The Whale; The Ladybird Books Story – TV review

"Thar she blows!" said one of the crew as a whale came to the surface. The cetacean wasn't the only thing blowing heavily in The Whale (BBC1), a 90-minute dramatisation of the sinking of the Essex, a Nantucket whaler, by a sperm whale in the Pacific. This was the shipwreck that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick; the BBC film was so laboured it only served to unintentionally remind me of Melville's genius.

The Whale felt like a big-screen movie epic trapped inside a relatively small-budget TV programme; the vastness of the ocean, skies and the whales got hopelessly lost. Worse still, it was structurally flawed, unable to make up its mind whether it was a rite-of-passage story for the young Tom Nickerson on his first voyage, a clash of wills between the two leads – the smouldering First Mate Chase and the even more smouldering Captain Pollard – talking in pirate-speak or Orca Strikes Back. Inevitably, it fell between every stool.

The biggest disappointment was the whale itself. The whale scenes had been filmed by the BBC's natural history unit and they looked like it. They were beautiful, precise and graceful and wouldn't have been out of place in a David Attenborough film. What there wasn't was any sense of the menace or personality that had captured Melville's imagination and was supposed to be present here.

When the whale attacked the boat, it came from out of the blue rather than from the sailors' perceptions they were locked in a struggle that the whale had made personal. As soon as the Essex sunk, the whale was out of sight and out of shot. It was forgotten by everyone, until the mariners had been floating round in the Pacific for several weeks – not, initially at least, appearing to experience much discomfort in their small open lifeboat – when the voiceover declared: "We all wondered if the whale was following us still." The whale must have been as surprised as I was to hear that.

The voiceover was another issue. Presumably because the BBC felt it was in need of a big-name star on which to sell the film, Martin Sheen had been roped in for a curiously lifeless cameo as the ageing Tom Nickerson, recounting his adventures to an unseen audience. All that was required was for Sheen to deliver deathless cliches, such as: "There is a darkness, blacker than the blackest night," straight to camera, a feat he managed without embarrassment. Though as Sheen's face is now so rigid, displays of emotion are probably beyond him. Long before the last remaining survivors were picked up, I was cursing the whale for not having done the job properly an hour previously.

I don't think that the Ladybird book series ever got round to doing a retelling of Moby Dick for children, but the company has managed to encompass almost everything else since it produced its first title during the first world war. For many of us who were born in the 1950s and 1960s, Ladybird books were our first literary love. For some of us, it's a relationship that continues to this day. I still can't resist dipping into my 1963 edition of Captain Scott, An Adventure from History; it gave me an enthusiasm for polar literature that has never dimmed. It was the book that taught me that it was far, far better to fail heroically and die than plan sensibly and come first: a lesson I have carried with me throughout my life.

The Ladybird Books Story: How Britain Got the Reading Bug (BBC4), the latest in the consistently good Timeshift series, was a heartwarming exercise in nostalgia. It outlined how the company began with a format to make the most of paper during the war shortages and became every parent's go-to source for learning-to-read schemes, history, science and nature books. But these were mostly jumping-off points for contributors such as Andrew Motion, Chris Packham and our own Lucy Mangan to talk of the meaning and impact these books had to and on their childhoods.

The Ladybird legacy has been far more powerful than any government initiative. A whole generation of children grew up learning Ladybird History. I'm surprised Michael Gove hasn't placed the books about Florence Nightingingale, Charles II and Sir Francis Drake on the national curriculum. And it's not just the younger generation who have reaped the benefits. During the Falklands war the army handed out copies of the Ladybird How to Read a Map for all those soldiers who were a bit lost near Goose Green. Ladybird: serving the nation faithfully for nearly 100 years. Long may it last.

Two books on Apple and Google: ‘Dogfight’ by Fred Vogelstein; ‘Jony Ive’ by Leander Kahney

Steve Jobs was many things: visionary, showman, iconoclast, hippie, bully, mentor. It turns out he was also naive.

As Fred Vogelstein writes in “Dogfight,” his illuminating, fast-paced book on the war between Apple and Google, Apple engineers knew that Google was working on its Android phone software as they were preparing to release the iPhone in 2007. But Jobs wasn’t worried. The companies were partners, even friends. Jobs was a mentor to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt was an Apple board member, even appearing onstage when Jobs introduced the iPhone. These Google guys would never betray Jobs.

But of course they did.

When Google entered the mobile-phone business, Brin and Page knew the stakes. “It’s hard to imagine a more revolutionary object than the object the two companies started fighting over: the smartphone,” Vogelstein aptly writes. “The smartphone has fundamentally changed the way humans get and process information, and that is changing the world in ways that are almost too large to imagine.”

Apple vs. Google is a battle over who controls the new way information — music, video, words, pictures, data — flows through the world. That Google opened up a lemonade stand right next to his own enraged Jobs, and it led Apple to sue Google’s hardware partners around the world. It eventually led to a tablet battle that in the coming years will almost certainly lead to a TV battle. “What this means is that Apple versus Google isn’t just a run-of-the-mill spat between two rich companies,” Vogelstein writes. “It is the defining business battle of a generation.”

If that strikes you as hyperbole or silly words about silly gadgets, the next time you have dinner with your spouse at Applebee’s, look up from your smartphone and gaze around: You’re probably not the only one scrolling on a gadget when you should be, you know, talking. These tiny screens dominate our lives. We are entertained by them. Our children learn with them in school. Our doctors diagnose us with them. They disrupt industries — television, newspapers, book publishing, Ma Bell, who knows what’s next. Surveys have shown that not a small percentage of Americans would give up sex for a week before giving up their smartphones.


Vogelstein, a contributing editor at Wired, does a solid job introducing us to the foot soldiers in the information war — the non-household names who engineer the devices and software we can’t quite put down. Jobs, it turns out, was more a master editor of other people’s ideas than strictly an idea generator of his own, terrain that Walter Isaacson previously explored in his brilliant Jobs biography. “Jobs had to be talked into building a phone,” Vogelstein writes.

