The Fry Chronicles - Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry is intelligent, urbane, assured and the epitome of an Englishman - unless you ask him. In this second autobiographical installment (taking up where Moab is My Washpot left off), Fry describes is candid, clear-eyed and distressingly self-deprecating detail his life following his release from prison for credit card theft, from his university years at Cambridge to his thirtieth birthday.
In that time he began what was, and still is, a prodigious career. By any definition a polymath, by this point Fry had already established himself as an author (of fiction, a play and comedy skits), comedian and actor; hats as a screen writer, television host, wildlife documentarian, narrator of audiobooks and video games, director and early adopter of Twitter and other social media still lay ahead of him, though the seeds for many of these endeavours were also sown in his twenties.
Fry is quite clearly remarkable and yet he is refreshingly, almost disturbingly, oblivious to this. If one is to accept the interpretation he presents of himself as accurate, he gives himself no credit at all. His writing is honest and unpretentious, and filled with apology - from the first line ("I really must stop saying sorry: it doesn't make things any better or worse") his intense dislike of himself is clear.
I have yet to find an aspect of Fry that I, on the other hand, don't like. From Black Adder and A Bit of Fry and Laurie, which were my introductions to him in the eighties, through a number of his novels, Peter's Friends (one of my favourite films), his need (like mine) to point out that 'decmate' means to take away ten percent of something rather than (as is often assumed) to destroy it, his appearances on Bones and the brilliant enjoyment that is QI, and his revisiting of Douglas Adam's Last Chance to See, through to this latest chronicle of an extraordinary life, every glimpse appeals. The only down side for me is that I feel, in contrast, intimidated, talentless, unintelligent and a waster of life - a universal state of affairs, which Fry discussed later.
In his extraordinary life, Fry has met many other extraordinary people - The Fry Chronicles documents some encounters, and he is as good at observation as he appears to be at almost everything else (except creating music in any form). I particularly liked Tom Stoppard's observation:

I was at a dinner party many years ago, sitting alongside Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses but between mouthfuls. An American woman opposite watched in disbelief.
"And you so intelligent!"
"Excuse me?" said Tom.
"Knowing those things are going to kill you," she said, "and still you do it."
"How differently I might behave," Tom said, "if immortality were an option."

Further in the book, Fry recounts his experiences of working with Richard Armitage on the stage musical Me and My Girl, which originally featured "The Lambeth Walk" by Armitage's father, and rewritten some forty years later by Fry. Armitage was simultaneously "producer, the heir and manager of the composer's estate, and not least so far as I was concerned, my agent" and "proved himself capable of switching hats mid-sentence" thus:

'I have had a word with myself,' he would say, 'and I have agreed to my outrageous demands as to your financial participation in this project. I want to cut you out of any backend, but I absolutely insisted, so much to my annoyance you have points in the show, which pleases me greatly.'

It was the profits from this project, which ran for eight years in the UK, three years on Broadway, and was nominated for a slew of Tony awards, that initially contributed to Fry's wealth; he is, typically, modest about this achievement. but I have leapt ahead of the chronology.
Fry discusses his fears, when starting at Cambridge, of being found out, of having his intellectual right to be there questioned, a fear I once believed relatively unique to myself until a casual conversation at uni revealed not only all my fellow post-grads, but my supervisor and even the head of my department all felt the same. Knowing that has, sadly, in no way obviated my concern. There's also a fascinating section on the different characters of Cambridge and Oxford, too long to reproduce here but very interesting, particularly for someone wholly outside the system. Part of my, while reading The Fry Chronicles, in the same way that I wonder what might have been different had I not dropped out the first time around, did ponder how my tertiary academic life might have gone had my family not moved from England to Australia when I was a child.
Fry had a role as an extra in Chariots of Fire, his introduction to the world of film, and I love how he describes his thinking at the time (when given visiting cards marked "Cambridge University Tennis Club" by a prop man) "that film makers were imbecile profligates," with his insider knowledge now that they are instead "imbecile misers." The contrast of experience with outsider assumption is beautifully presented, elegantly written, and manages to be both self-deprecating and forgiving of other outsiders who may think similarly; he returns to this two pages later, and in both cases I was reminded of the episode of Top Gear where Jeremy Clarkson decided that all the people standing around doing nothing during roadworks were superfluous.
The heart of the writing, though, is the twin and twined elements of Fry's insecurity and his recognition that this state is all but universal.

Never, at any point in my life, can I remember feeling that I was any part of assured, controlled or at ease. The longer I life the more clearly one truth stands out. People will rarely modify their preferred view of a person, no matter what the evidence might suggest. I am English, Tweedy. Pukka. Confident. Establishment. Self-assured. In charge. That is how people see me, be the truth never so at variance... It may be the case that my afflictions of mood and temperament cause me to be occasionally suicidal in outlook and can frequently leave me in despair and eaten by self-hatred and self-disgust. It may be that I am chronically overmastered by a sense of failure, underachievement and a terrible knowledge that I have betrayed, abused or neglected the talents that nature has bestows upon me... All these cases may be protested, and I can assert their truth as often as I like, but the repetition will not alter my 'image' by one pixel. ..
What I wanted to say about all this wailing is not that I expect your pity or your understanding (though I wouldn't throw either of them out of bed), but that I am the one actually offering pity and understanding here. For I have to believe that all the feelings I have described are not unique to me but common to us all. The sense of failure, the fear of eternal unhappiness, the insecurity, misery, self-disgust and awful awareness of under-achievement that I have described. Are you not prey to all those things also? I do hope so, I would feel the most conspicuous oddity otherwise. I grant that my moments of 'suicidal ideation' and swings of mood may be more extreme and pathological than most have to endure, but otherwise, I am surely describing nothing more than the fears, dreads and neuroses we all share. No? More or less? Mutatis mutandis? All things being equal? Oh, please say yes.

Yes!
it is this humanity and openness that makes fry's accounts so breathtakingly honest and fearless. These qualities are evident again when Fry recounts a premier he went to with Rowan Atkinson:

To hear his name shouted out by photographers and see the crowd of fans pressing up against the crash barriers caused the more intense excitement in me, combined with a sick flood of fury and resentment that no one, not one single person, recognized me or wanted my picture. Oh, Stephen. I have clicked on and selected that sentence, deleted it, restored it, deleted it and restored it again. A large part of me would rather not have you know that I am so futile, fatuous and feeble-minded, but an even large part recognizes that this is our bargain.

