I wanted to read this and I enjoyed it in parts, but I was left feeling conflicted about the fact that it’s arguably quite an intrusive endeavour. In I wanted to read this and I enjoyed it in parts, but I was left feeling conflicted about the fact that it’s arguably quite an intrusive endeavour. In Her Words was assembled by Amy’s parents, and it’s largely made up of youthful ephemera – letters, photographs, school reports, pages from notebooks and diaries. But it’s emphasised over and over again that Amy was a very private person (to the point of her family not hearing much of her music until it was ready to be released), and most of the material is the sort of thing she might not have wanted the world to see. I felt uncomfortable reading journal entries about which classmates Amy hated or fancied – I have loads of stuff like this in old notebooks and even now I’d be mortified if anyone else read it!
The sections that deal with Amy’s evolution as a musician and songwriter are more interesting. Here, we get to see handwritten lyrics and unfinished songs, and there’s a clear sense of how her songwriting process worked. It’s easy to read many of the lines as she might have sung them. There are some beautiful photographs too, and at the end, two stories from people who have benefitted from the services offered by the Amy Winehouse Foundation. These are lovely to read – perhaps they should have taken up a larger portion of the book?
With any person, famous or not, childhood scribblings might well provide glimpses of the adult they became, but I don’t know that they’re particularly interesting in themselves to anyone other than the person’s family. In Her Words is mostly these, and more or less cuts off at the point Amy became truly famous. It’s unclear whether this is because there’s little or no material available from those years, or just that her parents find it too painful to revisit them. As understandable as that might be, it shows the limitations of this book being curated by Amy’s family. While it was a time of great torment for Amy as an individual, that period of creative productivity and fame is, after all, the reason she is remembered, and the reason people want to read more about her in the first place.
(Also, I’d mistakenly got the impression that In Her Words was some kind of follow-on from Amy Winehouse: Beyond Black, perhaps because of the similar format and design of the books, when in fact they were produced and published separately. If you want to read one book about Amy Winehouse, Beyond Black is the far better option, and a truly gorgeous tribute.)...more
A lot of very interesting stuff in here but I often found myself wishing Klein would just drop the doppelganger idea; clearly the book needed a more mA lot of very interesting stuff in here but I often found myself wishing Klein would just drop the doppelganger idea; clearly the book needed a more marketable hook than ‘how people choose to align themselves politically and how this has shifted post-Covid’ but it really does feel extremely tenuous at times. So much ground is covered, and plenty of it, while solid and sensible, doesn’t contain any revelatory ideas, and that goes double for the woolly conclusion....more
An incredibly well edited book; the chatty oral-history format makes it endlessly readable, whether or not you’re especially interested in all the actAn incredibly well edited book; the chatty oral-history format makes it endlessly readable, whether or not you’re especially interested in all the acts discussed. Apparently this is over 500 pages in print, which amazes me because a) it feels short and b) I could have gone on reading it for much longer....more
Abandoned at 33%. This isn’t a general history of social media, and it’s my own fault that I thought otherwise, because the real subject matter is rigAbandoned at 33%. This isn’t a general history of social media, and it’s my own fault that I thought otherwise, because the real subject matter is right there in the subtitle: fame, influence and power. Lorenz is concerned with two things: firstly, how the now-ubiquitous figure of the influencer (or, ugh, ‘content creator’) came to exist; and secondly, how influencers started making big money. It is, at its heart, a book about money, much more than it is a book about the internet.
In the chapter on MySpace and Facebook, Lorenz briefly writes about a ‘scene kid’, Kiki Kannibal, whose online popularity brought with it an onslaught of bullying. As I did with a lot of the figures in this book who were unknown to me, I googled the girl’s name to see what she’s doing now. This led me to a Rolling Stone article that fills in the details: Kiki was harassed relentlessly, threatened, doxxed, and targeted by a paedophile. It got so bad her parents had to abandon their house, which they then couldn’t sell, and ended up bankrupt. The article ends with the whole family crammed into Kiki’s grandmother’s house, broke, jittery, chafing against each other. It’s an incredibly bleak story. It’s also a hundred times more fascinating than anything in this book.
This encapsulates my problem with Extremely Online: the interesting human stories are buried under a load of boring generalised detail. An oral history might have been a better way to tell it. A book about influencers who never actually made it could also be great. This book, as it is, is not for me.
