How I Write

How I Write

Review coming soon

Stuart, A Life Backwards

Stuart, A Life Backwards (amazon link)
Just like the book before this (Boy A) its also been subject to a TV programme and it also has to doom ridden small font. The saving grace tho, is the layout. Its rich with paragraphs, good margins, varying font sizes for featured sections and even the odd drawing thrown in to break things up. With a decent font size this could have been waaaay up in the 4 or even 5 stars, but as it stands its only getting a 3 from me. Stuart is a pretty unique book, covering a life in reverse from nutter to lovable child. Hope plenty of people check this one out. I’ve not read it yet, and I’ve only half seen the TV programme, but I’m looking forward to settling down to it.

Review:
I am reading ‘Stuart: a life backwards’. Its about a documented life of a homeless person told in reverse to the point whereby he went from a innocent lad to a twisted psycho, nick named ‘Knife man Dan’. Recommended reading if you care about people caught up in a world and fighting for a way out. This is a funny, yet informative read, which forces you to care about someone you would normally keep well away from.

One Red Paper Clip

One Red Paper Clip
I don’t really remember too much about the formating on this one, but the story is so good it’ll really appeal to non-readers. It starts with a sale of a paperclip on ebay and continues on and on with various sales getting big and better…until.. well you’ll have to have a look at it to discover where it leads. I recall decent margins, the occasional picture and easily managable chapters. But as I’ve already said…. the unbelievable, incredible, fantastic story is the selling point here. A really mesmerising read.

The Raw Shark Texts

The Raw Shark Texts
This book took a bloody long time to get on here. Why I’m not sure, because I’ve been stalking it in Waterstones for aaages… waiting for it to come up in a ‘3 for 2′ offer no doubt (like it did in Leeds, when I ’should’ have bought it) Grrr. anyways….

this is like a picture book with text… formatted wonderfully… loads of effort gone into making it diverse and interesting. With each turn of the page you’ve no-idea whats coming next… and that’s without reading a word of the story. This is a grand book. A real non-readers book. I will buy this in its hardback version, cause I’m not 100% certain that they’ll continue the formating in a paperback version (I hope they do cause its kinda key to the storyline) … click the cover above and read about it. The story has got flavours of the Matrix and Memento.  

Wrong About Japan

Wrong About Japan
short book, 150 odd pages, plus a few full page pictures thrown in. Decent sized font, with good kerning and line spacing, very easy on the eyes. The margins are big to, so the line length is pretty short. A real non-readers book this, tho rubbish smelly paper. I knocked out a chapter in Waterstones, bought it, and read another chapter in Starbucks… and I’m now about quarter of the way through the book. The story is a journal type thing about a dad discovering the hidden messages within Manga and anime history with his obsessed son Charley. Its an alright read, nothing stunning, you may learn something about japanese history, Godzilla being an animated response to the A-Bomb for an example, however Manga fan will probably enjoy this book the most. I felt a bit embarrassed carrying a pink Anime covered book about, luckily it fitted in my pocket tho.

Shorty Loves Wing Wong

Shorty Loves Wing Wong
Bit of a late find this one, I was almost out of the shop. 90 pages, half of them pictures of odd looking cat figures in modern poses and humanal(?) situations. Read the back cover and it sounded really good, contemporary and relavant to todays world. Easy on the eye. didn’t notice any thing about the paper (so it was probably average) … a little hardback tho if I recall. The only bad point imo was the standard formating of the text (small font, tight kerning, standard linespacing etc) and a complete absence of paragraphs. One could argue that the ‘chapters’ are only paragraphed sized, but c’mon, a little sentence break in the odd place would have helped people (ie: me) a little. That minor detail prevented it getting a full 5stars from me. However, I’m more than happy to give it a generous 4. Turns out it was written by michael smith who also wrote The Giro Playboy which looks equally as readable.