Soho in the Eighties (Christopher Howse)

Christopher Howse
Soho in the Eighties

Not really about Soho but about 2 pubs and a bar that the author hung out in. Interesting as they are pubs that I frequented when meeting friends, The Coach & Horses and the French House, usually before going to a club. The Coach is the famous Jeffery Bernard pub of Private Eye's The Regulars comic strip. Although some interesting anecdotes about artists, journalists and hangers on you get the feeling that they are mostly alcoholics and either too pissed or too interested in getting pissed to notice anything else going on around them in Soho. They come over as a self centred and argumentative lot which addicts often are and people you wouldn't really want to hang around with. By descriptions of the Coach you'd think that the regulars described lauded it over the place but I never really noticed the goings on when I drank there. Another irritation is Howse constantly going on about how poor they all were and therefore how bohemian - despite most of them going to public schools and Oxbridge and coming from rich families. And they all seemed to write for (mainly) right wing papers such as the Times, Telegraph and Spectator. The overall impression is that most of the people mentioned are slumming it in Soho and either died through alcoholism and it's physical or mental health affects or got out when they reached a certain age to settle down in to normal society. I would imagine that if I had noticed them in the Coach or the French House I'd have thought what a bunch of sad wankers.

Lady Sings the Blues (Billie Holiday)

Billie Holiday

Lady Sings the Blues

Written with William Dufty. Autobiography of the famous jazz singer packed full of anecdotes and her life's path which was not easy by any means not least as a black woman plying her trade in America. In some ways what Billie had to put up with seems like another world - in many ways probably not a lot different to today. One very interesting piece is about when Billie toured Europe and how we back in the 50s apparently treated drug addicts as medical cases with doctors giving addicts what they needed and governments putting addicts through the health service rather than the prison service. Billie talks about how many drug users are in American prisons and what a waste it is and with no proper rehabilitation many will go back on heroin. Also making the point that addicts buy drugs on the black market which are unpure leading to deaths and also very expensive leading to robberies. She hopes that in time, perhaps not her lifetime, that America will take up the European model. Unfortunately the opposite is true with America jailing more and more about half being for drug offences. Until the mid 70s the incarceration rate for American males was 200 per 100,000 population. That has gone up five fold. So for every 100 men 1 is in a federal prison. Half for drug offences. For the population those under "correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison)" it's nearly 3% of the population. One in three black boys born today will go to prison. Although drug use among African Americans is much less that amongst white Americans. It would break Billie's heart. Although the book ends on a very optimistic note about being clean and with a loving man she died a few years after it was published having been abused by her man, back on drugs and virtually penniless. A great read by a beautiful Lady with a tragic life story.

Moll Flanders (Daniel Defoe)

Daniel Defoe

Moll Flanders

Hardly the racy novel that I was expecting as the descriptions of sex are not graphic by any means. In some ways this is a precursor to later novels of the trials of a woman, or girl, left destitute in the world and how she makes her way. The difference between much later novels is that the morality of prostitution, or at least promiscuous living, and theft is put forward as inevitable in order to survive which is exactly what Moll (Defoe) tells us. The critical analysis at the start of the novel, note it's a real spoiler, as is the introduction by Defoe to be honest, puts this in the context of political upheavals of the time and are interesting. The novel is a good read and although not particularly descriptive of people or things has enough detail to bring you nearer to the early 18th century.

Olive, Again (Elizabeth Strout)

Elizabeth Strout
Olive, Again

... the sequel I read straight away and by the end of it realised that it's not the stories as such that are the point here but the feelings and small actions of the characters which is the point of the novel, and the first, and once I realised this I could float along on the descriptions of people, place and feelings without anticipating and action or wrap up of loose ends. Enjoyable, again.