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Ian Anderson recommended Bat Out of Hell by Meat Loaf in Music (curated)

"Ever since I’d been aware of Mr Meat I’d not been a fan at all. I thought he was bombastic, loud, churlish, arrogant – there was nothing about him that appealed to me, including his overtly showbizzy operatic voice. I’d never been a fan, until I was desperate for a track for some radio show I was doing where I needed to find an example of storytelling. I was looking for examples of people who told authentic observational tales, and I was stuck. Then my wife called to me from the other side of the office saying, ""life is a lemon and I want my money back”. I said I was terribly sorry to hear this, and she said, “no, the Meat Loaf song, ‘Life Is A Lemon (And I Want My Money Back)’,” although Jim Steinman actually wrote the song. So I found the song and became, if not a Meat Loaf addict, at least someone who had established a degree of reverence for both Meat Loaf at his best and the lyrical and musical writing of Jim Steinman. I think it’s a great song, and it just happens to be on this album. I’m not saying I enjoy the whole album or most of Meat Loaf’s work, but that is a very good track. As soon as I heard it I told my wife, “damn, I wish I’d written that,” which is probably the biggest compliment anyone in my position can pay to somebody else. In fact, I think that should be the epitaph on my gravestone."

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David McK (3649 KP) rated Fugitive in Books

May 31, 2021

Fugitive

Paul Fraser Collard | 2021 | Fiction & Poetry

7.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Entry number 9 in Paul Fraser Collard's Jack Lark series, this is an entry which - speaking personally - I very much found could be split into two main parts: the first part of the novel primarily concerns itself with the Victorian pursuit of 'slumming' (where rich toffs paid good money to see how their poorer counterparts lived in the slums and tenements of London), and the second with the Abyssinian campaign against the mad 'Gorilla King' (in modern day Ethiopia, I believe)

I'd heard, and even knew a bit, about the former. The latter? Sad to say, not so much.

So, for my part, a little new knowledge is a good thing!

As the novel begins, Jack Lark is back in England after his exploits in America (during the Civil War) and Mexico of the previous entries; back where - I feel - he belongs (ummm, speaking internationally, that is, rather than his precise circumstances!) and running Victorian slumming 'tours' (for want of a better word) for the rich who have more money than sense!

I don't *think* I'm giving anything away when I say that one such tour inevitably goes wrong, leading Jack - and a few companions - to flee the country, travelling to Ethiopia to join the expedition against the Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia, more concerned with what they can purloin along the way than the rights and wrongs of the situation that led to the campaign in the first place!

All in all, another solid entry in the series: I'm looking forward to where Jack ends up next!