I went in to The Fry Chronicles respecting, admiring and liking its subject. I left with all my positive feelings burnished, and my feelings of comparative poor self-worth somewhat ameliorated. I know I have failed to do The Fry Chronicles justice - it is human, humane, intelligent, funny, insightful, modest and astounding, a just reflection of its author. - Alex

How Starbucks Saved My Life - Michael Gates Gill

After a quarter of a century at one of New York's most prestigious advertising companies, 63-year-old executive Gill was taken out to breakfast by a protégé, and fired. After a privileged lifetime of never having to worry about money, and never having to interview for a position, Gill found himself unemployed and unemployable. In the space of a few short months he was also divorced, the direct result of an affair that unintentionally produced his fifth child, and diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma, with no health insurance to cover the cost of specialist visits let alone surgery.
Unready to accept the changes in his life, Gill dressed every morning in a suit and tie, briefcase in hand, and set out the front door. And more often than not he wound up in Starbucks, where the people were friendly and the ambiance uplifting. When a woman sat next to him one morning and casually asked if he was interested in a job, he said “yes,” without thinking. And that act changed his life.
Subtitled A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else, this riches-to-rags-to-fulfillment bio epitomises the concepts that you make your own luck, happiness is unrelated to income, and that it’s never too late to change your life. Though not something that had at all occurred to him – Gill, unsurprisingly, had been looking at executive-level positions – he found he flourished in a position that required a substantially new skill set, had different priorities, and involved a very different population that his previous role. And while there were certainly small areas of overlap, for the most part Gill was a neophyte – he’d never cleaned his own home, but relished getting the public toilet of his store sparkling, and threw himself with gusto into every task. And in return he was rewarded – by a supportive management style, humane corporate policies, complete health care coverage, and the opportunity to shine.
How Starbucks Saved My Life is also an excellent advertisement for the Seattle-based coffee chain that’s had worldwide success - except in Australia, where 75% of stores closed within two years. I have to admit that I’m no fan of American chain corporations, who pay minimum wage, offer few benefits, and modify employment hours to reduce these still further. I also have a fairly cynical view of chains in general, and global American chains in particular; though I don’t drink it myself, Melbourne sees itself as a foodie mecca, and that includes some of the best coffee you can buy, so the opening of Starbucks here was greeted rather hostilely, even more so when a Starbucks opened in Italian-rich Carlton.
So I was pleasantly surprised by Gill’s description of the benefits Starbucks affords its employees, and by their humane policies – toward employees but also to indigent Guests.
Gill does a veer a little toward the evangelical on the topic, though. Indeed, the tone of How Starbucks Saved My Life is a little too unrelentingly positive for me throughout – there are only cursory mentions of Gill’s wife and children’s reactions to his affair and new baby, for example. And he has a decided tendency to paint himself in the most flattering of a lights – even when recounting an incident where he was less than sterling (as when he remembers the way he treated an affirmative action trial staffer) the spin is less on his poor behavior than his new-found excellence. I was also a little irritated by Gill's frequent recollections of the past, usually triggered by something in stark contrast, and frequently involving contact with the rich and famous, particularly writing. That said, I didn't find Gill self-aggrandising or at all self-important. I did find his open embrace of change and life lessons positive, and I feel a little warmer toward Starbucks, though not enough to go there. If you’re in the mood for something a little Chicken Soup for the Soulish or if, like me, you’re killing an hour in a Singaporean bookshop, this is excellent. - Alex

My Life in Orange - Tim Guest

Tim Guest's mother left him when he was four, flying to India and becoming a disciple of controversial mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Now Ma Pram Visma, she returned when Tim was six, moving with Tim and her partner Sujan to a Rajneeshi commune in Suffolk. Commune members wore only colours of the sun (clothes dyed pink, orange, red or maroon) and surrendered themselves to a life of inner exploration, Eastern mysticism, therapies designed to challenge themselves, and sexual liberation. Though he enjoyed some of the life, including nearly unfettered freedom, and a world of other children, Tim's preexisting feelings of insecurity and lack of groundedness were exacerbated by the move. And this state grew as, over the following years he and his mother moved from the commune in Suffolk to others in India, Germany and the US, interspersed with holidays visiting his father in America.
Equal parts an autobiographical journey and a history of the Rajneesh movement, My Life in Orange has great potential. Unfortunately I found myself irritated by both the style, which is neither chronological nor ordered, and the tone. Tim was 29 when My Life was published, and revisiting his childhood clearly caused a number of emotional ghosts to resurface, so that much of the book is written from the perspective of a child rather than of an adult looking back. For me, this meant that the text is imbued with a self-pitying neediness I found grating and intrusive.
Perhaps, had the whole work been consistent with this aspect I'd have engaged with it better, though the work as a whole is significantly leaden, but Tim alternates between recalling these lived experiences with detail about the movement and the way it was perceived at the time, and now. Often these elements are poorly introduced, so there's frequently little or no context, and I suspect he assumed a more intimate knowledge of the movement than the average reader has. This resulted in a somewhat chaotic text that increased my sense of detachment, with sentences and sections that seem wholly random:
I didn't know Viruchana's real name then; I still don't know it now" for instance.
That said, the writing is on occasion amusing and evocative, and I suspect less personal books would be far better crafted and involving. I quite liked, for example, the reactions of his mother's friends to her new life:

The Marxists thought co-opting Eastern philosophy was intellectual imperialism. The feminists were outraged that her consciousness had fallen so low that she was carrying a picture of a man around her neck. Her therapist acquaintances warned she was projecting her primary love object in an unconscious bonding with an omnipotent fantasy and that was bound to end in catastrophic negative counter-transference. Her hippie friends thought it was a hassle to have to dye so many clothes.