(It’s also so US-centric that Lorenz refers to a clip from The Day Today simply as ‘an early viral video’, as if it originated on YouTube. Which was, honestly, the point at which I thought yep, I’m probably not going to finish reading this.)...more
Penman here offers a memoir-in-pieces by way of an overview of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s life and prolific filmmaking career, combined with a sort ofPenman here offers a memoir-in-pieces by way of an overview of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s life and prolific filmmaking career, combined with a sort of rough cultural history of 1970s Germany. The author sets out his stall with the first sentence of the book proper: ‘The first thing to proclaim is: the absolute impossibility of summing up Fassbinder.’ (Despite that, he does find a neat way of collectively describing Fassbinder’s thematically and aesthetically diverse output: ‘malign fairytales for jaded adults’.) Thousands of Mirrors is not supposed to be comprehensive – while a few of Fassbinder’s films are discussed in some detail, others have only a brief paragraph devoted to them, and Penman is most interested in personal aspects, in puzzling out why exactly Fassbinder became so significant in his own life. Mulling over the effect of the whole piece, I feel both Fassbinder and Penman remain somewhat obscure to me, but I don’t find that to be a problem. The book, deliberately a set of glimpsed fragments, is aptly titled.
I received an advance review copy of Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors from the publisher through NetGalley....more
(3.5) A charming examination of the concept of online fandom, particularly the type practiced by young women, seen largely through the lens of the aut(3.5) A charming examination of the concept of online fandom, particularly the type practiced by young women, seen largely through the lens of the author’s personal love of the boyband One Direction. Tiffany says early on that ‘this is not actually a book about One Direction’, but if you’re not a fan of them, it certainly feels like it is. After finishing the book and scanning through reviews, I noticed it’s already been criticised a lot for this, so I feel the need to point out that I don’t think it’s a bad thing! Concentrating on a single fandom gives a clear focus to a study that could otherwise become too sprawling to be confined to a short, neatly segmented analysis, and it makes sense for the author to write about something that a) was personally significant to her and b) she knows a lot about. (It’s also written well, in a style that captures the insularity – and bizarro humour – of the fan community while remaining understandable to outsiders.) The analysis of fandom more broadly can admittedly be a bit thin. What I think Tiffany does really well is to conjure up the magic of being a fan of something: how a song can make you feel ‘nineteen forever’, how observing and understanding the weird machinations of an online fandom can you create a sense of belonging even if you’re just watching from the sidelines. It got me thinking a lot about the cultural things I love – especially music – that feel like they’re part of my personal history, particularly the ones people laughed at me for liking, and how I love them even more now I’m older and they feel like a magic portal to youth.
Also, an interviewee in this book says the most incredible thing: ‘I know there are things I like. I want to talk about them and go have a good time. I’m a millennial and I’m going to die.’
I’ve listened to the podcast in its entirety at least twice, but I was still excited about reading this – even though I assumed it’d essentially be a I’ve listened to the podcast in its entirety at least twice, but I was still excited about reading this – even though I assumed it’d essentially be a rewrite of the material I’d already heard. Turns out it is quite different! A much more in-depth look at the Ruja Ignatova/OneCoin story, focusing less on personal accounts and more on the background and mechanics of how the con was orchestrated. While I was slightly disappointed that Bartlett’s voice is absent (the tone is very neutral), the almost-unbelievable narrative twists, and the horror of how big this thing actually got, are more than enough to keep the pages turning. It’s a massive cliche to say a non-fiction book ‘reads like a thriller’, I know, but to my mind, this actually does; I couldn’t put it down.
I received an advance review copy of The Missing Cryptoqueen from the publisher through NetGalley.
I’m not quite a convert to audiobooks. Compared to my typical reading speedAttempting to get into audiobooks #1
32 HOURS OF BREXIT. That was a journey.
I’m not quite a convert to audiobooks. Compared to my typical reading speed, they’re just so painfully slow. Then again, I can’t read a physical book or ebook while working, walking or cooking, so they have that going for them. An audiobook seemed like the perfect format for something like this, an unwieldy, highly detailed non-fiction tome about politics that I probably would never have got around to reading otherwise.
This is an exhaustive account, very well researched and put together. The four stars are for that, and not for the often completely infuriating content. On top of the 32-hour runtime, I also recommend ensuring you schedule regular breaks in order to scream, especially whenever Dominic Cummings is mentioned.
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