Perhaps the most riveting part of Vogelstein’s book is his re-creation of the days leading up to Jobs’s now-famous introduction of the iPhone. What nobody knew as Jobs showed off the device onstage is that it barely worked. It was riddled with bugs, and there was only a faint chance it could actually complete a call. Engineers gave Jobs a “golden path” of tasks to perform for his show, ordering the functions so the phone wouldn’t crash. They sat in the audience taking shots of scotch after each successful part of the demo. By the end, the flask was empty. The iPhone worked. It was, as so many said afterward, magical.

Vogelstein seems to think Google’s smartphone and tablet strategy — mostly giving away its software to manufacturers to put on their devices — is beating Apple’s grand ambition, which is to control everything, from the glass to the icons. He notes that Google’s Android software dominates the smartphone market and is running neck-and-neck in tablets. Those stats are true but miss more important data points.

For one, Apple has never cared much about market share. It does care about profits, and it controls more than half of smartphone profits around the world, though Samsung is closing in. Also, it’s not just how many devices Apple sells but what people do with them. And that’s a lot. Industry statistics show that Apple’s operating system crushes Android in the United States when it comes to mobile Web traffic — the very bits of information Google and Apple are brawling over. The more data that flow through Apple’s devices, the more entrenched those devices become in people’s lives. And Apple sells more. It’s the circle of digital life. Already Apple is slowly easing users away from Google’s services. Apple’s Siri voice search is now powered by Microsoft’s Bing. Google Maps no longer comes preinstalled on the iPhone.

The Year's Best Books for the Road Ahead

There's no better season than the present to read books that bring good tidings, tested strategies and sound advice about how to live healthier, happier lives in the year—and years—ahead.

Here are our recommendations for the year's best books for staying fit in all ways as you explore the territory ahead.
Belly Laughs

"Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys?" is comedian Billy Crystal's autobiographical musings on aging, decade by decade, and the perfect antidote for milestone birthday blues. Having trouble deciphering text and Facebook abbreviations? Invent your own, says Mr. Crystal, starting with GNIB ("Good news, it's benign"), OMG ("Oh, my gout") and WAI ("Where am I?"). He also has a full chapter on "The Five Stages of Forgetting Things"—a blank page.

Be prepared for some coarse language and a few rants too many, as well as a bit too much about his starring roles in films you may have missed. But his theme is on target: Whatever decade of life you're in, humor is the best strategy for keeping your own foibles—and everyone else's—in perspective.
Rewind to the Future

In her informative and witty "Counterclockwise: My Year of Hypnosis, Hormones, Dark Chocolate and Other Adventures in the World of Anti-Aging," journalist Lauren Kessler sets out to find "the best research and the worst scams" in the wannabe-fountain-of-youth marketplace.

"What exactly is possible in this brave new (scientific, medical and commercial) world full of tantalizing research, bold promises, controversial therapies, and perhaps a bit too much wishful thinking?" she asks.

She consults with plastic surgeons, seeks out medical tests that may (or may not) shed light on how her cells are aging, grows grumpy on a calorie-restriction diet, and investigates unsubstantiated claims of a multiplicity of vitamins and herbal supplements. Her conclusion: Ultimately, nothing beats "the sweaty truth" of exercise.
Mental Gymnastics

And don't forget to exercise your mind. "Our brain's health may be the most powerful indicator of how long you will live," begins "Your Best Brain Ever: A Complete Guide and Workout" by Michael S. Sweeney with Cynthia R. Green. It's a research-filled yet highly approachable guide to the scientific why and the practical how of keeping your brain in top shape whatever your age. The authors' "fitness regimen" for maintaining neural health through the decades can be summarized as: use your brain matter, or risk losing it. But they also provide numerous practical strategies for maintaining neuroplasticity—essentially, the ability to keep on learning and adapting—primarily through continued social, intellectual and physical engagement, but also via numerous "brain booster" exercises.
A Glass Half-Full

In "Up: How Positive Outlook Can Transform Our Health and Aging," physician and medical researcher Hilary Tindle promotes pragmatic optimism as a powerful tool for improving not just how we look at life, but how we age through life. No, it isn't about being a Pollyanna. It's about being "up"—cultivating an outlook and attitude that favors possibilities. Beyond the behavioral impact, Dr. Tindle presents an impressive array of research to show how the psychology of outlook affects the biochemistry of aging, down to the cellular level. Finally, she provides a practical seven-step plan for helping the glass look less empty, more full. Think of it not as a workout, she suggests, but as working "up."
A Guide For Guys…

At more than 500 pages, "A Man's Guide to Healthy Aging: Stay Smart, Strong and Active" by Edward H. Thompson Jr. and Lenard W. Kaye covers almost everything you need to know, but might be afraid to ask, about keeping fit mentally, physically, socially, intellectually and sexually through the decades. The authors directly address the necessity of a book focused solely on men: Because many men equate seeking medical help with weakness, they are about 50% less likely to seek out health services than women are.

Chapters give equal weight to mind and body, openly discuss issues of intimacy and aging, explore the stresses and costs of masculine stereotypes and present the latest medical and psychological advice for navigating a healthy course.
And One For Gals

"French Women Don't Get Facelifts: The Secret of Aging With Style and Attitude" is best-selling author Mireille Guiliano's latest follow-up to the series that began with "French Women Don't Get Fat." Her style is chic, her attitude is self-declared French. (And there are recipes!) Some of the advice is familiar (stay active, seek out new interests, most of all be comfortable in your own skin, even if it has a few more wrinkles). But her grooming and fashion tips on keeping hair, makeup and wardrobe both agelessly attractive and age-appropriate are choice and delivered with charm.

