The beautiful Shirley Eaton has written an impressive, fascinating autobiography that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about her life and about the classic James Bond film, "Goldfinger." Miss Eaton played the "golden girl" who was suffocated to death by gold paint early in the film -- her playful scenes with Sean Connery are among the best in the whole series of Bond films, and the image of her covered in gold paint is one of the icons of '60s cinema (landing her on the cover of Life magazine in '64). Miss Eaton tells all the behind-the-scenes stories of that film, making this book a must-have for Bond fans. What's more, she chronicles her own life and long career in witty, intelligent fashion, proving herself to be not just a lovely, talented actress but an inspiration for others. Especially fun are her reviews of other actresses -- Miss Eaton's critiques are insightful and on the money. If you don't know much about Shirley Eaton, you should, and this book is the best way to see what she's really like.

Actress Shirley Eaton examines her career and film history from the 1950s-60s, blending her memoirs with an insider's examination of the changing film industry and its many complications. Chapters do more than provide reviews of Eaton's experiences in film; they consider changing images of glamour and stars, and provide insights on fellow actors. Black and white photos pepper this coverage.

If you like Bogie than this is the book for you. Great photos accompany a readable text spanning the film great's lifetime. Bogie had an aura around him and this comes out in this book in photos such as the two on pp 156-157 where the original tough guy has Bacall on one arm and Norma Jean on the other. With Bogie what you saw was what you got. If you liked what you saw then check out this book.

Jonathan Coe has been favourably compared to Charles Dickens and it's not hard to see why. The classic Dickensian markers - a huge cast of characters, the use of foreshadowing, the social commentary - are all very much in evidence in Coe's work.

'What a Carve Up!' is a thoroughly post modern romp through the decades from World War II through to the early 90s. Coe uses the villains of the piece, the Winshaw family, to explore various aspects of British society during the period with humour and compassion and without resorting to diatribe. Most notably, he takes numerous broad swipes (not always effectively or fairly) at the 'greed is good' ethos of Thatcherite economics.

The finale sees justice meted out to those who deserve it - and justice is not always a punishment in Coe's world - in a thoroughly Biblical manner.

You will read Coe's work for the characters and the up-all-night-reading plot. But what you will remember is his apparent message: 'Watch out, hold on to your integrity....but keep on laughing.'

Some reviewers criticise "What A Carve Up!" for over-the-top satire, cartoonish portrayals of purely evil characters, and shrill polemic style. I got to the book in America in July, 2002, and while I agree that the bad guys are dealt with simplistically, the treatment may not be so far off the mark. Ten years after Coe researched this book, all his issues remain in the headlines. The West is gearing up again to topple the monster we created and armed in Saddam Hussein. Agribusiness conglomerates have devastated what remained of small farm America, brought other trouble to the towns where their enormous operations brutalise the workers and animals; and people only wonder more about the ever-increasing hormone and feed treatments used to make our food. Anyone who tunes in to certain American TV and radio networks, or reads certain columnists, will notice that right wing politicians and pundits have gone on to perfect the demonically dishonest rhetorical style Coe goes after (particularly on pp 137-138, 63-64, 385-88, 313 of the paperback edition titled "The Winshaw Legacy").

As for the charge that Coe unfairly makes greed out to be a bad thing, what Thomas Winshaw does to Phocas Motor Services in the book (pp 322-24 of my edition) was played out in many much worse factual scenarios that I know of in the US throughout the 1980's. (Look at what US Steel did to southeast Chicago, for starters.) And his analysis of this sort of capitalism couldn't be any more relevant with all the short-sighted and criminally dishonest market manipulations by politically connected that are coming to light Stateside in 2002 (Enron, Harken, Halliburton, Dynegy, Worldcom, Global Crossing, Adelphia...). Think of the havoc that these scandals have brought to individual lives among employees and fundholders who counted on these 'businessmen' - really a network of interconnected charlatans - to be running sustainable companies, not inflating the value of their options to whatever unsustainable level would maximise their personal wealth. Lack of subtlety should be the last criticism pinned on someone who addresses this sort of outrage head-on.

In short, you don't need to be British to get this book, not even to appreciate the parts devoted to the National Health Service. The points he makes are just as relevant to what's happened in America under Reagan and Bushes I and II. I agree with the critcism that Coe panders to upper-class resentment by attributing all these various corruptions to one aristocratic family, when it's untitled corporate conservatives throughout society who need blaming. But he is doing a satire, and the aristocratic trope serves as the novel's framing device.

