My Favourite People and Me 1978–1988, Davies. Non-fiction. Like Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, this memoir has what I think of as a non-traditional structure. In this case, each year constitutes a major section, with each of Davies’s “Favourite People” during that year given a sub-section. Unlike ZSW, the parts that are not straight-ahead memoir are contextual, historical, and atmospheric. The structural conceit is, unsurprisingly, stretched to the limit a number of times, with the nominal subject of a sub-section frequently taking a back seat to other notable people or events.
Given that Davies is a fairly thoughtful guy who grew up about the same time I did, I found it easy enough to identify with his accounts, though since he is English and I am not, I found the stories of exciting Cricket encounters less gripping than I otherwise might have. Even the football, of which I am also a fan, did go on a bit for my taste. I did find one parallel especially entertaining, though: In the 1979 section, he writes “There was a feeling amongst my peers that, culturally, American was best.” At the same time, my peers and I were discovering Monty Python, and had quite the opposite feeling. If I were to write a similar memoir, there could be several sequences in which my friends and I annoyed those around us by affecting ridiculous accents that we fancied were British.
Overall, it holds together reasonably well, and I enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about Davies than I had seen in QI.

Among Others, Walton. Yes. Walton continues to perform reliably for me. My only issue with this coming-of-age story, set in roughly the same era when I was coming of age, is that there is so much nostalgia and name-checking that, when it was over, I felt like there should probably have been a bit more story.

Night Watch, Pratchett. Yes. This was my first Discworld novel, though its Discworldness made no apparent difference to my reading. Pratchett’s writing is really quite solid, and I enjoyed Night Watch quite a bit: engaging characters, likable and detestable as required; flexible setting; compelling story.
I do not love Pratchett so much that I am going to become a completist, by any means, but I do think he is a reliable fall-back if I’m out of book with nothing else pressing.

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: a Book, Oswalt. Non-Fiction. I neglected to check the title page, so I don’t know for sure, but I believe the primary title should be rendered
☐ Zombie
☐ Spaceship
☐ Wasteland
and my own scorecard would look something like
☐ Zombie
☒ Spaceship
☐ Wasteland
I had somehow expected this to be a novel—even managing to miss the ‘B’ on the spine—so I was a bit surprised to find it instead more a series of sketches, many of them autobiographical.
Even the not-obviously-autobiographical material provided insight into Oswalt’s life and career: I suspect the script punch-up notes section would have been both funnier and sadder if I had ever worked as a script doctor, which makes me sorry and glad I have not.
The ability to make other people laugh nearly inevitably springs from a deep supply of what Roy Blount calls “sefflo” (short for “self-loathing”), and I think it’s fair to say Oswalt is not an exception; however, ZSW does an excellent job of letting the reader not look too hard in that direction. Oswalt can, after all, make us laugh.
Contractually obligated mechanical notes after the jump Continue reading →