"This book isn't about actual face-lifts—or about not having them," she writes. "It is about face-lifts in the sense of aging with attitude and the decisions one makes through the decades." Sit down with the book as if with a girlfriend over coffee or a glass of (French) wine

Bavaria Ends Funding for Scholarly Edition of 'Mein Kampf'

BERLIN—Bavaria's regional government has ended its funding for a controversial book release: a new, annotated edition of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," which hasn't been published in Germany since World War II.

The wealthy South German state of Bavaria—which holds the copyright until 2015—had been planning to co-publish an edition of the book with historians' notes highlighting the flaws and falsehoods in Hitler's arguments, in an effort to get ahead of other potential editions that might be released once the copyright expires. But this week, Bavaria decided the plan to publish Hitler's manifesto in Germany for the first time since 1945 sends a wrong signal, at a time when German authorities are trying to outlaw the extreme-right National Democratic Party of Germany, or NPD.

"I can't file a request to ban the NPD [at the constitutional court] in Karlsruhe and then associate our Bavarian coat of arms with the distribution of 'Mein Kampf'. That's bad," Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer told the state legislature this week.

Bavaria and Germany's other federal states are seeking to ban the NPD at the country's highest court, arguing that the party is "spiritually related" to the Nazis and seeks to subvert democracy. The NPD denies the charge.

The effort to ban the NPD comes amid renewed national soul-searching about the persistence of extreme-right ideology on the fringes of German politics. The debate was spurred in part by a criminal investigation and parliamentary inquiry into a spree of murders of immigrants by neo-Nazis, which police failed to solve for many years.

In an about-turn, the Bavarian science and education ministry this week announced it will pull out of the project to publish a critical edition of Hitler's book, citing respect for the feelings of victims of the Holocaust and their families.

Historians argue that a critical, annotated edition of Mein Kampf is essential to countering many of the falsehoods and anti-Semitic claims that Hitler makes in the book. Supporters of the planned publication say Bavarian officials' fears that the book's re-release will incite hatred today are overdone.

The planned two-volume edition, heavy with academic annotations, is unlikely to appeal to far-right activists today, said Richard Evans, historian at Cambridge University.

Mein Kampf is also "very boring" to read and unsuited for rabble-rousing in today's Germany, Prof. Evans said.

In 2012, Bavaria pledged €500,000 ($687,546) in public funding for the Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History, of IfZ, to produce a critical, annotated version of "Mein Kampf" for publication in 2015 when the copyright expires.

Bavarian finance minister Markus Söder said at the time that the publication would aim to "demystify" Hilter's manifesto.

The IfZ institute says it will carry on with the project even though the public funding will end, citing the importance of Hitler's treatise as an historical source. It won't have to repay state money handed out so far.

IfZ director Andreas Wirsching said on Thursday that he hopes the critical edition will "break down the propaganda in the work and make it transparent."

"Mein Kampf," which translates as "My Struggle," dates from the mid-1920s and outlined Hitler's radical anti-Semitic views, as well as his vision for German dominance in Europe.

Most Nazi symbols and paraphernalia are outlawed in Germany, including the swastikas and the stiff-arm Nazi salute. Mein Kampf isn't banned. Germans can already read it on the Internet, and buy it overseas or in secondhand bookshops.

But Bavaria has blocked the publication and sale of new copies in Germany since 1945.

Copyright expires 70 years after an author's death, meaning Bavarian authorities will lose their copyright from the end of 2015, seven decades after Hitler committed suicide in the final days of the war.

But the Bavarian government says it will continue to ban publication and distribution of the book in Germany through the courts, arguing that it incites ethnic hatred. It says it will make an exception for scholarly versions aimed at academics, such as the IfZ's edition.

Books 2013: The best books of the year

Lauren Beukes on Sci-Fi

'The Space Race' by Alex Latimer

This is a kick-ass thriller with deceptively lovely insights into human

relationships, about a secret apartheid space programme in the Karoo that gets

hijacked.

'The New Girl' by SL Grey

The third in the series of a disturbing downside world that overlaps our own in

the liminal spaces of a glossy mall, in a government hospital and now, an

exclusive private school. Smart horror with a scathing moral conscience.

    Beukes's latest novel is the critically acclaimed novel 'The Shining Girls'

Imraan Coovadia on literary fiction

'The Whispering Muse' by the Iceland writer Sjon, or Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson

I really like this book. It's not a book I can explain. It's light, strange,

related to Homer's Odyssey and Viking ballads, and sees the centrality of fish

in the universe.

'A Map of Tulsa' by Benjamin Lytal

It's a perfect New York literary exercise set in Oklahoma, or wherever Tulsa

happens to be, which is also a coming-of-age story.

'All That Is' by James Salter

I know I shouldn't like it but I do. It's the best novel written by someone in

his 80s. In fact, it's better than any novel written by anyone in his or her

60s. And there's also something eminently distasteful in its views of women and

life and its wandering story.

    Coovadia's essay collection 'Transformations: Essays' recently won the

South African Literary Award for Creative Non-fiction

Pieter-Dirk Uys on political non-fiction

'My Big Fat Gupta Wedding' by Zapiro

The one genius whose cartoons can make you laugh through your tears.

'The Zuma Years' by Richard Calland

Especially good for his wonderful suggested cabinet of South African women.

'A Passion for Freedom' by Mampela Ramphele

To help flesh out the extraordinary profile of a potential national leader.

    Uys's publication 'Panorama' is in its second printing

Andrew Donaldson on thrillers

'Someone to Watch Over Me' by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

The guff about Sigurdardóttir being Iceland's answer to Stieg Larsson is

regrettable, for the Thóra Gudmundsdóttir novels are way better than The Dragon

Tattoo trilogy and this, the fifth, is the best yet. A young man with Down's

syndrome has been convicted of torching his care home, killing five people, and

lawyer Gudmundsdóttir has been hired to prove his innocence. This is superior

entertainment.