This is the first Coe book I've read and I loved it. It's funny and clever, develops the plot in a fragmented, looping chronology with multiple perspectives, sources, and interlocking stories - all presided over by a very unhappy and frustrated lead narrator. You know, the sort of things you find in Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, and Will Self novels (and seemingly all serious films since at least 'Pulp Fiction'). But it is more straightforward, with less literary ambition, or pretension, than what I've read from those authors. The story is much easier to follow, and one can say exactly what happens at the end, rather than speculating on the desultory and stridently ambiguous finishes those other authors frequently give us.

The unfashionable clarity is a result of the book's overt politics. I find that Amis and Self bury their political commentary in stories that focus on how tormented their characters feel by the unexplained vagaries of life and how irreversibly complex it's all become. Coe, on the other hand, is willing to identify and blame the forces that have made society such a mess and living so hard to figure out. It's not some Fat Controller with supernatural powers, nor a mysterious seeming-friend doing improbable things with the money system to play out a personal grudge. It's right-wing politicians and businesses who, among other things: control our news sources and fill them with meaningless gossip or misleading agitprop, stoke up wars and profit on arms sales, industrialise food production at the expense of the ecology and consumer health, and intentionally ruin our public services to serve their theological devotion to laissez faire economics. In this way, Coe actually has more intellectual heft than the authors who imply that the world is just cosmically, unfathomably unfair and unpleasant. He's telling us that the malignant forces are entirely within our control, were we willing to stand up to the bent plutocratic filth that are allowed to run our governments and economy.

Englishman Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club is quite simply the most hilarious, laugh-out-loud novel I've read in years.
Not only is this politically-charged coming of age novel a gut-busting, funny-when-you-least-expect-it literary tour-de-force, it's an assured (although ultimately flawed) work displaying a rare élan and maturity seldom found in the works of young contemporary American writers.
Both an elegy to and an excoriation of the sordid "brown" Britain of the 1970s, which starts around the failure of the Edward Heath's Tory government and the attendant nationwide strikes, power blackouts, and general misery experienced by the population, the book moves through the resurgence of the Labour Party and the death of Socialism as marked by Margaret Thatcher's election victory in 1979.
Yes, this is a social history, and despite some critics who've said the book is too politically aware for its own good, it is first and foremost a tale of longing, be it the yearnings of a married, middle-aged man for his young lover, or protagonist Ben Trotter's (called Bent Rotter by his peers) unrequited desire for girlschool drama diva Cicely.
But the political cornerstone of the book definitely contributes to what many readers see as its major failing. Designed as the first volume of a dyad, this volume explores what Coe has called the last decade of real [British] politics, and a planned sequel will follow the principal characters as adults in the late 1990s through the current maze of Blairite socialism. As such, the novel's various threads don't all come together in a unified dénouement, and this open-ended, albeit life-like, conclusion will frustrate some readers.
And yes, the rumors are true: Coe, who's not afraid of experimentation, has indeed written a 15,000 word *sentence* which runs an exhausting 37 pages, and was inspired by Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, who once wrote a novel which barely contained a full stop.
This is an uneven novel which, due to the specificity of its locale, time period, and cultural references, may confound many American readers (I am an expatriate Englishman of Coe's generation, but being a Londoner, his depiction of 1973 Brum is as familiar yet as foreign as Tony Soprano's New Jersey). But what a novel it is! And what a terrific read (I devoured it in two mammoth sittings in a day).
One way or another, discerning readers will discover a trip to The Rotters' Club rewarding.

This is a comic but serious novel about the pain and joy of growing up and surviving school. Ben Trotter (aka Bent Rotter) negotiates his way through the minefield of adolescence, while trying to keep his oh so sensitive soul intact against all the odds.

I went to a school very much like the one Jonathan Coe describes, and reading the novel took me right back there - the angst, the cruelty, the stupid rules, the winter of discontent, the sudden death of prog rock, the friendships, the rainswept summer holidays, the girlfriends. The book is set in 1970s Birmingham, and Coe does a good job of evoking the sheer strangeness of the period. To be taken back there, pre-Thatcher,when unions had some power, and 'socialism' still meant something, is to realise just how much has changed, how British society is so shaped by the era but could never ever go back to it. Althought there is politics here, this is not primarily a political novel. Rather its great idea is the possibility that there are moments in time, instants in our lives, that 'are worth worlds' - moments that make life worthwhile, moments that we wish could go on forever. The characters' experiences of such moments are ultimately what drive the novel forward.