I completed reading My Life in Orange, though, because I find fringe movements and religion very interesting. It is evident that Tim was profoundly affected by both the disintegration of his parent's marriage and the lack of consistent and attentive parenting. I was sorry to see, when I googled him while writing this review (something I rarely do) that he died of a morphine overdose last year, aged thirty-four. It seems unlikely the two are unconnected. I also learned that he wrote a book about the online world Second Life, and if I find it I'll see how it compares. - Alex

The Year We Disappeared - Cylin and John Busby

At the end of the long, hot summer of 1979, police officer John Cylin was shot in the face while on his way to work. Hospitalised for months and facing years of reconstructive surgery, JOhn quickly realised it was an attempted murder and suspected a local tough. His family was under police protection, but John was sure that his department was corrupt, and that the arsonist was being fed information from one or more of his colleagues. When the town protested the ongoing cost of protecting his family in the face of no charges, the Busby's vanished.
Alternating authors, the memoir aims to add to straight forward true crime by combining John's fairly dispassionate report with the impact of Cylin's recollections as a child - she was nine at the time of the shooting.
Every review I've read since reading the Year We Disappeared has been positive and full of praise - for example:

It's hard-hitting and very, very tense. Neither Busby shrinks from revealing their darkest moments or innermost thoughts and so this book has absolutely immediate insight. Nothing about this year in the family's life was exciting or special. It was all about fear, anger, and loss. - honest, unflinching, and revelatory. It's graphic and painful to read ... heartily recommend

I am clearly heartless and alone, because I found The Year We Disappeared underwhelming. In fairness to the book, I did read it in store, after night duty, so it didn't get its best reading from me. That said, even though I knew it discussed real events and real people, I just wasn't gripped by the writing or the events. I don't know why, either - in addition to the shooting itself there's the undeniable and increasingly obvious corruption, the wierd lack of support from the town and from friends and family, and the premise is compelling. Yet something about the writing, which read a lot like a therapeutic exercise, didn't capture my attention, and the end was unsatisfactory. I know that this is because there never was a satisfactory resolution - the statue of limitations has expired without so much as an arrest, let alone conviction, but that in itself could have been stronger. Eh - Alex

Making the Cut - Mohamed Khadra

Subtitled A Surgeon’s Stories of Life on the Edge, Making the Cut is the “impressionistic memoir” of an Australian surgeon, from the first time he incised a patient in theatre, through his own journey as a patient, to his decision to retire from clinical practice and teaching.
I generally enjoy reading about medical practitioners – though Atul Gawande is far and away my favourite in the genre, he is not alone. I rarely buy books now, but Making the Cut was on my wanted list for a long time, and when last year I decided to cheer myself up before having hand surgery, I bought a small stack of new works, including Khadra’s

collection of impressions and retellings that are meant to raise issues about health, surgery, death and dying…[featuring] amalgams of characters and events and fictionalised places and names…I have tried to imagine for the characters a persona and a life outside my contact with them so as to accentuate their humanity to the reader… based… on conversations and snippets of insight I gleaned from my interactions with the doctors who cared for these patients, or with my conversations with these patients themselves.

Believing doctors should be well rounded and educated, Khadra insisted that his students open their tutorial sessions with a poem, and each chapter of Making the Cut does so too.
At times Khadra well encapsulates the frustrating aspects of medicine – the utter exhaustion of long hours and high pressure, unnecessary and futile attempts at resuscitation, intervening in the deterioration of a respected colleague, the tension in private practice between generating revenue and exposing patients to as little risk (ie surgery) as possible, the ease with which mistakes can be made, and the awful consequences of these mistakes.
But he has several points he’s at pains to make. Chief among these is his dissatisfaction with the Australian health care system, from the change in equipment purchasing from surgeons deciding what they need themselves to large expense panels, to the kinds of meals served in public hospitals and refurbishment (or lack thereof) of patient facilities. As a cardiac inpatient Khadra pities the lay patients who “were not armed with the knowledge to influence their passage through the health system… the number to call maintenance to grease the squeaky door… the supervisor to call to ensure [their] bathroom was kept clean.” Reading these sections without having any knowledge of the Australian public health care sector would paint a very dark picture, and one that is almost wholly incongruent with my experience.
He also has very definite ideas about nurses – though he acknowledges that a good (“experienced and sensible”) nurse can make life easy, Khadra has no time for the new breed of university educated nurses, “custodian[s] of quality, the barometer of good care… bureaucrats rather than carers.” In Khadra’s view, if “you are a good clinical nurse then you get promoted to administration, the worst-paid job is to look after the patients” – by default, floor nurses must not be good clinicians. I don’t disagree with all his positions, and certainly agree that by qualification hospital trained nurses “had seen a lot of illness and health and certainly knew what a nurse does for a living” while university educated graduates come out with different knowledge. But I think his perception that newer nurses’ focus on charts and tools and instruments of measurement comes from a lack of awareness of patient care is misplaced – it comes from administration requirements that, though they take away from time on the floor, apparently improve patient outcomes and for which nurses are responsible in addition to all their other jobs. And while some students may think they’re above bed making, few and far between are newly graduated nurses who are allowed to believe that.
Women in general do not come out well, particularly the greedy, grasping wife of one surgeon, whose focus on money and things inextricably leads to his premature death. It’s in vignettes like this that I was particularly uncomfortable with the knowledge that many of these cases are both hearsay (or ‘retelling”) and embroidered with fictionalised additions. There are few female surgeons (and no male nurses), and though the most sympathetic treatment received is to a pre-op male-to-female transsexual, Jo is referred to throughout as “he.”
Khadred discusses the stresses on doctors, referring to the hospital as a “hell zone” that family moments (like a child opening a present or a wife showing off a new nightgown) bring back in full force (the parent who’ll never see their child’s joy again, the patient who died in a similar nightgown). I agree that there’s a lot of pressure on doctors, that their suicide rate is unreasonably high and unaddressed, as is their rate of alcohol and drug abuse, and that a great deal of this pressure is internal. And, in what I suspect is an inadvertent reflection of this within the profession, Khadred recounts two suicides by doctors and references at least two more, with little sympathy or surrounding detail. He also

to this day look[s] down on doctors who take time off. For me, the worst offenders are those that take stress leave, whatever that may be. I have always lived by the aphorism ‘stress is good for you, it flushes the coronary arteries.’

