Give a book: Christmas Gifts round-up – Part Two
That time of the year is creeping up on us once again! Bookhugger asked its publishers to suggest a few choice items for your consideration during this hectic period. Here are their second set of suggestions…
The Wire: Truth be Told, by David Simon
Over its five series The Wire has built up a detailed, rich and layered portrait of Baltimore: from its corner buys touting dope and its dock workers facing extinction, through the strained education system and tainted halls of power, to the crumbling media establishment. Rafael Alvarez – a reporter, essayist and staff writer for the show – brings the reader inside this world, detailing many of the real-life incidents and personalities that have inspired the show’s storylines and characters.
Packed with photographs and featuring an introduction by series creator and executive producer David Simon, as well as essays by acclaimed authors George Pelecanos, Ed Burns, Richard Price, Laura Lipmann, Denis Lehane, it covers all fives series in glorious detail. Read an interview with the author.
The Hacienda, by Peter Hook
Peter Hook, as co-founder of Joy Division and New Order, has been shaping the course of popular music for thirty years. He provided the propulsive bass guitar melodies of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ and the bestselling 12-inch single ever, ‘Blue Monday’ among many other songs. As co-owner of Manchester’s Hacienda club, Hook propelled the rise of acid house in the late 1980s, then suffered through its violent fall in the 1990s as gangs, drugs, greed and a hostile police force destroyed everything he and his friends had created. This is his memory of that era and ‘it’s far sadder, funnier, scarier and stranger’ than anyone has imagined.
As young and naive musicians, the members of New Order were thrilled when their record label Factory opened a club. Yet as their career escalated, they toured the world and had top ten hits, their royalties were being ploughed into the Hacienda and they were only being paid £20 per week. Peter Hook looked back at that exciting and hilarious time to write Hacienda. All the main characters appear – Tony Wilson, Barney, Shaun Ryder – and Hook tells it like it was – a rollercoaster of success, money, confusion and true faith.
A Matter of Life and Death by Ronni Ancona and Alistair McGowan
Ronni Ancona is fed up with football: the way it dominates TV, takes over men’s brains and scuppers any chance of romance. And so, for the sake of women everywhere, Ronni concocts an experiment to see if a man can be made to give up the very thing he claims he cannot live without.
But who would agree to be Ronni’s guinea-pig? Surely not her ex-boyfriend, Alistair McGowan, who has devoted much of his life to the game, from a childhood obsession with kicking a ball about to an adult addiction to Ceefax football pages and an unhealthy interest in attendances?
Over the course of a year, we follow TV’s best-known male/female double act in a hilarious battle of the sexes. Using replacement techniques – walks, culture and endless rounds of toast and Marmite – Ronni does all she can to distract her former boyfriend during these early months of withdrawal. But what happens when a man gives up the thing he loves most? And after being ‘clean’ for the whole summer, will the lure of a new season break his resolve?
Part-memoir of a football addict, part-comedy self-help manual, A Matter of Life and Death is a brilliant, banter-fuelled book about the differences between men and women.
The Pocket Book of Boosh, by Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt
‘Welcome to what will in no doubt be a groundbreaking work of collage / literature.’ Howard Moon ‘Hey Camden children, Vince here. Hope you dig the Boosh book and all the groovy photos Bollo took. Skip past Howard’s bits though. Well dry.’ Vince Noir
I can think of no higher praise for The Mighty Book of Boosh than to say it is almost as good as a mid-70s Goodies annual. It has lots of pictures, and is shiny. Guardian
Read Bookgeeks’ review.
Women, Work and Art of Savoir Faire, by Mireille Guiliano
This is a book about life, how to make the most of it, how to find your balance when you are working long days and trying to be happy and fulfilled. Mireille Guiliano has written the kind of book she wishes she had been given when starting out in the business world and had at hand along the way. She draws on her own experiences at the forefront of women in business to offer lessons, stories, helpful hints – and even recipes! – that can make the working world a happier and more satisfying part of a well-balanced life.
Mireille talks about style, communication skills, risk taking, leadership, etiquette, mentoring, personal relationships and much more, all from a perspective of three decades in business. This book is about helping women (and a few men, peut-etre) feel good about themselves, being challenged and engaged in our working lives, and always looking for pleasure in every single day.
Listen to an interview with the author.
QI: The Book of the Dead by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson
In The Book of the Dead you will meet hundreds of Dead People, some well-known, others completely obscure, organised into 42 short chapters that play merry hell with the usual classifications. So, instead of Royalty, Scientists and Sportsmen, you’ll find rather more diverting categories like People who died Penniless, The One-Legged, Only Children, People who failed at School, Those only Remembered by a Single Quotation and the Last People to Know Everything.
Why did a church composer invent the hand grenade? What was Leonardo’s proudest achievement? If The Book of the Dead doesn’t persuade you to immediately join the massed ranks of those looking at the radishes from below, it will certainly make the tricky business of Living a tad less grim and a lot more interesting.
The Complete Peanuts 1959-60, and 1961-62, by Charles M. Schulz
As Peanuts concludes its first decade, a new character makes her appearance: Charlie Brown’s little sister Sally. This volume covers her earliest days, from her proud brother’s announcement of her birth to her first words (and crush on Linus)! Also: the initial ‘Great Pumpkin’ sequence; Lucy’s first appearance as a nickel psychiatrist; Linus’s short-lived and one-sided romance with his beloved teacher Miss Othmar; and Snoopy’s battle with the doghouse-destroying freeway bypass. All this, plus two of the most famous Peanuts strips of all time: the ‘clouds’ Sunday that Schulz cites as his personal favourite and ‘Happiness is a warm puppy’.
‘I have naturally curly hair.’ With those fateful words, The Complete Peanuts introduces another main character to the gang, the vain Frieda (not to mention her cat Faron). Also in this volume, which collects two full years from the early 1960s – one of Schulz’s most fertile periods – Sally begins to grow up, Snoopy endures an avian family crisis, Linus develops a crush on Miss Othmar and loses his blanket again (when Lucy turns it into a kite and then lets it fly away), amd more baseball routs. Aaaugh!!
The QI Annual 2010 by QI
The third great QI Annual written, drawn, photographed and lavishly blu-tacked together by the many writers, performers and brains from the BBC1 TV series, including: Stephen Fry, Alan Davies, Rowan Atkinson, Jeremy Clarkson, Bill Bailey, Jo Brand, Phill Jupitus, Jimmy Carr and many more.
