So we’re on to book 11 (only 11! It’s November!!) and this is my first non-fiction. In fact it’s my first since I started doing these reading blog projects. The last non-fiction I remember reading was Danny Wallace’s Join Me which must have been pre-2006 and I didn’t finish that.
Mark Kermode is someone I enjoy on the radio on the weekly podcast of his movie reviews with Simon Mayo. It’s Only a Movie is a sort of autobiography. I say sort of only because it’s in more or less the right order but leaves lots out and jumps around – as he often does on the radio once he gets on to a tangent about a particular movie he goes with that.
What you end up with is a series of anecdotes about being a film critic. They are well told and funny and yet don’t seem to add up to a whole lot. Strangely it felt a lot like the radio show but I liked it less. I think the value of having someone to spar with, and someone who drags him back on topic is not inconsiderable.
6/10 – a light entertaining read but not much more.