Not a lot of scope for support there.
Although he acknowledges we should consider quality of life over (or perhaps instead of) longevity, Khadred reports that he stopped exercising when he read that, for each hour spent exercising in youth, an hour is added at the end "when there is a good chance every day would be a prayer for death." This view of cardiovascular health is certainly unusual in a health professional, not to mention what it says of his perception of the aged and aged care.
This is not to say that I disagree with all of Khadra’s opinions. I agree that we make poor decisions about end-of-life care, though I think the statistic that “about 70% of the health budget is spent on caring for patients in their last six months of life,” though accurate, is misleading – the picture most people have, of old people being medicalised to the last breath, is not always the case; some of that 70% goes on patients whose first six months is also their last, on patients battling potentially survivable cancers, on previously well patients who present in terminal distress of one kind or other, and on trauma patients.
I found Khadra unsympathetic, and Making the Cut disappointing and depressing. As mentioned, I disagree with his portrayal of the Australian health system, though I acknowledge that my experience of it has been primarily with one institution and rarely as a patient. I also found his tone irritating, and didn't really understand what the point of Making the Cut was or at which audience the book was aimed. In parts a plea for economic rationalism in health care, in others an uninspiring autobiography, and at times an insider's portrayal of modern medical practice, it somehow failed to be even as much as a sum of its parts. I think a return to Gawande is in order - Alex

War Reporting for Cowards - Chris Ayers

Subtitled Between Iraq and a Hard Place, this tells the story of LondonTimes financial-turned-entertainment reporter Ayres' embedment with the US Army's 2nd Battalion 11th Marines artillery squadron.

I really like Ayres' voice, from his contemplation of Marine codes for contact with the enemy:

'Contact', in the language of the Marines, where all emotion is surgically removed to avoid collateral damage to troop morale, means being attacked by the enemy. When fire is returned it becomes 'engagement'. A nuclear exchange, presumably, is a white wedding.

Ayres was not a born war correspondent, and he's admirably honest about his complete disinclination to cover the war in Iraq. In fact, I was struck more by his candour than anything else in this well-written and absorbing book. This is nowhere more striking than in his account of September 11 - an Englishman in New York, Ayres sets the scene with his arrival in America some months earlier, and is open about his utter failure to grasp the impact of the event initially - unhappily caffeine free, and hypochondriacally worrying about his gall bladder after reading the New York Times lead story on arsenic poisoning,

I stepped into the lift at precisely 8:50 a.m.

"Down?" I asked.

"Did you hear anything about the trade center?" came the unexpected reply...

At first the words 'trade center' didn't mean anything to me. It was early, after all, and I hadn't had my morning espresso...

I wondered if this was a news story. If so, I was ill-equipped to cover it: I kept all my pens and spiral-bound notebooks at work...

There were probably much bigger stories to be worrying about, I thought. What with the arsenic in the water supply, this would probably make only a few hundred words: a photo story, perhaps.

The account that follows is vivid and traumatised, and brought back the full horror I felt watching events unfold in the middle of the night in Melbourne. In New York but not of it, Ayres speaks with shock, removed from the situation by shock and otherness - when he notices the proliferation of American flags he realises that he's "in a foreign country at war. The US had never really felt foreign to me: it did now."

His reporting of the first days on the invasion of Iraq is as vivid, honest and raw, which is not to say that it's in any way unpolished or unsophisticated. I found War Reporting for Cowards by chance while looking for follow-up works after reading The Faith Club. I'm glad I did, though I don't recommend reading it in public if you're liable to get chocked up revisiting the events of September 11. - Alex

Yes Man - Danny Wallace

When we last left Danny Wallace he had inadvertently founded a cult, and in the process lost his long-term girlfriend, Hanne. Catching up on three years of adulthood, Danny began doing grown up things, like shopping at Ikea, and in the process discovered he quite liked staying at home. So much so that he almost never went out, creating excuses for almost every social invitation. But one evening, coming home from work on a bus, Danny fell into conversation with a teacher from Aldgate, and with three simple words this nameless stranger changed Danny's life - "say Yes more." With that, Danny overhauled his attitude and life - he vowed that, whatever the opportunity, if asked he would say "yes." After buying his mate Ian several rounds, Danny then had to add a caveat, that this only applied to people who didn't know about his new life philosophy.
Along the way he pisses off a Very Serious man at a party, acquires a nemesis who sends him off on expensive and pointless adventures, reconnects with old friends, responds to spam, and rekindles a promising Antipodean relationship.
Wallace has two gifts - first, he is inspired to enact change where most wouldn't even notice the opportunity, and fearlessly carries these plans through to the bitter end, and second he is able to discuss the process with honesty, integrity and humour. Engagingly written, The Yes Man has moments of genuine hilarity - I particularly liked the two major interactions with ex-girlfriend Hanne - and deft humorous touches throughout. The mystery of the nemesis combines with Wallace's journey, and the romance threaded through is a bonus. I do hope he comes up with another stupid boy project, because they're such fun to read about, and on the way inspire me to make (far smaller) changes in my own life. - Alex

Join Me - Danny Wallace

Bored out of his mind one day, Danny was searching for something interesting to do. When his mother rang to tell him that his gread-uncle Gallus had just died, Danny had no idea that this event would set him off on one of what his girlfriend Hanne called his "stupid boy projects" (both meanings - stupid projects and projects of stupid boys - are accurate). For Join Me is the story of how a relatively normal bloke, inspired by an elderly relative's long-ago attempt at forming a commune, created a cult. By accident.
Danny discovered this information during the wake - even fifty years later Gallus's attempts were the cause of great hilarity among his surviving relatives. Out of a village of a hundred Gallus had hoped to recruit 100 members, but succeeded in only attracting three. On his return to London Danny wondered how well he'd go at gathering followers - to find out, he inserted a small ad that said only"Join Me: send one passport-sized photo to..."
What follows is a truly amusing, well-crafted tale that had me laughing aloud at several points. Each chapter begins with a verse detailing events that will follow. Chapter one, for example, begins:

1. In the beginning was the Word.
2. And the Word was There.

There is a man in Camden, Noth London, who once made me very happy.

