SHORTLISTED for the Baillie Gifford Prize’s 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2020 A Spectator Book of the Year • A Times Book of the Year • A Telegraph Book of the Year • A Sunday Times Book of the Year
This is NOT a fact-based compendium. Its purely opinion - the opinions of John Rentoul, his readers -- - and, yes, Twitter. Every week in the Independent on Sunday John Rentoul publishes a top ten based on suggestions from the great British public, covering a wide range of pressing issues, such as: which are the books that people buy but never read? Now collected together for the first time, and featuring previously unpublished lists, this is a book of open arguments that will ask readers to continue the discussion and contribute to the great debate online. It addresses essential topics such as: most overrated 1960s bands; meaningless words found on modern menus; great bands with terrible names; films panned as turkeys that are actually quite good; most beautiful British railway journeys; stupid car names; unsung villains; political heckles; words that ought to be used more often; British place names; best prime ministers we never had; visual cliches; political myths; anagrams; misquotations; worst Beatles songs; most interesting politicians. How to Outsmart Sherlock - is a compendium of the answers to such quintessential pub arguments. But who knows best? You, John, or Twitter? Pick up this book and join the debate. Top answers: Long Walk to Freedom; A Brief History of Time; Ulysses; Life of Pi; Longitude; Spycatcher; Gravitys Rainbow; My Life by Bill Clinton; Living History by Hillary Clinton; anything by Jamie Oliver.
Impossible to read at one sitting, but utterly unputdownable, Schott's Original Miscellany is a unique collection of fabulous trivia. What other book boasts an index that includes shoelace lengths, sign language, and the seven deadly sins; dueling and dwarves; the hair color of Miss America and the Hampton Court maze? Where else can you find, packed onto one page, the names of golf strokes, a history of the Hat Tax, cricketing dismissals, nouns of assemblage, an unofficial motto of the US Postal Service, and the flag of Guadeloupe? Where else but Schott's Original Miscellany will you stumble across John Lennon's cat, the supplier of bagpipes to the Queen, the labors of Hercules, and the brutal methods of murder encountered by Miss Marple? A book like no other, Schott's Original Miscellany is entertaining, informative, unpredictable, and utterly addictive.
Hunter Davies, the only ever authorised biographer of the group, has produced the essential Beatles guide. Divided into four sections – People, Songs, Places and Broadcast and Cinema – it covers all elements of the band’s history and vividly brings to live every influence that shaped them. Illustrated with material from Hunter's remarkable private collection of artefacts and memorabilia, this is the definitive Beatles treasure.
This reprinting of Korine's first novel presents fragments of a portrait in multimedia: print, photographs, drawings, news clippings, handwriting, a poem, attempted diagrams, clip art; but mostly text, including hard-luck stories, off-and-on-colour jokes, script-scraps, found letters, free rhymes, drug flashbacks and other scenes, exploring the world of show-biz with feet set lightly in the black humours of the real ol' world. This excretion of the danglers of public life would make William Burroughs sigh and turn the page, at least.
A collection of some two hundred cartoons dedicated in various ways to the Beatles from all latitudes. A subtle thread links the Beatles to comic strips. And not just because the four musicians had always been fanatic readers of those comics printed on cheap paper. Genuine icons of pop culture, like Marilyn and Coca-Cola, they were fated to meet up with the most classic means of expression, with a clear popular bent, a medium with great narrative and entertainment capacities that easily grabbed the attention of teens of both sexes. The book for the first time investigates and documents the interest that cartoonists, publishers and enthusiasts have shown in their special relationship with the universe of comic strips; a rich and variegated relationship with thousands of publications, in every part of the world, and a production that continues to the present day. In some stories the Beatles are the protagonists, in others they make cameo appearances, while others feature their lyrics transformed into comic strips. Published on the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four first single (Love Me Do) at the beginning of September 2012, the book celebrates the band with a festive, fun and original product, conveying a dimension that does not age, transmitting the legend that endures through the years and changing fashions.
This is not only the story of one of history's most popular songs, "Yesterday"... this is unique insight into one of the world's most accomplished recording artists, Paul McCartney. Recorded over half-a-century ago at the peak of the Beatles' triumphs, "Yesterday" remains at the top of the most recorded songs ever, with over 2,500 cover versions. As a Beatle, Paul McCartney was a brilliant songwriter and performer. Today, he is a shrewd businessman, musician, composer, and philanthropist. Focusing on "Yesterday" and the era in which it was created, author Ray Coleman, who was close to the Beatles' story from the start, draws a fresh portrait of McCartney, then and now. Coleman relates candid interviews with McCartney on a wide rage of subjects, including his rich and often mercurial relationship with John Lennon.
A selection of favorite quotes that the celebrated literary critic has collected over the decades. From Dwight Garner, the New York Times book critic, comes a rollicking, irreverent, scabrous, amazingly alive selection of unforgettable moments from forty years of wide and deep reading. Garner’s Quotations is like no commonplace book you’ll ever read. If you’ve ever wondered what’s really going on in the world of letters today, this book will make you sit up and take notice. Unputdownable!