'City of Blood' by MD Villiers

The crime debut of the year, this enthralling, provocative evocation of

Johannesburg's underworld has been longlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New

Blood) Dagger. It's a fast-moving rush, and most of the action unfolds in the

eyes of an orphaned youth whose life is thrown into considerable turmoil when

he goes to the aid of an elderly gogo who is being attacked by a Nigerian

knifeman. Villiers has given her coming-of-age thriller a cast of memorably

menacing characters, but it's the city itself that is most threatening.

    Donaldson is The Times book columnist.

Jade Zwane on erotica

'Slow Sex' by Nicole Daedone

Slow Sex encompasses OM, orgasmic meditation which is a 15-minute partnered

sexual practice that refers to orgasm not in the circular. Orgasm may or may

not include climax and includes everything from sweaty palms to faster

heartbeat, etc.

'My Romantic Love Wars' by Betty Dodson

I consider myself a sex-positive feminist and feel that Dodson is one of its

leaders. Her memoirs discuss how she came to be sexually liberated and non-

monogamous after being repressed about sex.

'A Girl Walks into a Bar' by Helena S Paige

I haven't yet read this highly anticipated book, but I'll be packing it in my

beach bag.

    Zwane is the author of 'aDICKted'

Sihle Khumalo on travelogues

'The Last Train to Zona Verde' by Paul Theroux

Theroux, already on his 70s, is as cranky and grumpy as ever. He calls Africa,

the very continent he is trying to explore northwards along the Western shore,

"violated Eden of our origins". His rich, true-to-life and picturesque

descriptions of places, transport and circumstances are legendary and make one

want to rough it up in Angola yesterday.

'City of Myths River of Dreams' by James Marr

Comical writing for a not-for-sissies adventure: overlanding through West

Africa. Run-ins with police, a ruptured fuel tank and other endless problems

are quickly forgotten when the team (author, wife and two friends) stop for yet

another alcoholic refreshment.

    In 'Almost Sleeping my Way to Timbuktu', Khumalo shares his own ambitious

journey through five West African countries

Laurence Brick on coffee-table books

'Interiors Now' edited by Margit J Mayer

Interiors Now is a visual indulgence of the world's best contemporary homes,

from world-renowned potter, home furnishings guru and decorator Jonathan

Adlers's retro-inspired colourful Shelter Island home to architect and designer

Shamir Shap's modernist interiors in a former printing press in Chelsea.

'Vanity Fair - 100 Years' edited by Graydon Carter

The best gift I received for my birthday, this book reflects the last 100

years, telling the story of a century of modern culture and society. Art and

interiors are part of this and beautifully documented, my favourites being on

architect and furniture designer Florence Knoll, whose furniture became design

icons of the 20th century, as well as highlights from the phenomenal 2006 Art

Issue.

'Living with the Light' by Axel Vervoordt

Beautifully photographed, Belgian designer Vervoordt's urban and rural

interiors showcase his passion for art and design.

    Brick is creative director of 100% Design South Africa

Andrew Donaldson on Music Books

'Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop' by Bob Stanley

For 50 years or so, pop music - full of the potency that held Noel Coward in

such thrall - was consumed like this: you heard a song on the radio, you read

about it, you bought the record, you lent it to friends, they lent you theirs,

and thus you not only built a cultural network, but you provided a soundtrack

to your life. What's changed? The recording industry may now be in dire

straits, thanks to the digital revolution, but our love affair with pop culture

is as strong as ever. Erudite, funny, informative, here is the history of it

all in 750 enthralling pages. Absolutely indispensable.

'The Beatles - All These Years: Tune in, Volume One' by Mark Lewisohn

The first volume in an ambitious trilogy. It's 900 pages long and only covers

the group's career up to 1962, when they were on the brink of stardom. The

obvious question, given everything that's been written about The Beatles, would

be: what more can possibly be said? Well, lots, it would seem. Much of what's

here is the pre-Fab stuff - that is, it's unfamiliar and comes across as

revelatory and fresh. Lewisohn spent 10 years on this project, and it shows.

Best for kids

'Lion vs Rabbit' by Alex Latimer

This is a delightful book. It's about a lion who is a big bully (such a

relevant theme for children, no matter what age they are) and the poor animals

that just can't get him to stop. Then one day, rabbit comes along and manages

to beat this bully (using brain not brawn). The illustrations are beautiful and

the story is so smart. I loved the clever clues in the pictures so that

perceptive readers can figure out for themselves how rabbit is outsmarting

lion. I think the author's playfulness with words and his superbly subtle

humour are such a boon for adults, who may be reading this book over and over

again to their children.

'If You Want to See a Whale' by Julie Fogliano and Erin E Stead

I so enjoyed this book for its simplicity, serenity and subtle messages about

mindfulness and patience in life. The words are so lyrical and rhythmic that

reading aloud is almost like a meditation, I thought. How beautiful for bedtime

reading. The illustrations are muted and soft, yet have surprising details,

like the little bird that appears on every page.

And the message, well, little ones may not get it totally, but surely will feel

the patience and calmness that the book inspires. These are virtues that we all

tend to forget in our rushed, busy world, so I think it's refreshingly

worthwhile to find a book to remind us.

Tips, links and suggestions: What are you reading this week?

I finished Roberto Bolano’s The Savage Detectives yesterday. What a book! I wasn’t sure what to make of it to begin with but was enjoying the writing enough to just let myself go with the flow and see where it took me, and I’m incredibly glad I did.

For those who haven’t read it, it’s long (577 pages), dense (an enormous cast of characters, most of whom narrate at some point), and unusual. The story of a group of somewhat brattish teenage poets in Mexico City in the 1970s who go off in their own directions, and are tracked through to the late nineties, with the story told by a large cast of those whose paths they crossed, in a story which embraces real events, real literary figures, and fictional creations. The central characters of Belano and Lima (who never narrate but are at the heart of the story) are apparently closely based on Bolano himself and his best friend.