Some of the humour is situation specific and therefore not easily described in a brief review, and all of the verses are amusing, particularly verses 9 - 11 (wherein the toasted cheese sandwich of the Leader burns) and Chapter 13, verses 1 + 2:

1. It came to pass that the words of Daniel were heard by a second Daniel, son of Ander.
2. And Daniel - nay, but the other one - was mending a chariot from the land of the Ikeans.

For conspiracy theory lovers like Lynn and I, the entire section with Benjamin (which takes up most of chapter 13, appropriately enough) is worth the price of admission, as Danny tries valiantly to distance himself from the many secret societies that Benjamin is convinced want to rule the world. I think my favourite part is when, after Benjamin asks him about a whole series of secret organisations ("What would you say if I said the words: 'The Process'?... What about The Children?... The Finderers" etc), Danny finally interrupts with:

"No. No, I've never heard of any of this lot. They're nothing to do with me. Im doing something called Join Me, and it's about good deeds. That's all. No Moon Children, Luciferians, or Finders."
"You've heard of The Finders?" Benjamin's eyes filled with horror.
"You just mentioned them a minute ago," I said...
Benjamin looked around the room, decided it was safe, and whispered conspiratorily "Since 1987, The Finders have been active, mainly in America."
The words "mainly in America" translated to me as "this is bollocks" and I sat back in my chair with a sign.

There's gold everywhere, from Wallace's self-deprecating comparisons of himself to other authors ("I'm sure if I'd been Bill Bryson my taxidriver would have told me a funny story of something") to language barriers ("She clearly meant it as a compliment, but round my neck of the woods being called 'a special' won't really wiin you any girls"), and a spectacularly amusing scene involving an evil friend and a tinted limo.
There's also impending doom - Hanne had been very clear after his last 'stupid boy project' that it had better be the last, and you sense from the start that when she finds out about Join Me she will not be pleased. There's also the tension of working out what he's going to do with all these followers, and some interesting sociological questions about joining in general, and why these people decided to Join Danny knowing almost nothing.
Join Me is spectacular fun and I cannot recommend it highly enough. - Alex

Friends Like These - Danny Wallace

Approaching his thirtieth birthday, Danny Wallace received a box of things his parents had cleared out of their attack. Memories of his childhood flooded back as he rediscovered newspaper clippings, certificates, homework and, most importantly, his old address book. Danny's parents moved around a lot when he was young, forcing him to leave old friendships behind.
Unlike his former girlfriend, who broke up with him on discovering he'd founded a movement without telling her (as recounted in the book Follow Me), Danny's wife agrees that he can try to catch up with the twelve friends from the address book, provided he earn Man Points (by doing all the domestic chores around the house that he puts off), and with the deadline of his birthday.
And thus follows an amusing, touching and engaging account of reconnection after reconnection.
Wallace has a great voice, and the touches of humour (like referring to miniature cans of Heineken has tinyken) contribute to the story rather than overpowering it.
The chapters are interlaced with school day writings ("Tuesday 24th May. I am going to a birth day party on Sunday") to support Wallace's claim of spelling excellence, photos and certificates, and by the belated return letters to a once faithful correspondent. The sequence of events adds a later layer of poignancy that's masterful.
The allure of these kinds of books is three-fold - taking a fairly common idea past it's logical termination point, actually acting on the impulse, and the near lack of adverse outcomes. Who hasn't approached thirty and decided to take stock, or thought about reconnecting with old friends? Without that impulse sites like Friends Reunited wouldn't exist. For most of us, googling the odd name or joining Facebook is enough, but Wallace is determined to track down all twelve friends, and not just email them but meet them in person, which takes him across Europe, the the US, Tokyo and Australia. And his almost reckless disregard (why wait until after the World Cup final to go to Berlin?) is intoxicating to someone who is far more timid and cautious when venturing overseas. I am one of those cautious, planning people and I was vicariously thrilled and wholly amused by Wallace's adventures. I won't go so far as to say I was inspired to see my own old friends face to face, having not so much lost track of them in the first place, but I thoroughly enjoyed the journey. - Alex

Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain

In 1914 Vera Brittain was twenty and about planning to study at Oxford, but a chain of events precipitated a war the likes of which the world had never before seen, and four years later the world, and Vera's generation, had changed in ways unimagined and unimaginable less than half a decade earlier.
The first volume of an autobiographical trilogy, Testament of Youth is Brittain's lauded reflection on that period of time. A great and lengthy work, it is not only a classic account of the Great War years but of feminist literature - it not only reflects on her own experiences but follows the impact of that war on a generation.
Or at least that's what the references to Testament of Youth that lead me to seek it out say. However I just couldn't get into it at all. I'm not sure if it was the style, the length, or just that I picked the wrong time to attempt it, but I skipped over much of the laudatory introduction and still couldn't make it to chapter 2 (entitled "Provincial Young-Ladyhood").
A taste, from pp. 27-28:

It would not, I think, be possible for any present-day girl of the same age to even imagine how abysmally ignorant, how romantically idealistic and how utterly unsophisticated my more sensitive comtemporaries and I were at this time. The naïveties of the diary which I began to write consistently soon after leaving school, and kept up until more than half-way through the War, must be read in order to be believed.

