How I Escaped My Certain Fate – Stewart Lee

Stewart Lee‘s explanation of the genesis and inner workings of his stand up routines, matching the period during which Phil introduced me to both halves of Lee and Herring.

Other parallels within Stew’s own life and mine: growing up in Solihull in the 70s and 80s, and a parent who moved out from the Birmingham suburbs to the rural world of Hereford and Worcestershire.

Amazon.co.uk link: How I Escaped My Certain Fate – Stewart Lee

Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade – William Goldman

Another gem from Phil’s bookshelf. After bemoaning the books on my “To read” shelf, and failing to get to the Barbican Library to stock up on fresh page-turning fodder, Phil came to the rescue:

Phil: “What do you fancy reading?”
Mary:”I don’t know, something like this [pointing to William Goldman’s Adventures in the screen trade].”
Phil: “You mean like this [holding out Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade], his follow-up.”

Thus I found myself back in the world of making movies, US-style, but this time with William Goldman deconstructing scripts, and explaining what works and why, and what doesn’t and why not – not just in his opinion but bringing in comments and analysis from other screen-writers he knows. It’s a small, small world!

And, yes, there are occasional asides, offering Heat-type gossip about stars of the silver screen. Thank heavens for a weekend for reading!

Buy it: Amazon link

Parallel Lines: Or, Journeys on the Railway of Dreams – Ian Marchant

…. “or every girl’s big book of trains”.

Quite why the third alternative title doesn’t make it onto the cover is a mystery, and an almost fatal one in my case is it’s taken me 5 months to pick up this book, which was another ex-Wishlist item.

And the loss would have been mine.

It’s had to explain why this is such a good book, and it’s hard to work out if I liked it purely because of my own character and background. Just don’t reject this book on the basis that it’s a trainspotter’s guide because it most definitely isn’t. Ian Marchant knows his stuff when it comes to trains and all things train-related, but he’s not an engine-spotting-list-ticker. Rather, he’s a bohemian bloke who loves the railways and their role in British history – all the way from the first horse-drawn tracks to Network Rail, via Stephenson’s rocket and the railway mania of the 1800s; Beeching and privatisation.

Parallel lines is part social history, part political commentary, part autobiography, in a style akin to Nick Hornby and Bill Bryson – but with less knowing cleverness, and more heartfelt passion.

Buy it: Amazon link

Polysyllabic Spree – Nick Hornby

A loan from Phil for the TGV/Eurostar home from Avignon, and greatly enjoyed. The book is a collection of Nick Hornby’s monthly musings on what he books he buys to read and why, and which books he actually gets round to reading and what he thinks of them. A bit like this really! He doesn’t go in too deep on the plot analysis or literary criticism fronts, which suited me fine. It was far more fascinating to read about why of the buying and reading.

Buy it: Amazon link