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Post by dem on Sept 14, 2008 10:57:11 GMT
Nicholas Royle (ed.) - A Book Of Two Halves: New Football Short Stories (Indigo, 1997) first 45M. John Harrison - I Did It
Christopher Kenworthy - Them Belgians
Irvine Welsh - The Best Brand Of Football
Tim Lawler - Villa
Stephen Baxter - Clods
Maureen Freely - More Than Just A Game
Tim Pears - Ebony International
Conrad Williams - aet
Nicholas Lezard - The Beautiful Game
Glyn Maxwell - Injured Men Are Talking
Steve Grant - Casuals
Iain Sinclair - Hardballhalf-timeNicholas Royle - Referee's Reportsecond 45Graham Joyce - A Tip From Bobby Moore
Geoff Nicholson - The Visiting Side
Geoff Dyer - Passage Thiere
Mark Timlin - Wonderboy
Michael Marshall Smith - Sorted
Liz Jensen - Sent Off
James Miller - Scoring
Mark Morris - The Shirt
Kim Newman - The Germans Won
John Hegley - Hat-Trick
Simon Ings - Sobras The Sacrifice
Christopher Fowler - Permanent FixturesPicked this up today for a quid and thought I'd add it here because at least some of these are horror stories and the editor and many of the contributors are familiar from Best New Horror and the like. Whoever owned the book previously left some helpful notes on the contents page against Irvine Welsh "wrote Trainspotting", Iain Sinclair "=cool", aet "what does this mean?", John Hegley ( "saw him he's dead funny") and asterisks beside Maureen Freely, Liz Jensen and Kim Newman "all these women writing about football ??". I've dipped in and even if the rest of it is awful - which I doubt - I'd have bought this just for the opener from M. John Harrison which is a wonderful slice of macabre. Michael Marshall Smith's Sorted we've met before, a depiction of premiership idols as beings entirely above and beyond the law who can - and do - get away with murder in between the shags and snorts: Liz Jensen's Sent Off sees a spurned wife losing it during a game of table-football with her son and Irvine Welsh unleashes a trio of coked up Lee Perry obsessives on a Hibs V. St. Mirren match. Not all of it is horror as we know it: the most frightening thing about Casuals, Steve Grant's touching non-fiction account of what it's like to support the devoutly amateur Corinthian Casuals, for example, is the teams infamous chocolate and pink kit! M. John Harrison - I Did It: He's been threatening to do it for ages and after another row with on-off girlfriend Nicola and a Chelsea home defeat versus Portsmouth (0-2), Alex finally goes for the latest must have fashion accessory and plants an axe in his own face. It doesn't kill him, but it looks awful and he just leaves it there which pisses Nicola off something chronic. Not to be outdone, she pulls the same stunt and now it's his turn to sulk. Typical woman, no imagination of their own, has to rip off my idea's, etc. Nicola and Alex eventually get back on speaking terms although he's taken another lover and opted to revert to the axe-free look. Feeling all the better for it, he urges Nicola to follow suit and after a fierce bout of counselling she agrees that it would be for the best. However, the next time she sees Alex he's got a new axe embedded in his skull! What could have brought about this latest bout of extreme self mutilation? Iain Sinclair - Hardball: A trio of groundsmen on the Hackney Marshes, marking out the pitches for the weekend's action: A racist, football-hating Pole with a particular down on the Gooners, a young West Ham speedfreak forever babbling on about Mayan mythology and how the natives used to play football with the skulls of their enemies, and the narrator who gets sucked into their clandestine world of photographing empty stadiums at night and gambling on the whizz-kid's entirely imaginary goalkeeping prowess in penalty shoot-outs with local fans on White Hart Lane. Ends on a grim note when the narrator - having lost them a bet by ballooning his penalty over the bar - is chased across the marshes to his sacrificial doom.
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Post by carolinec on Sept 14, 2008 11:09:07 GMT
.. and asterisks beside Maureen Freely, Liz Jensen and Kim Newman "all these women writing about football ??". Dem, I guess you probably know (as opposed to the book's previous owner!), but Kim Newman isn't a woman! Admittedly, the last time I saw him he had hair almost down to his waist, but he isn't a woman! He is, of course, a film critic, journalist and writer with a liking for Dracula. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Newman |
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Post by dem on Sept 14, 2008 12:40:12 GMT
Yeah, he was a fixture at Vamp. Soc. events during the last mad years of that august body and there have been confirmed sightings at Zardoz and, more recently, the Basil Copper A Life In Books launch. His handlebar mustache usually comes to the fore when the BBC need an e*p*rt to rubberneck about horror and vampires. Did you see the James Nesbit vehicle Jekyll last year? Did Mark Gatiss base his Robert Louis Stevenson on the Kimster or what!
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Post by carolinec on Sept 14, 2008 13:54:07 GMT
Did you see the James Nesbit vehicle Jekyll last year? Did Mark Gatiss base his Robert Louis Stevenson on the Kimster or what! Yes! I enjoyed that quirky take on Jekyll & Hyde. But I must admit, I hadn't seen the likeness between Gatiss' RLS and Kim Newman - but you're absolutely right. I knew he reminded me of someone! ;D |
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Post by sean on Sept 14, 2008 15:08:24 GMT
Veering furthur awya from the topic, Dem, check out the story 'Who Dares Wins' on Newman's website. It contains the line:
The policeman was Inspector Cherry, who often wound up with the cases involving vampires: a solid, if somewhat whimsical plod.
