Cheers gents. Lancashire libraries didn't have either of those in book format TD (though they had them as audio CDs, wtf?!) so I ordered The Old Man and the Sea, this time in English!

Also ordered the Manhattan Transfer, which will be dispatched from Skem! Is it not ace that a book by a now little-known American author WtW rates up there with Hemingway and Steinbeck is just sitting there waiting for a kid in somewhere like Skem to pick up and read?

Yes it is great!

As far as innovation goes Dos Passos is way in front of either Steinbeck or Hemingway... He tells his stories in fragments, mixing narrative with history and glimpses into shattered pieces of American life - in USA these are called 'Newsreels' - after the cinema of those times which would give a ten minute news roundup before the feature films...

You follow separate characters, he lays them down for a while, then picks them up, and sometimes they meet other characters, and sometimes they don't... you are never reading just one central narrative, but two or three or four, interspersed with glimpses of iconic people of the times, given a page of mini-biography and...

Oh sod it... just read it - it's brilliant...

All the above is a reference to USA. Manhattan Transfer is his first experiment into this form, that he is creating for the first time, fluid, jagged, always endangered - like the lives of his characters...

a couple of people have listed Clive James books here - DSB among them, I believe..

well - sadly - it seems he may not be with us much longer... (Clive James, that is!)


full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18532310

Margarita Pracatan is inconsolable.

Terible news. Great bloke to watch and listen to, with a brilliant dry humour. Sad indeed.

I hope he keeps going for a while yet. He can be a most engaging man (although I've seen little of his work) but he's always been something of an enigma to me. At times he comes across as an arrogant prat whilst at others he's a well informed and reasonable sort of chap. Maybe it depends on what he had for breakfast on any particular morning which shapes his daily attitude - or, perhaps, the dosage of devil's advocacy he'll insert into his writings and verbal outpourings. I don't know.

He left this country 50 years ago and has been an ex-pat since then to the best of my knowledge. At one stage he was well known, and often reported in the media, for 'putting the boot in' to his country of birth. Given that he seems to have become stuck in some sort of time-warp I was surprised to read him 'regretting' his inability to fly 'back home'. Perhaps it was expressed in manner sarcastic?

Reason enough for him to be popular here. Pity he wasn't French.

I have finished Paul Preston's Comrades. - it's a very well written 9 biographical portraits of prominent figures in the Spanish Civil War.

In my view it's not great history - for two reasons. One is that the author has a dream - and that is in some ahistorical 'third Spain' of middle class democracy that didn't really exist, however much its proponents wished it. Much more problematic - he offers no portrait whatsoever of any of the Anarchist left, probably the most numerous of the Spanish workers' movement. I feel this omission is almost fatal in damaging his book. Simply, you cannot discuss the Spanish Civil War seriously if you don't examine Anarchism...

I'm sorry for my habit of doing obscure stuff... I'm sure I'm easily ignored, and that offers me some consolation...

Come on now, WtW, feeling a bit maudlin today? Buck up, old son, I'm sure that others, like me, enjoy your critiques even though - in my case at least - the subject matter is not always familiar. That of course results in an inability to make a sensible and informed response.

Reading Kevin Barry's City of Bohane. An amazing book. Gang-land violence in a futuristic west coat of Ireland town. Black humour, weird characters and brilliant descriptive writing set in the grimmest place you've ever been.

Picked up his 'How not to be a professional footballer' for £2.99 at the weekend. Not started it yet, but some 'interesting' chapter titles.

Just finished City Of Bohane. Brilliant. Madly crazily brilliant. Read it do.

Guy gets kicked to death by two others up an alley. So badly beaten he's unrecogniseable. Copper walks to the end of the alley and tells the crowd of onlookers:

"Looks like another suicide folks"

That sounds really good. It has gone on my "to read" list - joining, currently, Iain Sinclair's Landor's Tower, Rob Smyth's The Spirit of Cricket, Nicholas Shaxon's Treasure Islands, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski's Soccernomics, Tim Harfords' Adapt and Mark Henderson's The Geek Manifesto. In no particular order....

I have just finished reading Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. That was good. Highly entertaining, well-written historical fiction, portaying a rather different view of Thomas Cromwell to the usual one.

Mrs Clapton keeps recommending that one to me but I can't say I fancy it. I'll probably get around to it sooner or later. You know the sequel, 'Bring Up The Bodies', has just been published?

It's good - trust me. I'm not really a big reader of historical fiction, but it is really good.

I saw Bring Up The Bodies had been published. I will get around to it at some point. Once I've worked through a few others. And it comes out in paperback...

Last weekend I managed to blast my way through the 400 pages of Jonathan Wilson's biography of Brian Clough 'Nobody Ever Says Thank You'. Very highly recommended. I haven't read 'The Damned Utd', so I cannot compare, but as a full biography of the man this would take some beating. A very forensic attitude, he tries to get behind the glip myths which make up what we think of as 'Brian Clough'. It really is a remarkably good read, let down only ever so slightly by what feels like a rushed ending (and rushed editing), a couple of spelling mistakes and oddly constructed sentences break up the 'flow'. It doesn't avoid the alcoholism, but it doesn't really deal with it either. Its main strength is the depth of research. Every point is backed up from quotes from his team-mates, players, acquaintances, chairmen. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in football. Would be a good holiday read, it was a good train read.

Now then, now then, due to a ghastly case of man-flu I am holed up in bed not doing very much. I'm reading 'A Tale of Two Cities' (I started but didn't finish as a kid, and was always put off by the image on the front of the copy I had of a foreboding looking guillotine!), I also have 'Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition' (a biography of Boris Johnson), two prezzies from the in-laws for my birthday: 'Hemingway's Boat'- an account of Hemingway's life between 1934-1961; and, 'Civilisation: The West and the Rest' by Niall Ferguson. Unbeknown to them I've recently read Ferguson's 'The Ascent of Money', and ordered a couple of Hemingway books from the library. Good guesses on their part!

Also, the library have just sent me an e-mail to let me know my reservations of 'The Old Man and the Sea' by Hemingway, 'The Grapes of Wrath' by Steinbeck, 'Inverting the Pyramid' by Jonathan Wilson, 'Why England Lose' by Simon Kuper and 'Manhattan Transfer' by Dos Passos have all arrived for collection. Efficiency never seen before in Lancashire Libraries! I may be busy for a while.

I have on the 'yet to read' shelf - 20 Years with Brian Clough: by Duncan Hamilton. I believe it to be excellent, too.

I haven't read the Clough book, but Hamilton's biography of Harold Larwood is superb.

Now there was someone who really was stitched up by the establishment...

I've just been to get them from the library. 'Unweaving the Rainbow' by Dawkins had also come in. Whilst there I also picked up 'You Cannot Be Serious: The 101 Most Infuriating Things in Sport' and Paxman's 'Empire'.

I can't stop. It's an illness, and I need help.