Category: Review (Page 91 of 133)

Rebellious Spirits: Audacious Tales of Drinking on the Wrong Side of the Law by Ruth Ball
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

The British have for thousands of years have been inventing various ways of getting drunk. We have had fruit wines, Even the Romans had vineyards. We have made apples and pears into ciders and perry’s made all types of grains into beers. For a lot of people, alcohol was the only safe way to get fluids as often the water wasn’t safe to drink. To really get a kick from the drink though it needs to be stronger, much much stronger.

There are various claims as to who invented distilling, some say the Egyptians, others the Greeks, but it was brought to the UK by French monks. The products of those first stills were supposed to be used for medicinal purposes, however, it didn’t take long for the locals to realise there were much better uses than trying to make yourselves better. It was always a low key thing though until in 1643 the Long Parliament decided to introduce excise duty on a selection of things including spirits. This tax was universally hated and rather than become legal, lots of stills went underground and it was the beginning of a long battle against the government and the beginning of the whisky industry in Scotland and Ireland.

That most English of drinks, the G&T, is actually Dutch. Bought over when William of Orange invaded and became our monarch, we adopted it and made it our own, so much so that around one in five houses sold drams in one part of London. The political elite was watching the population slowly become drunk all the time and rather than seeing it as the symptom of poverty they saw it as the cause. So they tried to ban it. As you can imagine, it didn’t quite go to plan, so they passed the Gin Act and that didn’t help either…

The Irish had been distilling for a while now, but when the taxman decided that they wanted the revenue from this, then they fought back. They realised that it was easier to move poitin rather than grain around the country, devised methods to hide their little pot stills and generally didn’t really want to assist the authorities in any way at all. They had ingenious ways of hiding the small stills, sometimes the easiest way was in plain sight! On top of all that, they had to try and stop the smuggling; whole coastal communities including the clergy would ensure that goods were snuck in under the noses of the excise men. With the advent of the Second World War, the government clamped down on the production of spirits diverting grain to the food needs of the country. But if you wanted a drink and happened to know the right people, you could still get your hands on a bottle. Not legally of course and the substances that were added were included with the spirits that really shouldn’t have been in some cases.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes – Oscar Wilde

Ruth Ball has managed to take a wide-ranging variety of stories of alcohol and distil them into this delightful little book. I found these tales are entertaining and written with a wry sense of humour. On top of this entertaining read, she has made a collection of recipes based on the originals that were almost certainly more fun trying than making and must have been the source of a few hangovers too. If you like sitting down every now and again with a glass of something to hand, then this is a perfect accompaniment to it.

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Puzzle Ninja: Pit Your Wits Against The Japanese Puzzle Masters by Alex Bellos
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Sitting down to do the crossword or Sudoku in a paper gives most people a lot of pleasure, it stretches your brain and enables you to while away a few moments away from a screen of some sort. For those that want to stretch themselves some more, then Alex Bellos has been over to Japan and has come home bearing puzzle shaped gifts.

These have been sought from the enigmatologists of Japan and are very different to the puzzles that you may have come across so far. There are graphical ones, ones that create mazes, a puzzle where you need to separate the wolves from the sheep and even a golf one. For most of them, there are two or three simple rules, however, from simplicity comes complexity and these may start easy, but he collected puzzles that he describes as excruciatingly difficult.

Dare to ask questions and seek answers to the puzzles of life. ― Lailah Gifty Akita

So if you fancy having your brain fried in new and fiendishly complicated ways, this could be the books for you. There are twenty of these new puzzles and over 200 examples in total collected from the wonderfully named Puzzle Poet and The Super Sensi to name but two. Was pleased to see one of my favourites in here, O’Elaki too. If you love puzzles then this is one for your bookshelf; though I cannot be held responsible for any stress caused…

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Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of the ultimate things that surfers seek is to ride inside the tube, this tunnel of water is a transitory and for surfers an almost religious experience that only lasts a few seconds in most cases. It is a place that some surfers feel most alive in, but it can be lethal too. Helen Dunmore looks at this transient line between life and death with her poems in this, her tenth and sadly final, poetry book.

In this moving collection that has themes on water, the voyage of mortality and elements of the ancient Greek classics. There are some poems that I really liked, the Lamplighter, Bluebell Hollows and Festival of Stone in particular. Hold out your arms is a poem that has been added to this collection and was written just before she passed away. As with all poetry collections, there are some in here that did nothing for me. That is the nature of poetry, each reader gets something different from the verse. Will definitely give some of her other collections a read though.

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The Cryptic Pub Quiz by Frank Paul
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

I do love a good quiz. One that has a balance of straightforward questions and some that you are sure that you know, but aren’t sure until you hear the answer. Sitting down to one of those where you struggle to comprehend what the question actually is, let alone what it is asking might be too much, but that is what the artist Frank Paul does on a regular basis at the Mill in Cambridge.

Since 2015, his cryptic quizzes have become legendary, full of anagrams, cryptic links, word searches and his amazing artistic creations. This book has collected some of his finest examples, including a Murder Mystery Advent Calendar of Doom, Eight Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Premature Obituaries, lots of palindromes and a Quizmas Carol.