Sound familiar from anywhere?
Newman is a pretty fun writer, his 'Dracula' books are superb, as are many other of his novels...'Jago' is cool, for instance, as is 'The Quorum' and 'Bad Dreams'.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Sept 14, 2008 15:23:38 GMT
I liked Anno Dracula and The Night Mayor. Has anyone read his Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula/Apocalypse Now parody?
Oh, and thanks for the copy of the book Dem.
I enjoyed the Irvine Welsh and the Christopher Fowler.
Oh, by the way, I sold the Brian Rix book on Ebay for £256.73
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Post by andydecker on Sept 14, 2008 17:01:58 GMT
I have read all of Newman´s Anno Dracula stuff. I liked it a lot.
Especially funny is his Rockford Files/Buffy parody playing in the Dracula Universum.
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Post by dem on Sept 14, 2008 21:06:32 GMT
I liked Anno Dracula and The Night Mayor. Has anyone read his Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula/Apocalypse Now parody? from The Mammoth Book Of Dracula? I've read it, can't remember a damn thing about though. Just about everything in that book seemed to pass me by. Couldn't have had my heart in it, I guess. incidentally, Newman's contribution to the recent-ish Summer Chills anthology, Richard Riddle, Boy Detective in "The Case Of The French Spy is an ingenious period piece, as the pint-sized sleuth and not-bad-for-a-girl Violet make things hot for scheming Johnny Foreigners down Lyne Regis way. Features special guest appearance from Dagon! Oh, by the way, I sold the Brian Rix book on Ebay for £256.73 Impetuous young hot-head! I was about to enter the fray with a much improved bid! Is it too late to tell the buyer it's already gone?  Veering further away from the topic, Dem, check out the story 'Who Dares Wins' on Newman's website. It contains the line: The policeman was Inspector Cherry, who often wound up with the cases involving vampires: a solid, if somewhat whimsical plod.Sound familiar from anywhere? I think I know who you're getting at, sean, and, if so, KN is certainly familiar with the blaggard, though i'm not so sure he's used him as the basis for Cherry. Admittedly I only speed-read Who Dares Wins, but the characterisation of the inspector struck me as so vague it might be anyone. |
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Post by sean on Sept 15, 2008 8:44:41 GMT
Newman's definitely up on his 'Meduas Touch', as he contributes to the commentary on its (I think) most recent DVD release, and although the Cherry character is known as Brunel in the film, Cherry was fairly established as he appeared in several of Greenaway's borderline supernatural novels. What makes me think Newman is having one of his little character-appropriation moments is that in PVG's 'Doppleganger!' there is a line where (IIRR) it is pointed out that Cherry is the chap who gets all the cases involving the inexplicabe... and the line in 'Who Dares Wins' strikes me as a deliberate echo.
There is an Inspector Cherry in the Dixon film 'The Blue Lamp', so it could be him instead, although knowing KN's trackrecord I'd say he was probably aware of both... and Greenaway was probably aware of the previous Cherry when he wrote 'The Medusa Touch' and others.
All pure conjecture, obviously....
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Post by dem on Sept 15, 2008 10:02:50 GMT
oops! talk about thinking at cross-purposes! I'm afraid I just have to hit on phrases like 'cases involving vampires' and 'somewhat whimsical', and the unpleasant spectre of a squat fellow of a million pseudonyms looms before me, crowding out all else including the giveaway "solid"!  Now it's been pointed out to me, I'd go along with you that Newman has DEFINITELY borrowed The Medusa Touch's excellent Inspector Cherry - whose existence I'd completely forgotten about despite raving about Mr. Greenaway's novel as the best I read in 2007!! Erm. I'd like if everyone would shut up about Kim bloody Newman now for a while ... |
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Post by sean on Sept 15, 2008 10:08:50 GMT
Hehehehehe!
CENSORED BY DEM!
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Post by dem on Sept 15, 2008 10:55:52 GMT
Sorry Sean, but Holy shit! No f**k**g way! And always remember, boys and girls - |
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Post by sean on Sept 15, 2008 11:04:00 GMT
Woohoo!!!! I've been censored! Still got it...
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Post by carolinec on Sept 15, 2008 11:11:58 GMT
Erm. I'd like if everyone would shut up about Kim bloody Newman now for a while ... Sorry, that was my fault!  |
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Post by dem on Sept 15, 2008 11:39:55 GMT
Woohoo!!!! I've been censored! Still got it... Yeah, you've still got it alright. God knows this board loves its hideous evil entities, but you have to draw the line somewhere. I mean, some of us were trying to eat. *all the best with the move, Sean, and I hope thing go well with you* Erm. I'd like if everyone would shut up about Kim bloody Newman now for a while ... Sorry, that was my fault! I might have guessed!  Well, madam. I hope you're proud of yourself! Not for the first time, you've let me down, you've let the board down, and - most of all - you've let yourself down! |
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Well, madam. I hope you're proud of yourself! Not for the first time, you've let me down, you've let the board down, and - most of all - you've let yourself down!