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so this isn't christmas part 3Jan 6, 2008 by garyL. The two leads in The Last King Of Scotland were the best of the year. Maybe aside from Sam Riley. Nothing really needs to be said about those two that hasn’t been said by all the various gold and silver trophies they won. However we spent time during last summer in Uganda and saw how little had changed since the period the in which the film was set. The genocidal reign of Idi Amin may have come to an end nearly thirty years ago but Uganda is a country in violent pieces still. I’ll not go on as I don’t want to get preachy. Although you could look here:
http://www.savethechildren.org/countries/africa/uganda.html where some smart people can tell you better than I.
Finally books:
Steve Jones – The Single Helix
Russell Brand – My Booky Wook
Stuart Maconie –Cider With Roadies
Ed Husain – The Islamist
John Connolly – The Book Of Lost Things
John Man - Kublai Khan
Lawrence Potter – This May Help You Understand The World
Hari Kunzru – The Impressionist
Joanne Baker - 50 Physics Ideas You Really Should Know
AJ Jacobs – The Year Of Living Biblically
Robert Guest – The Shackled Continent
Some of the books on my list weren’t actually released this year. I just read them this year. I’m a slow, slow reader. Like my eyes are under water but my head isn’t. Glasses? Maybe glasses? Yeah, glasses. Also in the last few years I’ve spent a lot more time reading science and history books. I wasn’t good at science at school so I’ve a lot of catching up to do.
Two books helped me immensely as an introduction to science: Steve Jones ‘The Single Helix’ and Joanne Baker ‘50 Physics Ideas You Really Need To Know’. In case anyone is in the same boat I was in (not having a grounding in science) those both helped me a lot to better cope with what can be (and still is mostly) baffling.
In a similar vain, this time concerning the world at large there is a very helpful book by Lawrence Potter called This May Help You Understand The World. Even the title has the ring of simplicity and the calming influence of a deep breath if you’re as bewildered as I am trying to understand why the world is going mad around you and in distant lands when you’re not even sure who said what to start with or when and who the hell that guy is. Potter’s excellent book gives the background on everything from US politics, Israel and Palestine, Darfur, the difference between Sunni and Shia and a whole host more. If you find yourself, like me, out of your conversational depth an awful lot of the time this is a great book to get.
My favourite novel this year was John Connolly’s ‘The Book Of Lost Things’. It is a terrifying fairy tale in the vain of the Brother’s Grimm. It kept me up a few nights in a row able neither to put the book down nor sleep if I did.
I’ll not go on and on about everything as I think I’ve said more than enough but just to say how much I loved Stuart Maconie’s autobiography Cider With Roadies. For those that don’t know he’s a fantastic Radio 2 DJ who I’ve been a fan of since his time doing a late night, very funny, film review programme called Collins and Maconie’s Movie Club along with Andrew Collins. His autobiography is beautifully written and typically hilarious. Even if you’re not aware of the man (please check out his radio 2 show) the book is a glorious love letter to music and his treasured home town Wigan.
I’ve had a great year and enjoyed so much and too much and not enough and just the right amount of everything. We will be going into our secret hidy hole, at the bottom of the sea, to start putting the new songs together very soon and hopefully into the studio soon after that. That having been said it will be a wee while before the record is ready. I hope you’ll all be here when we have it finished. We’ll see you then for another whirl around the place* (airlines and broken limbs permitting).
I hope 2008 is a rinkydink panther of a year for all you.
Gary.x
*earth**.
**the planet earth.
Happy new everything.
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