Fiendish is an understatement.

I think his brain works in a totally different way to everyone else’s, but if you love quizzes and verbal puzzles then this should be an essential book for your collection. His unique combinations of quizzes and games along with his wonderful art and very original games will have you exasperated and stumped in roughly equal measures; what is satisfying when you know or have worked out the answer. If you’re still totally baffled, and I will admit I was on some of these.

Thankfully there are the answers in the back…

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Walk Through History: Discover Victorian London by Christopher Winn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

London is an intense city. It feels vast and packed with people, the modern architecture punches the skyline with the grey steels and glass structures. The shops are full of glitz and glamour. Some locations ooze money, others areas seem run-down, but every part of this great city is layered with history. In this charming little book, Christopher Winn wants to take you on seven walks around parts of the city to reveal the huge influence that the Victorian age had on the city and to show you the vast amount of it still left.

Each of the seven walks has a map and clear directions with around 20 or so notable examples of Victorian architecture. The places to find on the walks vary from marble urinals, palaces, terraced houses, pump stations, stations and churches. There are loads of details in here to add extra to the buildings that you are being taken around, including who built them, when they were built, historical details and snippets.

All the way through the book, accompanying the text, are the delightful drawings by Mai Osawa. These drawings are of the buildings and details from them, like gargoyles and occasionally some of the interiors. The prose is straightforward and pragmatic, the main intention of the book is to inform you of buildings that you will see on your walk and fill in the gaps in the history of the areas. More importantly, there is a helpful list of pubs provided at the end of each walk to enable you to slake your thirst and recover from your perambulation. Great little book on the London that a lot of people see every day but will be utterly unaware of.

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Long Road from Jarrow: A journey through Britain then and now by Stuart Maconie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Eighty-two years ago around 200 men set off from the Tyneside town of Jarrow to march to London. The reason for this was to protest at the closure of Palmer’s shipyard that had affected everyone’s livelihoods in the town. Calling themselves crusaders, they were carrying a petition to the government of day asking for a new industry to be created in the town. Back in the 1930’s it was nothing like it was today, the world was in a global depression, there was the rise of right-wing political interests, a stark north/south divide, food banks and indifference from the political elite; err hang on…

It is through modern England that Stuart Maconie wants to retrace the march that the Jarrow Crusaders followed stopping in the cities that they did, seeking the places that supported them with food and provisions, seeing how many people know of anything about their story and to take the pulse of a just post-Brexit Britain. Whilst some things remain the same, there is a lot that has changed in the UK in that short period of time; gone are the big industries, mines and manual jobs that the north relied on and in their place are service jobs, disillusionment and high unemployment.

Maconie is one of those guys who can talk to almost anyone and in this book he does, from waiters to mums, healthy debates in pubs and even gets invited to an event with the leader of the opposition. He is prepared to say it how it is, how even now the north still is massively underfunded compared to the south-east of the country, how the London bubble distorts the economy and how there is much more community spirit the further from London you get. As usual, he writes with deft humour and his keen eyes observe the subtleties as he moves through the country at walking pace. As some have complained about the number of times he has mentioned food in previous books, he takes special care to ensure we know exactly what he has eaten. So you will read about a few curries, several beers and the odd dram or three and one of the best pork pies he has ever eaten. This is another thoroughly enjoyable book from Maconie and if you have read his others you will almost certainly like this.

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Literary Wonderlands: A Journey Through the Greatest Fictional Worlds Ever Created by Laura Miller
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

People have been immersing themselves in stories for thousands of years, originally these were passed from person to person before someone had the genius idea of writing them down. What stories though are the defining example of a type? Literary Wonderlands tries to do this by picking around 100 books and series that they think have redefined the literary landscape when they were published.

There are five sections of books, beginning with Ancient Myth & Legend and then Science and Romanticism it then goes onto the Golden age of Fantasy a New World Order and finishes up in the Computer Age. There are classics such as The Odyssey and Beowulf and the Tempest, The Time Machine and The Water Babies and it brings pretty much up to date with Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy. I was pleased to see favourite authors like Sir Terry Pratchett, Iain M. Banks and Neil Gaiman, and titles that I had read and enjoyed like Snow Crash and Neuromancer that I hadn’t expected to make it in.

This lavish coffee table book of books has a small biography of the author and there are lots of pictures, artworks and maps from the books covered. There is a plot overview and for a series or trilogy there is a broader look at the story, but be aware there are frequently spoilers! The main flaw is that as it is very broad in its scope, it misses so many other books that should have been included as defining books of a particular genre but it would have made the book too unwieldy though.

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The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State by Nadia Murad
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

The only place that Nadia Murad had even know was Kocho in Northern Iraq. This small village was part of the Yazidi community, and most of the population there were farmer or shepherds. She had simple dreams, wanting to open her own beauty salon or become a teacher. The war in Iraq had affected them a little, but not much. However, in August 2014 everything was to change forever. That was the day that ISIS rolled into the village, separated the men from the women and children and slaughtered the men, piling the bodies in a mass grave. Six of Nadia’s brothers were among those killed in cold blood.