That might sound like the worst sort of navel-gazing, but it's actually vivid, dark, heady, and occasionally very funny, but always fascinating and well composed

LeoToadstool:

Finished The Quiet American and was mightily impressed. It was my first Greene: he really knows how to create a narrative of psychological depth and marry it to a plot worthy of a thriller. I couldn't help but be reminded of The Great Gatsby while reading it, as both novels explore the dangers of idealism and the nasty compromises one makes to achieve the unobtainable. It is quite quotable too.

Now straight into Lessing's The Fifth Child. One word assessment so far: hypnotic.

BEST BOOKS OF 2013: Ed Piskor finds a beautiful groove with ‘Hip Hop Family Tree’

ED PISKOR was born just after most of his current book takes place. And yet his latest graphic novel booms and resounds with such a sense of textured observation, you’d swear the young Pittsburgh cartoonist must have been alive and around and tuned in during the infancy of hip hop.

“Hip Hop Family Tree” (Fantagraphics), Piskor’s first book about the ‘70s New York rise of a music and a culture, positively pops — if not pop-locks — off the page with its energy and movement. And those pages themselves even bear the yellowed aesthetic of nostalgia.

Through his painstaking study of the period — with references that range from gritty ‘70s films (like, say, “The French Connection”) to Bob Camp album covers — Piskor is able to render a world that resonates as truth. And his encyclopedic knowledge of early hip hop allows him to blend smart narrative lines with his bold pen lines.

As Piskor works on the next volume in this hip-hop series, Comic Riffs caught up with the cartoonist to talk about journalistic storytelling, Pittsburgh art — and his commitment to depicting hip hop’s origin story.

 ED PISKOR: Sitting around drawing comics all the time gives you plenty of time to think and unfortunately, sometimes my mind wanders. The premise of hip hop and comics being related is one subject that I would keep coming back to. It's not just comics and hip hop that go together. There are other things too like pro wrestling, and Garbage Pail Kids. These were/are all forms of trash pop culture that makes parents nervous, so I naturally gravitated toward them. I've always had problems with authority, and it was right up my alley early on to go around with comics in my back pocket while uttering profane a-- rap lyrics just to be a brat.

Those bratty impulses subsided over the years, and my increasing analysis of comics took over, but I still have these outside interests that I want to explore. Comics and hip hop go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

MC: In looking at “Hip Hop Family Tree” more broadly, [it seems you’re] hitting a new aesthetic peak, visually. There is so much going on there, with achieving a yellowed-nostalgia look and delivering a style that feels gritty-yet-sorta-pretty — there's beauty in roughed-up surfaces, when the only thing "slick" is Rick.

EP: Thanks. It's sort of cliche at this point when you hear a cartoonist in an interview say that they're just trying to make a comic that they'd want to read — and the phrase applies to every aspect of the “Hip Hop Family Tree.” I'm 31 years old. I've been doing comics for like nine years, and it's only now that I'm slowly starting to get closer to where I want to be creatively. There's still a ways to go. I'm a slow learner.

I think it was important for this project to simply be a cool comic. Everybody's getting their heads wrapped up in this idea of being “graphic novelists” or being “fine artists who dabble in comics,” and I've been into this stuff for too long to desecrate where I've come from. This isn't supposed to be some grand literary work. It's a big f---ing comic. That's why the dimensions are huge. That's why the paper looks yellow. That's why you see four different color dots that make up the entire color palette of the narrative. I never want the reader to forget that it's a comic book. A cool comic book.

 MC: Like a fellow Pittsburgher who found a creative mother lode in what arises artistically in New York — that naturally being Warhol [and the ties to Basquiat and '80s art/music shows feel utterly organic here], you deftly render New York boroughs in “Hip Hop Family Tree” that feel as though they're own real worlds. Beyond the real-life characters, what do you do to capture and re-create these retro-scenes?

EP: There are some great films that capture the vibe of that crazy time in the Bronx and New York City. Hip hop films like “Wildstyle” and “Style Wars.” Troves of gritty New York City movies like the works of Scorsese. “French Connection.” “Pelham 1-2-3.” Martha Cooper's photography. Henry Chalfant's photography. It's a well-documented era and as far as the comics component goes along with it, whether they knew it or not, these old Marvel cartoonists were drawing 1970s New York City until [Todd] McFarlane came onto the scene.

MC: Good "based on real life" comics writing, many forget, is rooted first in good reporting. How did you approach the journalism for “Hip Hop Family Tree,” because you obviously follow your fascination to some pretty deep and interconnected places — like, not just down the rabbit hole, but down to where the subterranean tunnels connect up to other pop-cultural tunnels.

EP: It's so daunting that people use the term “journalism” describing my method, but I can't think of a better term — and the approach legally allows me to explore the subject matter without getting into trouble as long as I employ the proper, common sense, journalistic ethics.

First and foremost, I strive for accuracy. I'm fully immersing myself in everything I can about the subject. Zooming in on specific scenarios, I spend a week on each scene to make sure I get things as close to “right” as possible.

If there is some question about an event or situation, if there's a popular idea about what happened but some people say things happened another way, I will specifically put the words in the characters mouths to absolve myself personally of being considered wrong by somebody who matters. A good example of this would be, throughout the book, you will find no less than three ... people taking credit for coining the term “hip hop.” I found four plausible etymological origins of the phrase credited to various people who were all there at the inception. I also made note not to take sides on the issue.

MC: Pittsburgh feels like one heckuva great comics scene right now — and the city [was] sure well-represented at this year's SPX. Does it feel like creatively fertile environs to you now, and does that seem like quite a contrast to your sorta-isolated Homestead childhood?

