« More Comedy Enthusing | Main | Involuntary Smile »
November 29, 2002
A coward among cowards.
For ages I've been stared at from my bookshelves. There's dozens of them up there, all looking at me accusingly as if to say "See, you thought you'd get clever just by *buying* us. And you're never going to read us. But here we are on shelves, looking bigger than the other books so friends can ask you what you thought of us. Mwahahahahaha!"
There's the books I've browsed but not properly read - like Julian Cope's 'The Modern Antiquarian' (3 years), the books I've repeatedly started and not quite managed to sustain momentum through - Robert McKee's Story (2 years), books of skills I really must pick up - Teach Yourself Irish (8 years) and books that were light enough to bring home but too heavy to hold and read - Neal Stephenson's Cryptomnicon (2 years).
But in the new house, with them all laid out in a much more blatant way, I felt ready to take on the challenge of John Diamond's 'C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too. (18 months).
I remember feeling after Ben Watt's brilliant but gruelling 'Patient' that I never wanted to read another medical autobiography again, and the BBC's Inside Story documentary on Diamond made me far more inclined to pick a different book off the shelf each time.
But, you know what? It's really really funny. And incredibly optimistic. And really skilful in its acknowledgement of dramatic irony. Unlike the punchdrunk feeling I got from Watt's brilliant book, this is making me feel very inspired. Something I badly need at the moment.
Posted by Tom Dolan at November 29, 2002 08:37 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.sparklefluff.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/134
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