There were times when I laughed out loud, and many more times when I smiled in recognition. If I have one complaint it is that this is the first part of a two-novel sequence and I can't wait for the sequel.

Coe has constructed a novel which produced some of the most visceral responses to writing that I have ever experienced. I use the term constructed with intent because his narrative is a series of elements held together by traditional prose sections; diary abstracts, a stream of consciousness sentence close to 15,000 words, school play reviews, a "What I did on my summer vacation" essay and so on. I would liken the effect to rummaging through a box of old news papers found in an attic. It paints a full and satisfying portrait of Britain in the period leading up to the so called "Thatcher revolution."

I took the book with me on a flight but had trouble reading some of the passages in public since they were so laugh out loud funny. Coe is an author in complete control of his medium and thus also managed, in turn, to bring tears of feeling for his protagonists to my eyes. This book is a keeper - a snap shot of a city in a time that has passed but that is full of shared memories of youth. Bring on part two right away, Coe, or I'll give you a 2 side imposition on "Why the locker room is no place fop or idler."

I have carried the older edition of this bird book for a number of years, and purchased this new one as the old one had become so dog eared as to be embarassing. Also we knew that many species ranges were changing, and wanted to be up to date on that information. The new edition has the same format (down to the exact page) as the previous, and same illustrations. The many advantages of this guide include:

1) It has every bird you are likely to see in North America 2) Everything about a species is on one page, including illustration, description, range map, and sonogram of song (for many species) 3) Nice comparison charts of similar and confusing species 4) Range maps include migration date lines 5) True pocket size -- you will carry this book with you in the field!

The new edition also has updated nomenclature for species that the bird expert powers-that-be keep changing on us. It also has updated range maps for those species whose ranges are changing. It is printed on a slicker stock than the previous (only time will tell if this is better). It also has a new "quick" index which is handy for locating birds by generic name (crows).

But there are some disappointments.

1) It is probably 95% a reprint of the previous edition, both with respect to descriptions and (particularly) illustrations 2) The little check boxes to mark off birds you have seen are missing from the new edition -- surely that was an oversight(?) 3) They did not correct the one thing that was a true weakness of the previous edition, that the range maps are small and rather difficult to interpret. How much easier it would be if the US state borders were overprinted on these little range maps (or for that matter Canadian provinces and Mexican states)???

But of course, it is still our favorite -- if you have only one bird book, and you want to carry it in your pocket, this is the one to buy.

The Golden Guide to Field Indentifcation of Birds of North America is a handy, not to mention effective, guide to the birds. Accidentals, rarities, stragglers, and casuals are all covered, along with the common birds. This guide includes full color illustrations of birds were and how they are most often spotted, whether gliding over the ocean or perching in dense underbrush, as well as winter, summer, eclipse, immature, chick, juvenile, adult, male, female, breeding, non-breeding, molting, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd winter plumages, if need be. Any bird spotted can quickly be indentified quickly and easily with this guide.

"Birds of North America" is a truly excellent guide. It may not be the most comprehensive, but it certainly is the most useful. It's probably the all-around greatest birding field guide out there. The illustrations are very well done, and the size of the book is easily manageable. This book is detailed enough to accomodate all but the most demanding and professional birders, but user-friendly enough to not overwhelm the amateur.

'THE HOUSE OF SLEEP' by Jonathan Coe has to be one of the most original books that I have read in a long time. It is a dark comedy about a group of friends who in college lived together in an off campus residence hall called Ashdown. In the book all of the odd numbered chapters take place between 1983-84 when the group is in college and the even numbered chapters take place in 1996 twelve years later, when Ashdown has now been turned into a clinic for people with sleep disorders.

One of the main characters, Sarah, suffers from narcolepsy as well as a disorder that causes her to dream so vividly that she often mistakes them for reality. Robert, another of the main characters who shows up mainly in the odd numbered chapters, is madly in love with Sarah who unfortunately does not return his affections. And then there is Terry a freelance journalist who once required fourteen hours of sleep but now finds himself getting less than twenty minutes of sleep a night. These three along with a host of other characters makes 'THE HOUSE OF SLEEP' a very interesting read that will keep you guessing and at times keep you laughing.