EP: I like that you brought Warhol up earlier. I wonder if his Pop Art expertise contaminated the water in Pittsburgh or something. There's definitely a connection between what he constructed and where we're at now. I think it's pretty great that several of us started getting published right around that same time and we naturally became friends. I'm talking about Jim Rugg and Tom Scioli. ...

I spent the first 21 years of my life obsessed with comics, and literally the only time I would be able to talk about it was for maybe 20 minutes on Wednesdays to the clerk at the comic shop. It's great to absorb and share information with close peers. In fact, I can say it put my work maybe five years ahead of where it'd otherwise be if I didn't have good people around me.

Blue Peter Book Awards 2014 shortlist announced

Tony Robinson, best known for his role as Baldrick in BBC Comedy Blackadder and as the presenter on Channel Four’s Time Team, is in the running to win his second Blue Peter Book Award (following a win in 2007) for his book Tony Robinson’s Weird World of Wonders: World War II, illustrated by Del Thorpe. Also on the non-fiction shortlist are Jonathan Litton and Thomas Flintham with Marvellous Maths and Jon Richards and Ed Simkins with The World in Infographics: Animal Kingdom.

The award also celebrates fiction with the Best Story category, which has three titles competing for the accolade: Oliver and the Seawigs, an inventive sea adventure from another Blue Peter Book Award winner (2007) Philip Reeve and illustrator Sarah McIntyre; Whale Boy, by Nicola Davies; and Rooftoppers, by Katherine Rundell.

The shortlist was announced on Blue Peter today. CBBC presenter Katie Thistleton, who was on the judging panel for this year’s award, appeared along with Jeff Kinney, the author of the successful Wimpy Kid series. Diary of a Wimpy Kid was crowned the Best Children’s Book of the Past 10 Years by Blue Peter voters in a poll conducted last year.

Author Marcus Sedgwick, who was also on the judging panel, said: "Judging a book award is a very hard thing to do. With the Blue Peter Book Awards there's also the added responsibility of knowing the loyal viewers of the show are waiting for our selection."

More than 200 children from 10 schools across the UK will now read the six shortlisted books and vote for their favourites in each category. The two winning books will be announced live on the Blue Peter programme scheduled for World Book Day on March 6, 2014.

The best drink books of 2013

Oddbins used to stock a wine in the late 1990s called Kiwi Cuvée. It was a sauvignon blanc from the south of France designed to taste as if it came from New Zealand. This summed up the direction wine was going in at the time. Supermarkets sold wine made to a formula and at the top end highly paid consultants created lush "iconic" wines for well-heeled collectors. There were still plenty of interesting wines out there, but the received opinion, not least from the EU, was that unfashionable vines such as Carignan should be ripped out to be replaced with Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. This homogenising trend is thankfully over. Variety is now everything. Tesco even has a half decent Old Vine Carignan in its Finest range. Whereas once the concept of terroir – a sense of place – was mocked by Anglos as a marketing device used by the French to sell wine without any fruit character, these days it's used without ironic quotation marks around the globe (though my spellcheck still tries to change it to "terrier").
The World Atlas of Wine

It couldn't be a better time, therefore, for Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson to publish the latest (seventh) edition of The World Atlas of Wine (Mitchell Beazley). It is a very different book to the last edition and now includes detailed maps of some of the most exciting emerging regions – such as Croatia, the district around Mount Etna in Sicily, and Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne, which is rivalling Burgundy for its elegant Pinot Noirs. Cannily, there are two pages on China. The book is a celebration of terroir and a logical companion to Robinson's Wine Grapes (2012) – an expensive and exhaustive encyclopedia of every grape variety in the world. There's an infectious sense of glee about this new atlas. I get the impression that Johnson and, in particular, Robinson with her humorous pedantry, really enjoyed writing it.

The other new edition of a classic worth noting is Alex Liddell's Madeira, the Mid-Atlantic Wine (C Hurst & Co). Madeira is a wine whose long and colourful history you can actually taste – 18th-century wines from this island are both quite easy to find, and still drinkable.
World's Best Cider

It's not only wine in which variety is being rediscovered. Fifteen years ago it was quite hard to get a decent pint of bitter in London, let alone proper cider, but recently a new wave of pubs have opened dedicated to craft products. Cider, for a long time drunk only by teenagers in bus shelters and the Wurzels, is now attracting serious attention. Best known for his beer writing, Pete Brown has produced World's Best Cider with Bill Bradshaw (Jacqui Small). Although it looks like a coffee-table book with lots of photos – many of them stunning – it's also written with wit, knowledge and passion. You might even go as far as to describe Brown and Bradshaw as the Johnson and Robinson of cider. I had no idea that cider was so widespread outside the three cider superpowers of England, France and Spain. The Germans make cider and express surprise that anyone else does, the Irish drink the most cider per head and in Quebec they make a super-sweet ice cider. It's not all good news though, as it is shocking how few actual apples go into some commercial brands. Nevertheless, one gets the impression that cider is currently the most exciting drink in Britain and is only going to get better. Growers are still trying to match the best apple varieties to the right land, just as grape growers did in Bordeaux and Burgundy generations ago.