Not so much interested, but I appreciate the offer. - Alex

The To Do List - Mike Gayle

British author Mike Gayle is married, mortgaged, with a daughter and a child on the way. Yet, on the eve of his 36th birthday he still doesn't feel like a proper adult, at least not in comparison with his new and unquestionably grown up neighbours. He and wife Claire are fairly certain Derek and Jessica don't leave milk spilled under the fridge for weeks on end, or still wear undies over a decade old. Long a list writer, Mike writes an oberlist that ends up being 1,277 items long - it ranges from "eat more salad" to "clean windows" (numbers 1 and 1,277 respectively), and covers aspects of family life ("fly kite with child"), friendship ("have John and Sue over for dinner"; "post Jackie and Mark's unposted Christmas card"), love ("write love letters to wife like I used to"), self improvement ("read something by Freud"; "get to know cheese") and fiddly bits of business ("finish Guardian quick crossword begun in April").
To ensure he stuck to it, Gayle emailed all his friends with his intention to do all of his list within a year, giving them permission to tease him unmercifully if he failed. He inadvertently included his agent in the mass emailing, who approached a publisher, which is not only how Gayle stuck to it but also how The To-Do List became a book.
Gayle's voice is straight-forward, funny and honest. From the first page I found points of reference, from the unread (but once longed-for) DVD box sets to the evil siren call of procrastination and the arduousness of tackling War and Peace.
The book combines his attempts to meet his aims with reflections on his life, and the year he spent between birthdays was more than a pursuit of adulthood - it was an opportunity to reconnect with friends and family, reassess relationships, and take stock of his life. As an inveterate writer of many undone To Do lists I was inspired to create my own, far more modest 250-item version that I similarly hope to achieve by this time next year. One item is writing reviews of books in a more timely manner - Alex

Frank Stella - William S Rubin

Part autobiography (though focusing almost solely on his work), part art history study, Frank Stella explores a decade of work by one of the few post-war American artists still creating art. Born in 1936, Frank Stella appeared on the New York art scene in 1958. After experimenting with linear colour he concentrated on contrasting black with white. His first series, "the Black Paintings," resemble fine pinstripes of white on a black background, though he rejects this description and they are in reality broad stripes of black that leave thin lines of unpainted canvas showing. He used house paint over artists' oils, and re-introduced colour a few years later, retaining the symmetry and geometry of this early work. Stella was the first artist to use shaped canvases as an integral part of the composition, and in the late sixties began creating the Protractor series, 71 paintings named for Middle Eastern cities and based on intersection arcs of colour within square boundaries.
I know very little about art, and generally don't get modern art. Several years ago, while researching a paper for my more artistic sister, I read a couple of books about modern art. Though dissimilar from one another, and quite different to my usual tastes (which include well known Renaissance artists, surrealists, and the works of Vettriano, Botero, Cooke and O'Keefe), two of the paintings grabbed my attention. They were both by Stella, one of the Black series (The Marriage of Reason and Squalor) and one of the Protractor series (one of the Sinjerli variations), and interested me enough to follow it up from time to time over the intervening years.
Frank Stella is a comprehensive text, enhanced by quotes from the artist and shaped by interviews the author had with him. It is difficult, with reproductions, to get a feel for the size of the works, and there are several pictures of pieces hanging in galleries, as well as one or two that include Stella, allowing the observer to see the impressive size of each canvas. It is unfortunate that many of the reproductions are in black and white when colour is such an integral part of much of his work, and this was particularly disappointing in the metallic section. All in all, though, I found Frank Stella to be a useful and interesting overview of the first part of this insufficiently well-known artists' work. - Alex

Madam - Jenny Angell

When Abby graduated college she drifted from job to job until she began work as a receptionist at a brothel. Surprised she discovered that she really enjoyed the work, until her employer (who also rented her space to live) sent a punter down to her wile she was sleeping. Deciding she could run a call out service better than Laura, Abby chose a new name, a new location and a business title. Within a short time Avanti became Boston's premiere escort agency and Peach was known to provide excellent girls with one phone call.
Madam is Peach's story, as told to Angell, a former call girl who worked at Avanti. She's written her own story, an extract of which is included at the end of Madam - Callgirl is by far the superior work. It is coherent and interesting. Madam, on the other hand, is choppy and leaves out details that would enhance the story.
We learn about a variety of problems, like the call girl whose client expired mid act, or the client who decided to withdraw from his sex addiction and asked Peach to cut him off. But then the story ends, leaving this reader at least wondering what happened next. The most annoying of these was Jill - after several months of apparently promising work Peach learned Jill had been intimidating clients into giving her extra things (from tips to tickets to games). The story ends with Peach reassuring the client who finally revealed this to her that Jill would never know it was him who told, and organising a new girl for him. What did she do next? How did Jill react? Did this affect business with other clients? Was it something Jill had done with all if them? We'll never know. I also wanted to know about how Peach paid her taxes (prostitution being illegal in the US), tested new girls, and more about how she kept her public and private personas separate, particularly after becoming pregnant.
I finished the book but was unsatisfied. I should really have known better, as most memoirs in this vein tend to be sold more on their titillation factor than good writing. As I said, Jenny Angell's own story may be more compelling, though it won't reveal much about the day to day running of an escort agency as much as the day to day life of a high end prostitute. I'll keep you posted. - Alex

Tunnel Vision - Sullivan McLeod

At the age of 29, after much travelling, "a lifetime of silly ideas" and the odd bit of stand up, Sully McLeod decided, while in a Norwegian sauna, that he was going to try to make it as a professional surfer. Okay, he was overweight, unfit, broke, and hadn't surfed since he was eleven, but it was an idea.
Subtitled The true story of my probably insane quest to become a professional surfer, Tunnel Vision is the story of the nine months McLeod spent training (mostly drinking) in his home town of Margaret River, funding (persuading a brother to add on to the size of a business loan), and competing (see 'training) in Indonesia, South Africa, England, France Portugal, Spain, Brazil and Hawaii. Along the way he meets a variety of predominantly agreeable people, has almost everything he own stolen (including his boards), and winds up in a detention cell because he entered a country without a visa.
This is a highly entertaining and genuinely interesting tale that made me nostalgic for the misspent, impulsive youth I managed to avoid. The irreverent tone and 'she'll be right' attitude could only be Australian, and I found McLeod's take on his homeland as interesting as his account of the circuit, with the added bonus that it wasn't complicated by surf speak (there's a handy glossary at the back, though). I particularly liked his description of Melbourne as a place where, if you distilled its essence you'd have "a young woman with pink beads in her hair who studies law during the day and karate at night."
There aren't any great insights or life changing events, and this travel book has much in common with others written by young globe trotting men in their twenties, but it was amusing and the quest was absorbing enough that I almost feel bad McLeod won't get anything from my having read it, as I polished off Tunnel Vision in a spare hour or so between meeting a friend for coffee and meeting my parents for dinner. - Alex