This is the second novel by this young Brit, and if this book is any indication, he should be writing intelligent, thoughtful, humorous novels for some time. It's my intention to pick up his first novel (once I have time to read it, that is). "The House of Sleep" is a novel about dreams and obsessions, about sleeping and waking and how vital they are. The book has an interesting style, it is about four students who knew each other (some well, some just as passing acquaintences) in college, who all wind up coming back to the old house that served as student housing 12 years ago which is now a sleep-disorder clinic. The chapters switch off, the odd-numbered ones take place in the present and the even-numbered ones take place in the past - or is it the other way around? At any rate, I felt this might get confusing but it was quite naturally done. The problems of narcolepsy, and of a man who hasn't slept for the better part of 12 years, plus two other men with strange obsessions, don't sound like they would be part of a very funny novel, but parts of this book were so funny I was practically crying. The chapter about the "business success seminar" was utterly hilarious. The characters were likeable, for the most part, and well drawnand well-realized whether you found them likeable or not. The lyrical writing, the use of similar and repetitive language, and the many-layered plot contrived to form a compelling and enjoyable novel. And even though I saw the ending coming from about the middle of the book, its impact was not lessened. The coda, in the form of three brief appendices, was absolutely breathtaking. Highly recommended!

The House of Sleep is a well-written novel that is hard to find these days, especially in Asian bookstores where variety is confined to books with Hollywood plots. This book stirs the mind like no other novel I have encountered in the recent past. I was in awe about how the writer was able to spin a most interesting and insane story about old friends in a college boarding house in Britain. The characters are very intriguing. And the book, which goes back and forth through time alternately per chapter, was seamlessly written. Writer Jonathan Coe manages to make the story move forward with his brilliant and very imaginative writing. Truly worth your time! A refreshing read for people who enjoy wild surprises!

Jonathan Coe was born in 1961. The film "What a Carve Up!" (aka "No Place Like Homicide") was released the same year. Thirty-four years later, Coe published this book of the same name. The US prints are titled "The Winshaw Legacy." Is Coe's book the story of the film? Yes and No. The film is just a character in the story. The film and the story get bizarrely intertwined towards the end.

Coe carves up quite a story here, but it's not the dainty carving of a romantic sculptor. It's the irreverent slash of the nonconformist knife. It's the wayward chiselling away by the postmodernist pen. Out of these strokes emerges a story that takes stereotypes to an absurd level. Yet the absurdity doesn't offend your intelligence. It's as if the author signs an invisible pact with the reader: "Yes, you know it's exaggerated, so do I, but what the heck!"

The Winshaws represent a bunch of opportunist parasites who have checked into the world without the baggage of conscience. A columnist who generates mindless trash endlessly, an art dealer who sells fame for sex, a merchant banker with a morbid voyeuristic streak, a livestock farmer whose way of dealing with economically unviable male chicks is to put them in a mill "capable of mincing 1000 chicks to pulp every two minutes" or to gas them with chloroform or carbon dioxide... you'll find the worst imaginable faces of post-War England here, caricatured to contortion beyond recognition. Each chapter is a peep at the plot from a different angle. The principal narrator is a young writer called Michael Owen who is commissioned to write a biography of the Winshaw family. Most divergent outlooks mingle and collide and so do the characters in ways stranger than fiction, culminating in a kind of nemesis any deus ex machina would stay away from.

"What a Carve Up!" is a wild cocktail. Cheers!

After reading the excellent "House of Sleep" and "What a Carve Up", this came as a big disappointment, although with a few mitigating good features. The basic problem of this book is that its central characters are uninteresting and the plot (such as it is) unabsorbing. The "short stories within a book" at its core are an interesting idea but somehow never quite work properly. At some points it threatens to really take off, with some good secondary characters and scenes (particularly between academics and lawyers)and there are some memorable flashes of humour, but overall it is very unsatisying

Coe's first and least novel. Pants to be honest. Some humour, particularly at the expense of the novel as an art form, and readable as always, but it is all very insubstantial and lazy. Can't abide laziness.

A slight but charming novel of ideas, wise and tender, by turns unbearably sad, enviably clever and roar out loud funny, 'The Accidental Woman' is a series of vignettes from the almost tragic life of Maria, an intelligent and lovely young woman who has never been sure what she wanted and to whom as a consequence things just happen at random. This being the case, it isn't as exquisitely structured as his later work. The auctorial voice is playful, if compassionate, and scenes range from savagely farcical to gently satirical to a sort of heightened realism. Coe fans will enjoy it as long as you aren't expecting What A Carve Up or House of Sleep; anyone who hasn't read him should start with them.