(not so good)

This pulled me out of my reading ennui with the fabulous tale of Joseph Banks on Captain Cook’s first cruise to Tahiti. A wonderful story, which continues into Banks’ relationship with Herschel and his sister, a pair of most devoted cosmologists, who discover a new planet, which might have been called George (after their patron George 111rd) but which in fact became Uranus. Later we encounter Humphrey Davy and his amazing experiments with laughing gas. He had parties where they all went out of their minds. Very Sixties. But at least he perfected the Miners lamp, a lamp with a live flame that would not cause explosions from coal gas.

I read this because I did a staged reading for charity with the Hankses in the Spring, with the insanely brilliant Marty Short, the extraordinary Kenneth Branagh and the hilarious Tracey Ulman, not to mention Reba MacIntyre singing country songs and so on…oh it was a great evening of delightful Shakespearean insanity, all in a good cause, for the LA kids Shakespeare thing. That being said it’s not so much a play as a Panto, being the response to a direct request to Shakespeare for a Christmas entertainment from the Queen. (Elizabeth 1) She wanted to see more of Falstaff.

I enjoyed this tale of a man who buys a gold mine. The title is the definition of a gold mine, often (apparently wrongly) attributed to Mark Twain, It’s actually a story of two pairs of brothers. The hero who has great affection for his brother, although he betrays him with women, buys an old, and possibly ex, gold mine for fun and gets some local friends to help him. They are approached to sell by two rather less real Asian brothers in the mining business, who eventually attack them, and blow them up and burn down their house and do everything in their power to take the mine. In many ways it is of course a movie and like a movie it must and does have a satisfactory resolution. My problem was how to write something useful for Dan, knowing how publishers work. I came up with two quotes: “ Like Jane Austen, without the violence “ which Dan liked, and a slightly longer one… “Smart, sexy, funny and a brilliant story teller. And that’s just me. Wait till you read Dan…”

A rather enjoyable thriller novel which I also downloaded, and I am reading a PDF download of his latest novel as he has kindly asked me for a quote, which is a daunting task for a comic.

A long essay and a fabulous expose of the exaggerated charity of the somewhat smug writer Greg Mortensen’s Munchausen-like claims in Afghanistan. Very good.

I vaguely wondered if this play might make a musical, but it seems to have lost its charm. I used to love the old movie with Rex Harrison.

Tales from the joke face. Stand up memoirs of a British comedian very well told.