2020 – The Year There Was Pretty Much Fuck All Else To Do But Watch Telly

I’ve seen the comedy show which this book was based on 1.4 times (long story – but the 0.4 was a manful effort at putting on a performance despite the best efforts of the performer’s gastrointestinal tract). Andrew O’Neill can be described as many things – but “passionate about heavy metal” is definitely foremost in the list. Here, he presents his story of the genesis of his favourite genre of music, its progenitors, their influences, and then how the various subgenres sprawled out over time – all in O’Neill’s signature style which highlight the fact that he speaks in footnotes IN REAL LIFE.

Just excellent – educational AND hilarious, and I’m gonna read it again at some point but this time with the playlist he’s built to accompany the book on his website.

SIT DOWN LARS!

Generously written biography of the singer from Kidderminster who caught the eye of Jimmy Page, who would go on to become a golden god of the rock firmament. There’s so much more to the Robert Plant story than just Led Zeppelin, and this book admirably captures that – whilst of course a big part of the story, for Plant it was always about the music, and his subsequent endeavours demonstrate that.

Also you learn that following the truncated 1977 Zeppelin tour, Robert played some dates with a bunch of local musicians, who called themselves “Melvin Giganticus and the Turd Burglars”.

A collection of autobiographical stories by the founder of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society which falls just short of being interesting – I’d sort of hoped for more depth on the founding of the society beyond the usual story about how “a few friends bought a cask, then decided to do it again”… and I suppose the first half of the book delivered that. The rest of the book was a bit of a ramble though.

Wonderfully written insight into the approaches & attitudes of James O’Brien in being a liberal talkback radio host, and the sorts of thoughts and beliefs he has as he encounters the sorts of callers he has on a daily basis. Ultimately I took his message as one of hope – hope that by asking people the right questions they might realise that they’re just parroting views that have been fed to them, and perhaps start to think a bit more critically about what they’re being told.

For the first time, comedy LEGEND Billy Connolly has put “pen to paper” to record some of his dizzying array of stories collected over the years and meted out to audiences in packed houses across the globe. You can’t begrudge the man for wanting to share. Trouble is, as a huge fan and someone who’s been lucky enough to see him live a few times since the mid-90s, I feel like I’ve heard them all. So, there’s a certain artistry in the way the story’s told – but it’s counterbalanced by the easy conversational tone on the page being so close to the content of the live show. One of those instances where it’s better not written down. Still, love the bloke to bits.

Randall from XKCD has collected a bunch of thought-scoping exercises here about how to solve fairly basic problems (such as how to dig a hole) and then extrapolated to some less-basic ones (such as building a lava moat around your house) in such a way that gets you considering the notion of problem-solving by indirect routes. The linear logic of it’s delightful, as if cheese would be a normal building material to use to make an above-ground pool from – it doesn’t matter that the idea’s ridiculous: the question is more one of “having worked out how to do it, where does that get us?”.

I found this really hard to put down. Instant classic.

The history of Soho’s Colony Room Club – a gathering place of Bohemians, artists, and free thinkers – established in 1948 by the redoubtable Muriel Belcher and closed in 2008. In that time it was home to a rollcall of Britain’s alternative art establishment, and as with many of London’s private clubs the source of many far-fetched tales. I’ve had a fascination with the place ever since hearing about it, despite the fact there’s no way in hell I’d have ever been a member (the main criteria for membership appears to have been that you weren’t boring).

Began as a fascinating exploration of the pulling of various strings to manipulate senses into contrarian experiences for people trying things, and somehow partway through turned into a love letter from the author to the Italian Futurists. Not helped by my continual confusing of Prof. Charles Spence with Prof. Richard Wiseman.

I’m vaguely disgusted that this is the first book I’ve finished since the end of May, but in my defence the writing was set *really* close together, and that doesn’t help.

One could be forgiven for feeling a little bleak about one’s adopted country on the face of reading this – if it weren’t abundantly clear that the author had started with THOUSANDS of similar incidents and narrowed it down to a more digestible 52. Coupled with the barrage of human dickishness I’ve been mainlining from The Dollop podcast, and the present-day delights of Brexit, Trump, etc. it all paints a fairly depressing portrait of what we’re capable of as a country and a species. Yay. Still, amusingly written in a kind of gallows way.

An autobiography posthumously discovered in an attic, of one of the British comedy scene’s most distinctive enigmas. Though he died incredibly early at 48 his life was packed with more living than most people – my head was spinning at having read of his adventures dossing in parks, touring the country performing, working in Paris, and then realising he wasn’t yet 18! Fascinating bloke.

I had no idea that he was a jazz musician – although the way he tells it, neither did he…

A companion to his excellent Whisky manual, but geared at The Sugar Spirit – Broom-san deploys his mixer-led grading system to inform notes on a load of different styles of rums, and paves the way to educate on different styles & processes for what turns out is a VASTLY complex territory for knowledge. And people claim that Whisky is “confusing”… It’s given me some great pointers for things to try, and things to avoid based on what I already know I don’t like. Although try as me might, I fear he’s never going to win me over to having coconut water in the fridge on-hand to make mixed drinks.

More a pamphlet than a book – I was intrigued into this by seeing it on a friend’s “recently read” feed. It’s a 60-ish page essay on the character of Alexander Boris DePfeffel Johnson, and given his temperament and past history of lying and criminal-adjacent activity & disrespect for the rule of law it simply beggars belief that he should be in any way fit for serving on a body concerned with making laws – least of all being the head of it. Published in 2016 prior to Johnson’s ascent to the top job, the author must have been sitting, gawping open-mouthed at 2019’s election result. Sadly there was nothing in here I wasn’t already aware of – it just saddens me that more people clearly don’t think this sort of thing is important.

I love seeing Gary Delaney at work – a slightly battered comedy ‘everyman’ with a hint of wrong’un, he fires out puns and stupid one-liners like a sort of giggling bullshit howitzer, and I can’t help but get caught up in the joy of it. This is his first book, and bar some slightly iffy editing which sees jokes repeated, it’s proper divorce-potential material, whereby one partner thinks it’s relentlessly funny and can’t help read out selected highlights, while the other rolls their eyes and wonders what the boundaries of manslaughter are.

A detailed yet slightly austere/opaque history of the whisky industry in Campbeltown from around 1769 through to the early 2000s, covering the burgeoning scene to its production peak with the 29 active distilleries in 1835 and the subsequent decline following industry rationalisation and war to its current population of 3. Well, 2 and a half, sort of. This book taught me that Victorian prose is akin to Shakespearean verse, in that unless it’s presented to me and brought to life by someone who can communicate the key themes outside of the words then I struggle to follow what’s going on. But a good factual reference should I need it.

As someone who’s not a software architect, I figured this book about what software architects need to know might open my eyes to the sorts of things I might need to know about if I were to ever want to pursue becoming a software architect. The catch is, it was published in 2009 – so any tech specifics would be guaranteed to be irrelevant, right?

Each page contained a short-ish thought from an experienced architect on some facet of the role – but often tended towards the philosophical: ways to think about the project, the team, the business/team relationship… And then there was things like “consider performance”, or “do maintenance & refactoring”. So, on the whole it kinda told me about a bunch of stuff I’m either already doing, or already know ought to be done.

The challenge with the “one story per page” format is that each author is starting from still to make their point; meaning it’s not possible to get into anything in any depth. Of the 97 pieces of advice, I think I’ve bookmarked about 7 or 8 – but would be surprised if I ever got around to going back and re-reading any of it.