.

Days to read: 91

Days per book: 16

Every 14 Days...(8)

The If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One EP (Stewart Lee)

After his last book, ‘How I Escaped My Certain Fate’, in which he annotates transcriptions of his three stand-up DVDs to date, Stewart Lee follows up his ‘LP’ with an ‘EP’ of his most recent live DVD along similar lines.

It’s an interesting approach to the autobiography, adding stories behind the routines to document the real-life events that inspired the falsified anecdotes.

To read, it is horrible; constantly switching between footnotes and the main body, confusing as to which page you are actually meant to be on. But for the diehard comedy purist, it’s an insightful work to inspire another viewing of the DVD. However, what’s most interesting about this book is that it was first published in 2012, yet I bought it off the man himself in December 2011.

Days to read: 4

Days per book: 15.7

Bye Bye Balham (Richard Herring)

Essentially, this book is pointless.  The numerous unsold copies that haunt the writer’s basement –hindering both players’ shooting angles in his Me1 vs. Me2 snooker podcasts – are testament to this. Any pathetic human, such as me, can log-on to www.richardherring.co.uk and click on ‘Warming Up’ and read the blog that he has kept every day since 25^th November, 2002. Coincidentally, the same date that I started this little reading adventure (well, actually 26^th November).

‘Bye Bye Balham’ is the first six months of the blog in published book form, looking back at the words he wrote from 2008, adding information here and there. But, being that there is no porn on his website (sex porn, anyway), I have little to no interest in spending too long on his website (or any website for that matter) and so would much rather read the words on page than on screen.

Perhaps, though, the only reason he decided to publish this as a book in 2008 is that he knew that in January 2012, I would be spending a lot of time journeying up and down the Northern Line to and from Balham appreciating the irony each time.

Days to read: 16

Days per book: 15.7

TV Go Home: TV Listings the Way they should be (Charlie Brooker)

Completing the trilogy of comedians that wrote the pile of books I have to get through (can anyone guess what I got for Christmas?!), Charlie Brooker’s TV listings mockery was next on my chortle-sphere.

I’ve got more and more into Mr Konni Huq’s BBC Four shows over the last couple of years, and having enjoyed much of his screenplay writing, I thought it best I read some of his paper book writes as well. ‘TV Go Home’ is essentially the RadioTimes written by a man angry at how shit most television is, with falsely created TV shows to put an ironic spin on how most of television works, as well as hit-out at Shoreditch-based media types.

My balls did hurt in parts with laughing at some of the sheer outrageous and absurd ideas he concocts, though many programme premises are – this is a man who had the idea of the Prime Minister fucking a pig made into a commissioned programme. But as an overall read, it’s not one to sit down for long sessions with – having been based on a magazine – and thus, I hang my head in shame, Stewart Lee, it makes a great toilet book.

Days to read: 10

Days per book: 15.5

The Perfect Fool (Stewart Lee)

Wow! Those books I got for Christmas written by TV funny men (Richard Herring just wants to be on telly!) just keep coming!

A novel, I hear you cry. Indeed yes, a novel based on the Native American concept of the ‘perfect fool’: where a member of society plays the role of the fool in order to work as an example to others. Here numerous ‘fools’ each live out their equally ridiculous lives (in Balham and other such places) with seemingly no conclusion in sight, before they all meet in the deserts of Arizona.

This is stand-up Stewart Lee’s sole novel to date and starts as quite a struggle of a read. While outshining the works of say, Chris Moyles, the initial chapters feel rather conceited as Lee tries to use too grandiose a writing style to distinguish his work as literature among the throngs of pulp fiction. However, sticking with it, this soon becomes less of a problem as the story develops.

The various characters require some leaps of faith in the reader to make them believable and some of their actions towards the end seem a little out-of-place. But much like his comedy, this does raise some interesting points, whether you think it’s good or bad and raises Lee above some of the more foolish titles on the shelves…such as the works of Kipling. You are shit Rudyard!

Days to read: 9

Days per book: 15.3

Screen Burn (Charlie Brooker)

Part two of making my way through the books of Charlie Brooker is ‘Screen Burn’: a collection of works from his column of the same name the ‘The Guide’ in The Guardian. Now, the problem with reading this is that you have to cast your mind back to the years 2000-2004 and much of the television that was broadcast over this period. This is, however, the time when I was at University and staying in of a night to while away in front of the ol’ radiation king was not top of my list of priorities.

While much of the book is undeniably funny, with various social comments and guffaw-inducing remarks about popular culture, a lot of time is spent wracking the brain as to whether or not you can remember, or have even heard of, the various shows to which he is referring. Though, while some quick references may pass you by, the entertainment value is higher than most books as you read the pages of a man condemning the very thing he loves.

At 360 pages, this can become a little tired – with each article only around two pages long – and repetitive; never really able to get into the book in a long session, making it not really one for a long journey. But it was never intended to be anything more, as the writer himself describes ‘one easy-to-read-on-the-toilet package’. Are all his books toilet books?!

Days to read: 16

Days per book: 15.3