It's a great time to be drinking but it's not necessarily a great time to be reading about drink. This year saw far too many books along the lines of "200 Wines to Impress your Father-in-law" or "A Beginner's Guide to Craft Beer". Most were illustrated and designed to be easily marketed to English language readers worldwide. They're all starting to look alike, just as the products they celebrate are becoming increasingly diverse. Drink books are now either for gifts or reference. What is lacking is the sort of book that you want to read in bed – an Elizabeth David or Jeffrey Steingarten of wine, perhaps – to make you smile, think and, rather than trying to educate, assumes a certain knowledge and interest on the part of the reader. There are lots of people writing about drink in an interesting way on the internet. There are even some Americans trying to combine comedy with wine, albeit not very successfully. None of these writers, however, are producing engaging books for the general reader.
Sediment Guide to Wining and Dining

The two books I enjoyed most this year didn't come from traditional publishers. Reds, Whites & Varsity Blues: 60 Years of the Oxford & Cambridge Blind Wine-Tasting Competition (Pavilion) – don't be put off by the title – shows how wine writers can entertain when they're given a bit of space to breathe. It features noted wine types letting their hair down or at least giving their toupees a good airing. I particularly enjoyed Oz Clarke on sticking it to the toffs as a grammar school boy at Oxford, and Will Lyons on claret and the Auld Alliance. The second book is an ebook only thing called Wining and Dining: Sediment Guide to Wine and the Dinner-Party (Sediment). It brings a mixture of seriousness and silliness to the strange ritual of the dinner party. In the right hands, wine and comedy can go together.

Books to Watch Out For: December

“Brown Dog” (Grove Press), by Jim Harrison, out December 3rd. Brown Dog (or B.D.), a down-and-out, Upper Peninsula Michigan Indian prone to roaming in pursuit of his appetites, first appeared as the title character of a 1990 novella, in which he tries to recover the body of an old Indian preserved at the bottom of Lake Superior. Since then, B.D. has developed over the course of four more novellas, in which he does everything from searching L.A. for the man who stole his bearskin to caring for special-needs foster children while suffering from a chronic toothache. This volume brings all the Brown Dog stories together for the first time, along with a new, sixth novella, “He Dog,” in which we find B.D. on a road trip to Montana for a chance at love. Harrison’s writing is funny, generous, and bittersweet, with an

“Dangerous Women” (Tor Books), edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, out December 3rd. Among the twenty-one original stories in this cross-genre anthology (a companion to the 2010 collection “Warriors”), some are entirely new, and others are continuations of best-selling series—a novella by George R. R. Martin, for example, about a civil war in Westeros before the events of his beloved series “A Game of Thrones.” All are linked by a focus on anti-damsels in distress: “sword-wielding women warriors, intrepid women fighter pilots and far-ranging spacewomen, deadly female serial killers, formidable female superheroes, sly and seductive femmes fatale, female wizards, hard-living Bad Girls…” Diana Gabaldon, Jim Butcher, Sharon Kay Penman, and Lev Grossman are among the volume’s contributors. —R.A.


“In the Night of Time” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), by Antonio Muñoz Molina, translated by Edith Grossman, out December 3rd. Publishers Weekly called this expansive novel a “ ‘War and Peace’ for the Spanish Civil War.” A story of love, violence, and politics, the book is told from the perspective of a Spanish architect named Ignacio Abel who flees Madrid for New York in 1936, leaving behind a wife and children. His recollections of his rise from inauspicious beginnings to notable success wind through the true historical events of Spain in the thirties. The complex plot and dense descriptions echo Molina’s earlier works, including the much-praised “A Manuscript of Ashes.” “In the Night of Time” was received with prizes and enthusiastic reviews in Europe. It is the fifth of Molina’s books to be translated into English. —A.D.



“Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York’s Legendary Chelsea Hotel” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), by Sherill Tippins, out December 3rd. These days, the Chelsea Hotel is famous largely for the bohemian crowd that gathered there in the sixties and seventies. Tippins’s history of the building surveys all the expected anecdotes from those years—Bob Dylan writing “Blonde on Blonde,” Andy Warhol filming “Chelsea Girls,” Janis Joplin sleeping with Leonard Cohen, Sid Vicious apparently murdering Nancy Spungen—as well as providing a more thorough sense of the atmosphere where these events occurred. Tippins also goes further back in history, to the building’s founding, in 1884, as the home of an association dedicated to the communal-living ideas of the French utopian Charles Fourier. In those days, the neighborhood was on the edge of town, and the Chelsea was the largest residential building in New York. The neighbors feared that “Parisian-style apartment living might lead the residents to looser moral standards.” Maybe, in retrospect, they were right. —A.D.


“No Regrets: Three Discussions” (n+1 Foundation), edited by Dayna Tortorici, out December 9th. This pocket-size book—the fifth in n+1’s pamphlet series, and a follow-up to 2007’s “What We Should Have Known”—features engaging, often funny conversations with twelve female writers, editors, academics, activists, and artists about reading in their late teens and early twenties. What books do they wish they had read? What books made them want to write? What books do they avoid revisiting? Where did they get cues about what to read? (Elif Batuman: “I had the worst time ever trying to read Henry Miller in Samarkand. I had a serious crush on a guy who said that ‘Sexus,’ ‘Plexus,’ and ‘Nexus’ were the best books ever, so I went to a bookstore, and they were too expensive, so I just got ‘Sexus’ and ‘Plexus.’ ”) Tortorici, who moderates the discussions, describes “No Regrets” in her introduction as “a book of women talking about the processes of becoming themselves.” —R.A.



“Neutrino Hunters: The Thrilling Chase for a Ghostly Particle to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe” (Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Ray Jayawardhana, out December 10th. Neutrinos gained widespread attention in 2011, after a team of physicists in Europe discovered that the subatomic particles could travel faster than the speed of light, thus violating Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Those findings turned out to be erroneous—the result of faulty experimental equipment—but among physicists like Jayawardhana, neutrinos have been a subject of keen interest for decades. In “Neutrino Hunters,” Jayawardhana, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Toronto and an award-winning science writer, chronicles more than eighty years of neutrino research by some of the “most brilliant minds and colorful personalities in the history of physics,” from Wolfgang Pauli to scientists today, and explains the particles’ enormous implications for cosmic phenomena like stellar explosions, dark matter, and the early stages of the universe after the Big Bang. Neutrinos, he writes, are “by far the most elusive and the weirdest of all known denizens of the subatomic world”; but, for neutrino hunters, “the best is yet to come.” —R.A.