Nadia, her sisters and the other young women of the village had a different fate. They were packed onto buses and taken to Mosul to be sold as sex slaves. Forcibly converted to Islam and marry her captor, the second part of her story tells of the horrific time that she had at the hands of the thugs that ‘owned’ her. She was forced to marry one of her captors, beaten, whipped and raped repeatedly. She contemplated suicide or fighting back as this might bring death and a release from her misery. She didn’t though, and when the chance came, she climbed over the wall and escaped through the streets of the city. Looking for shelter, she almost knocked on one door, but had second thoughts and went to another. Luckily for her, this was a Sunni family that took her in and gave her shelter.

They gave her the much-needed care required, and she managed to get in contact with the little that was left of her family. A plan was hatched to smuggle her through the ISIS checkpoints to get her to a refugee camp so she could join her displaced Yazidi people.

It wouldn’t be a spoiler to say that she survived. ISIS implement a cruel and harsh version of Islam, with rules that are arbitrary and are their strict and warped interpretation of the Koran, that they are more than happy to break them as and when it suits. This, her heart-wrenching story, is to tell the world of the plight of this peaceful community and to force the world to pay attention to the genocide against the Yazidi. She is one brave woman and the momentum she has gathered since she escaped is inspirational and very moving, it had never even crossed her mind that she would ever address the UN or be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. This is another book that I can highly recommend, even though it is uncomfortable reading and I hope one day that they get the justice they deserve against ISIS. 4.5 stars

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My Country: A Syrian Memoir by Kassem Eid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Kassem Eid grew up in the jasmine streets of Moadamiya, a small town on the outskirts of the ancient city of Damascus. He was not a native Syrian, but his parents were Palestinian refugees who had made this country their home. He was bright and was really looking forward to school, but on his first day, he realised that he was never going to be fully accepted because of his origins. He had already taught himself to read using the Readers Digest that his father had, and was really looking forward to school, but just how much of an outsider he was dawned on him when he first went to school.

In 2000 Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father as the leader of Syria. There was a glimmer of hope in the country that he would be a little more tolerant than his father. These were dashed fairly quickly when he gripped the country with an even fiercer tyrannical government. Eleven years later revolution swept across the region with the Arab spring. Each country reacted differently to the uprisings, but Syria crushed any protest with arrests and violence. There was only one way that this was going to go and as Kassem reached his mid-teens, the country was spiralling into civil war. The regime was prepared to use any means to keep the parts of the country suppressed, including chemical warfare, and on one day in August, Moadamiya, where he lived, was attacked with Sarin gas. He saw many people die that day in the horrible way that the poison works, but he survived.

That was the day that he joined the Free Syrian Army; that was the day he first picked up a gun.

This is a book that demands to be read. The situation in Syria has now reached crisis point especially with the recent military action that the UK was involved with. The people of Syria have suffered enough at the hands of the brutal dictatorship; all these people want to do is live in peace in their own country. Sadly though they are a pawn in the battle between the USA and Russia and until that is resolved, people die. Eid’s book about his life spent there tells the story of the brutality suffered by him and other under the authorities is heart-wrenching stuff. With his background, he was always going to be an outsider whichever country he lived in, but he still has the right to choose that country and be able to make the choice to stay in Syria.

If you have a single shred of humanity in you, then you need to read this book.

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The Mechanic: The Secret World of the F1 Pitlane by Marc ‘Elvis’ Priestley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motorsport, the teams have multi-million-pound budgets, some of the drivers are household names and for those looking in from the outside, it is seen as a high octane exotic sport. I have been an F1 fan since about the age of eight and the team that I have supported since then is McLaren; mostly because I lived in the same town as them.

Even though the drivers are immensely talented they would be nowhere without the teams of engineers and mechanics to ensure that they are in the best position to win. In its heyday, McLaren under Ron Dennis was seen as the best and most professional team in the paddock, most because of his obsessive attention to detail. AS the budgets were so enormous, they would think nothing os flying the entire test team back from a track for a Christmas party and flying them back, slightly worse for wear and day later. They even used a helicopter to try and dry a track out to test a component.

In this high-pressure environment was Mike ‘Elvis’ Priestley. He joined them as a mechanic and worked his way up from being the guy to fit a nose cone in a race to become one of the men changing the wheels in the lightning fast 3-second pit stops. They would sometimes have to pull a-l night shifts after the drivers had wrecked the car, change engines when the had blown and ensured that their driver had the very best car at their disposal.

This work hard mentality also meant that they played hard and also drunk hard too and Priestley’s book is full of stories about the races and the aftermath after a successful weekend, of hire cars trashed, the continual practical jokes that they played on each other and the drivers. He also gives the inside story on the Spygate scandal that engulfed McLaren and the fierce rivalry between Alonso and Hamilton. Priestley tells a good story and this is an entertaining read of the slightly murky reality that lies behind the pristine world of F1.

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