I read Starter For Ten a few months back, after walking into Waterstone’s and discovering the film was based on a novel (hadn’t yet seen the film). As the film stars James McAvoy (best young actor to come out of Scotland in the last 5 years IMO) I had intended to see it in the cinema, but picked up the book when i saw it in order to read it before seeing the film. I thouroughly enjoyed that, so ordered the understudy when i bought a load of books a short time ago. I finally got around to reading it, and found it less engaging and more clichéd than Starter…
The characters are believable, but for each one i could imagine who would play them in the film (which Nicholls is writing a screenplay for) and found their interactions less than realistic. I know Nicholls has a full CV, but i wouldn’t be surprised if this is his final book, nor would i be surprised if his next book is about a journalist or a screenwriter, as he seems to only be able to draw on his own experiences when writing

Not much of a story, more a comment, but whilst reading an article about Sebastian Faulks’ new Bond novel this week I discovered that Jane is supposed to be a re-working of James Bond. The name Fleming would be the biggest clue to that, but even without knowing that I loved the book, and next time I read it, with that in mind, I’ll probably view Jane in a completely different light.

I’ve wanted to write something in this style for a while, and may still do it. I really enjoyed this book, although really disliked one of the characters/narrators (but I think that they’re deliberately unlikeable) much more readable than fever pitch, and hopefully the jumping around of narration will prevent anyone attempting to butcher it into a film (with the exception of high fidelity and the original fever pitch (which i’ve not seen) the hornby films are trite) although it works well with election.

This is yet another fantastic album from The Polyphonic Spree. If you don’t like melodic happy rhythms and a multitude of instruments creating a wholly organic sound then it’s not for you, otherwise go and buy this album. There’s a beautiful LP version available as well as the CD, and for all you “modern” people it is available for the usual low quality download on iTunes, but why bother with that when you can get it on full quality CD or LP and actually hold the album in your hands. The CD also comes with a special DVD (if you buy the special edition) charting the making of the album as well as showing a video for the title track.
It’s not as good as their previous “Together We’re Heavy” but i cannot wait to see this album performed live.