15/12/16: Garth Risk Hallberg – City on Fire (2015)

City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg. Bought this 944-page monster on eBay. Love the cover design and wanted a chunky brick to sink my teeth into. I disagree with those who say the book is too long – see the criticisms in many reviews. It's deliberately as vast as the lives and the city it describes. It's wonderfully evocative of New York in the 1970s. And the characterisation is brilliant: after living with them for a while, you will not forget the innocent-led-astray Charlie, the dedicated cop Pulalski and the sinister, scheming "Demon Brother". The narrative switches sideways, backwards and forwards in time to detail how the lives of the main characters intersect. The scope is huge. The writing is often beautiful. Pages from fanzines, journalism, letters and reports are all woven in to widen the tapestry. There's humour, too. You need to set aside a decent chunk of time to complete this sprawling marvel – it took me weeks – but it's worth it. If you prefer books to be tightly plotted and to the point, this might not be for you. According to the internet, Garth Risk Hallberg was given a $2 million advance to write this – supposedly the most ever for a debut novel, and possibly another reason why the critics were so happy to find fault.

04/12/16: Rob Sheffield – On Bowie (2016)

Borrowed from Barnet Libraries. Toward the start of this book I was surprised to read this anti-Bowie quote from Keith Richards (see p.10): "It's all pose...It's nothing to do with music. He knows it, too." Keith's wrong about that. The author admits that this 198-page book was rush-written in one month after Bowie's death, but it's a respectful and loving account of his thoughts on the legendary icon. I agreed with most of it – such as Lodger being his "most underrated record" – but don't agree with him that The Man Who Fell to Earth is a bad film. There are no blinding new insights on Bowie's life and art (other than him being "the C-3PO of rock and roll", p.51, and I never knew that he first met Angie at a King Crimson press event), but there are plenty of likeable moments throughout this well-meaning appreciation. If there's one thing I would have changed it's that endlessly throwing in lyrical references becomes a little annoying. (See how I didn't need to write "ch-ch-changed" to make the point.) But overall it's worth reading.