Waiting: True Confessions of a Waitress – Debra Ginsberg

After twenty years as a waitress, Ginsberg reflects on the experience, the restaurants she’s worked at and colleagues she’s worked alongside, and the perceptions the public have, based on both her experience with diners and on the way waitresses are portrayed in films and on television.
Coming from a country where tipping isn’t mandatory (and, depending on where you’re eating, often not expected), the section on wages was a little distressing, but I have the same reaction almost every time I read about US conditions of minimum wage workers. I’m sure that, along with most diners who haven’t worked in the industry, there are many aspects that I’m unaware of, but for the most part I found myself contrasting the (what seems to be unnecessarily complex) US system of bus boys and hostesses and sommeliers with the (at least superficially) streamlined Australian experience, where one person does everything. Somehow I have a feeling that wasn’t what Ginsberg was aiming at.
There are no surprises here, and nothing I found particularly amusing or interesting. It wasn’t uninteresting, and I certainly finished it, but if I was using one word to describe Waiting it would be “inoffensive”. - Alex

I Know You're Out There - Michael Beaumier

In I Know You’re Out There personals editor Beaumier illuminates the world of personals, those ads from people looking for everything from a one-night stand with a submissive man wanting humiliation to a life-long relationship. Each chapter opens with a sample ad, altered only to protect the hapless, which epitomises the theme of the chapter – from “losers” to “someone for everyone”. Along the way, as well as learning almost everything a potential ad placer or respondent may want to know (including, most vital of all, following the advice of the editor, who’s seen it all before and knows that “likes long walks along the beach” simply won’t cut it), more and more of Beaumier’s own life leaks through. And, although he tries to remain dispassionate, more of the lonely hearts’ lives begin leaking into his – almost against his will he gives advice to one particularly shy and self-effacing man, and tracks down a vivacious senior citizen who suddenly stops placing frequent ads. Estelle has some words of wisdom that resonate: “Love, real love, is when you realise that you’re in a race to see which of you is going to die first. And the worst thing in the world is when you lose.”
Although I’m sure that, when I bought I Know You’re Out There, I knew it was non-fiction, but that was some time ago. In my ongoing (and relatively unsuccessful) attempt to work my way through my own unread books, instead of buying and/or borrowing books, I grabbed a handful from a box, sight unseen. I began reading assuming it was fiction, probably of the romantic comedy variety. It isn’t, but I Know You’re Out There is warm, intermittently amusing, and interesting. Beaumier’s voice is detached but warm, and the snippets he initially drops about his own life are intriguing, making the latter chapters – where he goes into increasing detail about his unhappy long-term relationship – satisfying. There are light touches of humour, and a lot of compassion. This is by no means a weighty or significant book, but it’s not a bad way to pass the time.
As the internet takes over from more traditional media it will be interesting to see how much longer print personals survive. In the interim it’s on some level comforting to know that, at least in one case, the person responsible for safeguarding the dreams of the lonely cares about his charges and has an investment in their lives. - Alex

Candy Girl - Diablo Cody

In this autobiography, subtitled A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, Cody (better known as the writer of the film Juno) honestly described the year when, on a whim and (somewhat) out of character, she stripped in a variety of Minnesotan clubs. A pale and pasty cubicle dweller working as a copy writer after relocating to Minnesota to live with a guy she met online (or, as she calls it, the World Wide Waste of Time), she saw a sigh for a club's amateur strip night and decided to participate. One of only two actual amateurs, she didn't even place, but something about the experience resonated and over the next year and a half or so Cody worked her way from club to club, culminating in pay-per-digit one-on-one shows for men ranging from closet homosexuals to shoe fetishists (but water sports and other "fluid ounce" variations were strictly forbidden. Unusually, for a memoir of this type (and, indeed, memoirs in general), Cody doesn't reveal anything about her life growing up until the final chapter, and that itself is more a recap than anything else. Contrary to popular conception, she wasn't sexually abused (I was a little uncomfortable with her quip that this was because she wasn't attractive enough) or otherwise mistreated.
Cody's voice is detached, witty and amusing enough to hide the fact that she doesn't reveal anything too unsurprising in her memoir. It's surely not news that stripping's harder work than it appears, that the house take a hefty cut, that there are required minimums, that the drink prices are inflated or that partaking of said drinks is mandatory. In the end, it's that detachment that robs the book of warmth and human interest that would otherwise have strengthened the story. There's very little about the other women, and almost all of that is superficial. That's a shame, because I sense they may have had a more interesting story than Cody did. All in all an interesting enough diversion, but I'm glad I read it in the shop and didn't both buying it. - Alex

Trust Me: I'm a Junior Doctor – Max Pemberton

This somewhat fictionalised diary account of Pemberton’s first year of medical practice conveys a strong and clear picture of the unexpected aspects of being an intern, from struggling with crippling sleep deprivation and useless consultants to inserting IVs (a skill not taught to medical students) and certifying dead bodies. The impact of death is something Pemberton returns to, a topic that’s too often inadequately covered during medical school:

Because we never actually think about medicine not working and people dying, it comes as a bit of a shock when we’re faced with it... The subject of death isn’t just avoided at medical school, but on the wards too. Dying people are seen as a bit of an embarrassment to doctors –
they’re reminders that we’ve failed in our jobs, despite the fact that dying is an inevitable consequence of being alive. Because of this, doctors tend to avoid dying people like the plague... It’s a bit unfortunate that a profession that continually comes up against death hasn’t yet come to terms with it.