“Heir to the Empire City: New York and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt” (Basic Books), by Edward P. Kohn, out December 10th. Teddy Roosevelt has come down to us through history as the Rough Rider President, living strenuously and gleaning his political outlook by exploring the untamed American West. This new biography of Roosevelt argues that our understanding of him is upside down, that the Western adventurer was a persona that Roosevelt promoted to play to voters’ romanticized notion of the frontier, while his politics were, in fact, firmly rooted in his upbringing and political training in New York City. Kohn’s last book, “Hot Time in the Old Town,” explained how New York’s disastrous 1896 heat wave, which occurred while Roosevelt was the police commissioner, helped vault the young man onto the political stage. “Heir to the Empire City” expands this storyline, looking at Roosevelt’s biography and writings to demonstrate that Teddy was as much an urban sophisticate as he was a cowboy, and more of a New Yorker than a frontiersman. —A.D.


“The Long Voyage: Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1987” (Harvard University Press), edited by Hans Bak, out December 16th. Boswell of the “lost generation,” literary editor of The New Republic, and champion of authors from Fitzgerald and Faulkner—whose career he resuscitated—to Kerouac and Kesey, Malcolm Cowley lived a long life and wrote a ton of letters debating, critiquing and defending the state of American literature. (Kenneth Burke, Allen Tate, Conrad Aiken and Edmund Wilson were among his closest interlocutors.) The majority of the letters in this collection have never before been published; they are presented here in chronological order, with a foreword by Cowley’s son, Robert, and extensive biographical notes by Hans Bak, the book’s editor. Cowley was a “barometric chronicler of his literary times,” writes Bak in his introduction; his collected letters amount to a heady portrait of American literary and intellectual life in the twentieth century. —R.A.

The 100 best novels: No 11 – Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (1845)

For more than a decade after the death of Jane Austen in 1817, the English novel was rather in the doldrums, a reflection of the times. English literary culture was making the transition from the high camp of the Regency to the hard grind of early Victorian society. A brilliant new generation would burst on the scene in the late 30s and early 40s. For the moment, the leading novelists of the age were Sir Walter Scott and his protege, "the great Maria", Maria Edgeworth, the Irish-born author of Castle Rackrent and Leonora. Rightly or wrongly, I am choosing to pass over these names for the list on the grounds that I do not know enough about their work to make a good judgment.

Meanwhile, the British readership was avid. There was, more than ever, a booming market for new fiction. The novel had become the medium in which ambitious young writers could make a splash. Bulwer Lytton, author of Pelham; or the Adventures of a Gentleman, (and later, The Last Days of Pompeii) was one of these. Another was the young dandy and rising political star Benjamin Disraeli.

I've worried about Disraeli's place on this list. Would he have made the cut if he had not become prime minister? Or if he had not dazzled and enchanted Victorian society for so many years? His literary contemporaries such as Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and even Anthony Trollope are much greater novelists. Disraeli's plots are far-fetched, and his characters balsa-wood. And yet… At the same time, he has flashes of brilliance that equal these greats at their best. There are, for instance, lines in his precocious early novels, notably Vivian Gray, that rival some of Oscar Wilde's. Is it fanciful to see Dorian Gray as a kind of homage from one outsider to another?

Disraeli is not just a fascinating literary sphinx who famously said, in answer to someone who asked him if he had read Daniel Deronda: "When I want to read a novel, I write one." With his polemical fiction of 1844-47 (Coningsby, Sybil and Tancred), he more or less invented the English political novel. From this trilogy, Sybil, or the Two Nations stands out as perhaps the most important Victorian condition-of-England novel of its time.

In its own day, Sybil precedes, and possibly influences, Mrs Gaskell's Mary Barton (1848), Charles Kingsley's Yeast (1848) and Froude's Nemesis of Faith (1849). Occasionally, this genre was taken to ridiculous lengths, as in Mrs Frewin's The Inheritance of Evil, or The Consequences of Marrying a Deceased Wife's Sister (1849).

Disraeli, the novelist, is far more sparkling than all of these. The opening scene of Sybil, the eve of Derby day at Crockford's, is justly famous, a tour de force with some celebrated zingers. "I rather like bad wine," says Mr Mountchesney. "One gets so bored with good wine." Having begun in a London club, Disraeli moves swiftly to explore the two nations of the subtitle. His portrait of life in a grim, northern manufacturing town is vivid and memorable. Like Dickens, he made a point of researching those parts of the novel that fell outside his experience, and it shows.

As many critics have noted, the most important character in Sybil is Disraeli himself. As an author, he is irrepressibly at large in all his writing. His voice resonates from page to page, and his sympathy for the plight of the poor elevates even the dullest passages. The speech in which the young Chartist agitator, Morley (in love with Sybil) describes "the Two Nations… between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy" is brilliant, passionate and unforgettable, reaching its climax in that celebrated upper-case line: "THE RICH AND THE POOR."

English political rhetoric still refers to one-nation ideals. Weirdly, Disraeli has occasionally been appropriated by Ed Miliband's Labour party. In Taper and Tadpole, he created memorable archetypes who still crop up in the Westminster village. Without Disraeli, Charles Dickens might not have written Hard Times. We are approaching the summit of the mid-Victorian novel.

A note on the text

Disraeli was unlike Dickens, Thackeray et al. He never published in serial form. His novels miss the advantages and problems of serialisation. Instead, he adopted the standard Victorian three-decker form – simultaneous publication in three volumes at a guinea and a half for the set. Disraeli was not a bestseller. Coningsby and Sybil sold about 3,000 copies, and gave him a profit of about £1,000 per title. Sybil was advertised for sale in the Times, on 8 May 1845. The publisher, Henry Colburn of Great Marlborough Street, owned one of the fashionable imprints of the day. Disraeli was a starry young MP. It was natural for publisher and author to do business.