Books

Book Review: One Summer, America 1927 by Bill Bryson
PREMISE: Populist author takes readers on a journey across the American landscape at the peak of the Roaring Twenties. PROMISE: “There are two kinds of readers: those who love...
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May 13, 2014

Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion
PREMISE: An accounting of the monumental Memphis record label that exemplified soul music for black and white alike. PROMISE: “The Stax story has been told in bits and pieces in...
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March 20, 2014

Hull: City of (Literary) Culture
While staying in Yorkshire last November, I ventured into Hull one evening to attend a reading. It was being promoted by the same great people at Head In A Book...
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January 29, 2014

Louder Than Words: Telling Stories
Between November 15 and 17, I participated in the inaugural Louder Than Words festival in Manchester. An outgrowth of the popular website Louder Than War, the Festival billed itself as...
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December 4, 2013

Autobiography by Morrissey: A Full Review
Morrissey’s Autobiography largely lives up to the reputation of its author – sometimes for better, often for worse. “Naturally my birth almost kills my mother, for my head is too...
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October 16, 2013

Book Review: Run Wild by Boff Whalley
PREMISE: Chumbawamba guitarist hits 50, takes a year’s sabbatical in America to write a memoir about his love of “wild running” – and uses his observations of the 2010 New...
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October 11, 2013

Name your fave rock bio – and why: competition winners
So, to the winner of my competition, where I asked you to name your fave rock bio and state why, in less than 50 words, and win a signed copy...
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September 14, 2013

Now in paperback: A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of The Smiths
The UK paperback edition of A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of The Smiths is published today, September 5th, by Windmill Books/Random House, precisely twelve months after...
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September 5, 2013