True, but rarely openly acknowledged.
There’s also an articulate rant about the hypocrisy of middle-class recreational drug users, incidental humour (like his reflection, after a failed attempt at a night out with colleagues, that “the only thing worse than missing an avant-garde all-female dance interpretation of -Coriolanus is, surely, not missing it”), and quite a lot of acclaim for the underappreciated role of nurses.
This last is certainly balanced by criticism and concern about nursing roles. He discusses at comparative length his concern about allowing nurses in hospitals to prescribe drugs without having gone to medical school – if the UK situation is anything like that in Australia, the drugs he refers to are standard doses of over-the-counter medications like aperients and paracetamol (acetaminophen, without codeine), and can’t be given more than once without medical review. He also talks about his decision not to sedate an elderly, demented woman despite the nurses’ strong requests that he shut her up so they could have a quiet night. For Pemberton this was a difficult decision because he felt pressure to prioritise helping out the nursing staff (both because they’d been helpful and supportive in the past, and for fear that this would change if he didn’t accommodate their wishes) over the perceived best interests of his patient. Unfortunately, what neither the author nor, apparently, the nursing staff articulated was the effect of hours of demented screaming on the other, often quite ill, patients.
There’s also a heavy sprinkling of reflection on how bureaucratic rules (like a four-hour Casualty wait policy), outsourcing services, and cost-cutting adversely affect staff and patients, including a brief but reasoned discussion about MRSA (and how it’s not the fault – or at least, not just the fault - of poor hand washing technique in NHS hospitals). Pemberton’s argument for how and why private insurance undermines the NHS (using a transportation analogy) is strong and compelling, though I am a little biased - I'm also an advocate for universal health care, which is why I don’t have private insurance and as a result pay the Medicare levy surplice. Back to the book – on outsourcing parking, Pemberton recalls that “I witnessed the unbelievable sight of a man who had just seen his wife die in A&E being threatened with having his car towed away because he didn’t have a [parking] ticket.”
But the strongest impression I came away from Trust Me with was exhaustion – from the hours (as Pemberton points out, changing the law on how many hours they can work has – as in the US – only means junior doctors don’t get paid for all the time they put in) to the lack of support and sheer weight of responsibility. His entry about his biggest medical mistake particularly stands out in this regard – Pemberton, distracted by being responsible for a patient following an unfamiliar but potentially serious procedure, missed a serious but not uncommon unrelated medical issue. The patient was fine, the registrar was unhappy about having been woken in the middle of the night, and Pemberton was distraught, but all was fine. Of course, what lingered was both the knowledge of how differently it could have ended, and the fact that it was all around the hospital by the next day. I was tempted to reach through the book and tell him that there’ll be bigger mistakes coming down the track.Less funny and painful than the classic tale of a medical graduates’ first year of practice (the immortal House of God”), Trust Me is also more honest, more political, more reflective and more true (and thirty years newer). - Alex

America Unchained - Dave Gorman

Dave Gorman is well known, at least among oddballs like me, for his two previous books based on carrying through with apparently ridiculous ideas to surprising success. In Are Your Dave Gorrman? he tried to meet all the other people named Dave Gorman, but no Davids etc; in Googlewhack Adventure, he created a Googlewhack (put two dictionary-approved words into Google - if you only get one hit you've created a Googlewhack) and tried to create a ten person Googlewhack chain by visiting the creator of the first site , getting them to create a googlewhack and so on. In America Unchained Gorman, scarred by a six week book tour through America at its most commercial, bland and undifferentiated (chain hotels and everything the same wherever he went), wonders if it would be possible to travel across the US avoiding chain hotels, petrol and food. For Gorman to think is to do: he sets off to try just that, accompanied by a one-woman film crew.
As with his other works, Unchained is amusing, illuminating, surprising and inspiring. It also made me realise just how structured my life is and how few risks I take - possibly not the best discovery when I'm in Opatija* rather than, say, Melbourne. Fortunately, being prosaic and unspontaneous, this is unlikely to translate into me ditching my plans and backpacking into the wilds of Croatia.
I think my favourite part of the book is the section on Salt Lake City and Gorman's discovery of the Church of LDS. One tends to assume that other people also have one's own general knowledge, so discovering he didn't already know about a religion I've long been fascinated by made interesting reading. Suspecting that the creation of the group and its underlying precepts might be a litte... unorthodox, Gorman contacts a vicar friend, who's generally tolerant and accepting of differing faiths. his response to Gorman's enquiry about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka Mormons) is worth the price of the book, even if you don't buy it as part of a special Borders offer at the airport. - Alex

*The fact that I'm writing this from Opatija may make it sound as though I'm more daring that I claim, but its for a conference, everything's very civilized, and the riskiest, most spontaneous thing I've done here is either catch the scary bus to Rijeka (not that scary) or deecide at the last minute where to have dinner. And I'm here with friends so I'm not even adventuring on my own

Moab is My Washpot - Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry's fiction is like the man himself, at least as he appears to the casual-but-interested observer - wry, amusing, quintessentially English, somewhat self-conscious, unquestionably self-deprecating and disturbingly intelligent. This, the autobiography of his first two decades, is no different, though it's also illuminating, a little distressing, and surprisingly honest.
In Moab (a title I'd love to be able to explain without recoursing to Wikipedia, but my - expensive enough - education clearly left gaps of erudition filled by Fry's upbringing), he details his childhood, the lack of trauma of being sent off to boarding school as a young child, his long-held and deeply-rooted fears and anxieties, the shock of secondary school, his growing realisation that he was gay, and how (though not so much why) he went off the rails entirely and disappeared with a stolen credit card.
Sprinkled through the autobiography are (mostly) relevant and (always) interesting essays on a variety of topics, including a dispelling of the strongly held belief that gay sex is both unnatural and all about buggery, an explanation of why it's not distressing to go off to boarding school when it's the norm for everyone your know, and why our imperfections (like his broken nose) are important. He also describes the cockiness of intelligent youth (and my vocabulary is now enriched with the words pleonasm, as well as being replenished with the known-but-lost sesquepedilianism and prolix), the inculcation of U and non-U behaviour (including the appropriate pronunciation of such words as Monday and interesting, and the eschewment of serviette and mirror).
It's thanks to Moab that I now know Alexander Graham Bell once said "I do not think I am exaggerating the possibilities of this invention when I tell your that it is my firm belief that one day there will be a telephone in every major town in America."
Most of all, Fry beautifully and exquisitely captures the torment and tortures of childhood, from those that reverberate throughout our adulthoods to those that are wholly forgotten until we're reminded of them years later. Like Fry I wrote letters to myself to be opened by my older self, complete with stern admonishments that were embarrassing in retrospect, and pilfered petty cash from my parents (though never whole credit cards from hosts when I was a house guest). I could never write as well as Fry, but if I could this is what I'd want to write. - Alex