Reviews and Comments

I feel that for music to have some impact on you it needs to have been part of the soundtrack of your life. For some reason, the Foo Fighters (1995) music never featured in the soundtrack of my life, so now on listening to their back catalogue, only one or two songs were familiar to me. I do have the memory of buying Nevermind (1991) when it came out in because I shared the purchase of the CD with a friend because we weren't sure if we liked any of the other songs apart from Smells Like Teen Spirit. I had the CD for a couple of weeks and then passed it on to him. I'm not sure who has it now.

With the death of Taylor Hawkins, Dave Grohl's name must've come up a lot and somehow I started getting recommendations on YouTube for his interviews. So watching Dave Grohl's interviews reminded me of what a nice guy he is and what an interesting life he must have led.

This lead me to this book and since starting I haven't put it down, well actually, I listened to the audio recording read by Dave himself straight through.

One of the appealing things about Dave Grohl is how much of a fanboy he is and through his own music managed to meet and play with many of his childhood heroes. Just listening to him tell of how excited he was to meet them and how he bumped into them through amazing coincidences is really touching.

If you know who Dave Grohl is you should listen to this book. I laughed a lot and cried a little too. I just hope he is doing OK right now.

I realised while reading this that I didn't have TV for the early 1990s and it wasn't tuned to football much for the later 1990s so much of the history of Paul Gascoigne was new to me. If you like stories about football you'll enjoy it very much. What a crazy life! Huge respect to him for coming back after career ending injuries.

This book covers his history before he turned to the dark side.

I wondered what I was getting into when I started this book as many of the "mutants" described are very seriously disabled people due to birth defects. However, continuing through the book it is a compassionate description of how small genetic differences can lead to huge changes in animal and human physiologies.

I probably need to reread this book at some stage to annotate the interesting observations but since it is a few years old it probably is getting a bit out of date as scientific knowledge has progressed.

One thing that it lead me to consider was that ageing may be adverse manifestation of the genes that were useful to us until our expected age of child-rearing is complete. Humans have never lived longer than we live today and some bad effects of useful genes have never been seen until modern times as prehistoric people just didn't live long enough to express them.

Good Cop, Bad War

This is probably one of the scariest non-fiction books that I have read.

I saw Neil Woods on some YouTube channels and heard some of the stories there so wanted to read his book for the extra detail and background.

With a backdrop of his own dysfunctional marriage it traces his development from being a gung-ho undercover police officer in the UK infiltrating drug gangs to an advocate of the end to the war against drugs and the wholesale decriminalisation of drugs.

I know nothing about drug culture at all but his story are arguments make a compelling case and are a gripping read.

The scary part is the two parallel worlds that he portrays and how on going to a town he managed to pick out the people to contact and within a couple of introductions he was face to face with some of the most dangerous people at loose in the country.

Also scary was the attitude of some of the police in this and how they make the problems worse and put him and other people in more dangers.

A really interesting, honest account of the drug dealing sub culture in the UK.

The W.F. Howes Audio book was really good.

Probably the best modern football tactics and strategy book. Ever wanted to know who started playing out from the back first? Or where possession football started? What the difference between Klopp's and Guardiola's football is? And who influenced them?

The audio book was great but I really feel the need to get the Kindle version to read it again slowly and annotate it.

I was initially going to say that this is more of a general history of Europe but gradually I got in tune with the theme of the book.

I think that probably you would get more out of the audio book if you follow along with the maps and charts that I expect are in the text versions. Also, talk of the genetic markers makes me want to get tested too.

One thing that comes across is that the origin of the scots is complicated and diverse. The people we see today are not the same mix of genes a hundred years ago or even that of a thousand years ago. Very poignant given the politics of accepting refugees and immigrants.

Worth a read if you are interested in the history of the people of Scotland and those who arrived on it's shores.

I had always known about this book. First of all I didn't really get much out of it because the audiobook reading of it was a bit lacklustre and boring.

I do have a idea now what it is about and will keep it in mind if I am planning to invade a neighbouring country. I can see that it does contain good advice in this situation.

To get the most out of it you probably need
some kind of annotated version to understand the historical context of what he is saying.

I have a vested interest in this book as I run 20+ strong football supporter group and have in the past attended all home and away games in a season following my team in Japan. I avoid using the term ultra as I know there are fans who attend every away match including those abroad and would think nothing of taking a trip to see the youth team or a friendly match. Ultras in Japan are as likely to be a retired couple or a young family with kids in tow. Unfortunately, this book only mentions Japan in passing but that is fine. Maybe, it is for me to write that part.

Having said that, this is a fantastic book, a scary book and a really in depth delve into ultra culture which is a fanaticism that surpasses left and right politics, race or religion. It shows how strongly knit tribal groups form and why they are feared by the authorities. In many countries, for good or bad, the violent ultra groups were the only citizens who could take on the police when demonstrations turned violent.

As a book it does a great job to shock and amaze and is entertaining and informing. I'll definitely read it again.

Also, speaking in March 2022, this book is a goldmine of information about the situation in Ukraine and the political situation there. It also covers a lot about the subtle and not so subtle influence of Putin in other European countries and the complex political situation in Balkans and how money, football, hooliganism, rent-a-mobs have been used to sway the politics of many of those countries.

Crazy brave reporting and investigation went into this book.

I have read around the topic of the English Civil War but I always wondered why the English Republic invited King Charles II back to rule.

This book is a detailed investigation into the events that preceded it mainly Cromwell's refusal to accept the title of the new hereditary King and his avoidance of making it clear who the next Lord Protector would be. The legislators were not anti-monarchy as such but preferred a godly king that was not Charles I.

We tend to look back at history with the eyes of our current experience but this book really brought home how differently they thought about the situation. For example, Parliament were convinced that they had God's blessing because of the military victories that they had attained in The Civil War but the failure and loss of the colonies in the Caribbean obviously showed that God was angry with them and they pondered as to what it was. As a result some suspicion lay with Cromwell as he was head of State so must have something to do with it.

I can't say that I listened carefully to this book as it was in the background at times when I did other things but I did feel that I have better grasp of the topic and enjoyed it.

One thing that surprised me was that Cromwell died partly from Fens Malaria. Looking into it, malaria was endemic to the Fens at that time and was a killer until the last century when the number of stagnant water bodies were reduced by drainage and it died out.