Richard Mascall's Weblog

Guinness Book of Records - Shocking Omission

Back in the 1950s I used to love a book called the Guinness Book of Records. Full of facts and figures it was a compulsive read. As the decades rolled by, I continued to buy a copy every five years or so, and still have three editions.

I stopped buying after crossing out all the imperial units in the 1993 edition - it seemed too much effort to repeat even though I did it while doing something else such as listening to a radio programme.

But in Croydon yesterday I almost bought the latest edition since it was being nearly given away in a bookshop that was closing down. Almost, that is, until I opened it because I then discovered something rather important was missing : text ! Well, not completely, but nowadays it is nearly all pictures with just the occasional letter or number in annotation.  (Unlike the old days - see the photos here for how it used to be.) 

And the records themselves now are much more of the "heaviest weight held by a beard; fastest time to slurp ten panacottas" type. Yes, it was always fun to have the occasional quirky entry but now it seems the majority have to be this trivial.

In the old days it was dense with detail but now it is more a picture book for children under ten and those who have difficulty with reading. It is of course good that book publishers do not ignore these groups but at the cost of sacrificing one of the classic publishing successes ? The McWhirters must be spinning in their graves.

Cooking Abruzzo Style

Chloé and Moris (see a previous visit) came for lunch today. They gave me a welcome if challenging Christmas present : a book of recipes from Abruzzo, the region of Italy where they are living.

Actually it is more than recipes, having also lots of information about the author's upbringing in the area as well as plenty of snippets describing the background to the meals and the ingredients. Looks like there are going to be some fun times in the kitchen in 2009.

I shall be trying the Semifreddo recipe sooner rather than later because I made one for my brother's visit over Christmas as described in the James Martin Desserts book which was not a total success (see a more successful selection). This might simply be that I served it too frozen so it was more Doppiofreddo rather than Semofreddo !

Rabbiting On About Books

When I saw my friend Nick yesterday, he told me about a new website his employer was promoting : BookRabbit. It's a social networking site with the theme of books. As the site's description says,

"BookRabbit is an online bookshop that dynamically connects readers, authors and publishers through the books they own. Using BookRabbit, readers can share their passion for books, make recommendations to other readers as well as creating their own personal bookcase and catalogues online – anything from medieval falconry, through bestsellers, to educational publications for schools. BookRabbit has a simple aim – to claim back book selling and book buying, enabling readers to discover the right books for them.

Oh and we're also cheaper than Amazon on the top 100,000 titles, with free UK delivery!"

When you sign up, which is free, you can register as many of your books as you wish, and you can see who else owns the same books. I have done this for a few books. You can also upload an image of a bookshelf (with books on, obviously) and then you can tag the individual books.

Clapton : Heard The Music, Now Read The Book

I recently finished Eric Clapton's autobiography and wrote a review for Amazon which you can read here.

Peter Cook Book Review

I always find reading the customer reviews on Amazon of interest, even if they often conflict with my own opinions ! So I felt I should make the effort to contribute myself and so have submitted my comments on a book that Santa brought me, Wendy Cook's biography about her husband, Peter Cook. I deliberately avoided reading the other reviews before submitting mine - just as well, given that the other three each gave the book just one star while I thought it warranted four.

My review goes as follows ...

Although the book claims to be the Peter Cook story, in fact it is the Peter and Wendy Cook story. It's none the worse for that because Wendy was with Peter during the beginning and heights of his career as well as during the beginning of his decline. While she is hardly a disinterested onlooker, she often takes account of this and concedes that she might not always have seen or known about certain aspects of Peter's life. This gives credibility to what she does say and the list of interviewees that she draws on to augment her experiences is impressive. I was fascinated to learn that Anneke Wills, someone I knew only from Dr Who in the Sixties, was part of the crowd.

I was not old enough to see "Beyond the Fringe", although I do now have the complete CD recordings, but later in the Sixties did watch "Not Only But Also". So I have no doubt about Peter's genius, especially having also enjoyed the original "Bedazzled" and the wrongly forgotten "Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer". However I also remember seeing the unpleasant side of the man on some sixties TV chat-show where his method of indicating disagreement with another guest was to make funny faces behind the guest's back. Perhaps he was already into the drinking which was such a part of his later life. Wendy's book leaves the reader in no doubt about either side of the man's complicated character and is almost impossible to put down.

Part of the book's appeal for me was the way stories relating to the famous names of the era are intermingled with the minutiae of everyday living in Cambridge and Swinging Sixties London. Another part of its interest was the author's attempt to explain why Peter was the way he was. Add in the informal photographs, and the result is a book that I look forward to dipping back into over the months to come.

Nobody Cares What You Ate For Lunch

This is the title of a book I recently bought. See here for comments on Amazon. It is a set of 100 ideas designed to make a blog more interesting (it's never too late, is it ?). I am reading just a couple of suggestions every day and am up to number 10.

Just to go against the spirit of the title, today I had crab omelette for lunch. The venue was the Bow Wine Vaults.

My companion was Chris, my Best Man back in 1973 and a fellow maths student back in University days. He had reserved a table in the bar area where we were all jammed very close together but the service was excellent and the food delicious.

"Watching The English" Book

I have just finished this book by Kate Fox, originally published in 2004. Kate is an anthropologist and in the book she purports to describe what the characteristics of English behaviour are. I found it most convincing, perhaps because the examples she uses to bolster her claims seem so very true. She also quotes interviews with visitors to England who support her case by saying how baffled they are at this or that type of behaviour.

While most of her observations might seem unoriginal taken in isolation, for example the fact we like to talk about the weather, what she adds is to put forward a plausible explanation of why we do what we do, and generalises a set of behaviours into a guiding principle. Most of the characteristics she identifies seem positive, for example our modesty, but perhaps that is just the view of an Englishman. Incidentally, she suggests that these behaviours all stem from the Englishman's fundamental inability to socially engage with others, so she cannot be accused of saying what she thinks English people want to hear.

To summarise, it's a fascinating book and well worth reading.