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The Man in the White Suit - Ben Collins
by julwhite This review is of the book "The Man in the White Suit" by Ben Collins. Collins is better known as the Top Gear driver, the anonymous "Stig", sometimes also known on the show as "the tame racing driver". This book hit the headlines when it was published because the BBC attempted to get an ... injunction out to stop publication, claiming that because it named who the "Stig" was, against Collins's contract. Collins himself claimed that he had done everything he could to keep his position private and that he had been worrying about losing the contract anyway, so he felt he had the right to publish the book. However, the publication certainly caused controversy and on Top Gear after the event, he found himself derided by the presenters. The identity of the "Stig" was guessed by many before the publication of this book, there had been many hints and rumours. When the Health and Safety Executive Commission produced a report into the 2005 crash of Richard Hammond which nearly killed him, it named Collins as a consultant for example. However, this book is not just about this period of Collins's life. It also talks about his time in the army reserves, and more importantly, the racing driver lifestyle that he had experienced. He had started driving in 1994, and had had many successes over the years. However, the book goes through just how difficult it was for many years in gaining sponsorship to pay for his racing driving, and how he still kept his role on Top Gear a secret during this time. The book starts with the story of how he was invited to a race track, which later transpired to be the Top Gear's test track, and was told to race around it. He asked what his timings were to compare with the previous drivers, but he was refused, and he remained a little unsure of the purpose of the day. I found this opening section interesting, and one of the best, and as it transpired, he had to wait several weeks to find out that he had been invited to work for Top Gear. Just as with the rest of the book, there's lots of detailed writing about the actual driving, which will interest those who are fascinated by this aspect of Top Gear. In terms of the style of the book, I was less impressed generally at the writing style. It wasn't badly written, but I found it a little less than compelling, with anecdotes sometimes thrown together with other anecdotes, which all sometimes led to a disjointed writing style. However, if he avoided using a ghost writer, I much prefer to see a disjointed writing style than to see a more carefully crafted book by a ghost-writer. The book is interesting to read, and I enjoyed many of the stories and tales, but I was a little disappointed that there weren't more stories about the Top Gear presenters and the actual production of the show. The rest of the story was worth reading however, but I'd suggest that a fan of motor racing generally would find the book very interesting, it's of less interest to a casual observer. I remember reading in the media that Collins was an arrogant and self-serving individual, who didn't care about his contract with the BBC. I must say that I get the impression that this is very unfair, I believe he comes across well, he has a story to tell, which is worth finding out about, and he didn't come across as at all bitter to me. There are three versions of the book at the moment. There is a Kindle edition which allows you to download the book immediately, which costs 3.49 pounds. The hardback book retails at 20 pounds, but can currently be obtained for 11 pounds new on Amazon, or 6 pounds for a second hand copy, both including postage. For a paperback, the book retails at 7.99 pounds, and is available for 4.49 pounds new including postage on Amazon at the moment, second-hand copies are no cheaper currently. Both the hardback and paperback books are 352 pages long, the ISBN of the former is 9780007327966 and the latter is 9780007331697. Overall, I'd recommend this book strongly to anyone interested in motor racing or the story of Ben Collins. I found the writing style a little plodding and disjointed at times, but overall, I'd say it's an interesting book and well worth reading. Read the complete review |
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Fight or Die: The Vinny Paz Story - Tommy Jon Caduto
by Jake Speed Fight or Die: The Vinny Paz Story was written by Tommy Jon Caduto and published in 2009. I doubt that many people have heard of him outside the sport but for over twenty years Vinnie Paz was one of the more colourful and entertaining pugilists of recent times. He was born Vinnie Pazienza in Cranston, Rhode Island in 1962 and took up ... boxing after watching the first Rocky film. Pazienza was from a relatively comfortable background so his enthusiasm for boxing was genuine rather than something he felt obliged to do because he had no other options. Because Pazienza was white and amusing in interviews he probably got far more attention than he deserved from boxing magazines in the United States and was fairly hyped when he first began to make waves as a skinny lightweight in the eighties. Pazienza had a flashy and eccentric boxing style and looked like he was just making it up as he went along. He would throw bolo punches and pound his chest for inspiration. He won the IBF lightweight championship on a highly disputed decision against his great rival Greg Haugen in 1987 but was soundly thrashed in the rematch. Thereafter, Pazienza was more of a 'character' than a greatly admired boxer, winning and losing in equal measure in his more salient fights, but he always remained an entertaining fixture in the sport and could draw a crowd. In 1993 Pazienza won the WBC junior middleweight championship by battering a Frenchman named Gilbert Dele but was involved in a bad car accident before he could defend his championship. He faced a long recuperation and doctors told him he would never fight again but he proved them wrong. This particular chapter of his life is probably the principle reason why a film about him is apparently planned. Vinnie Pazienza (I'll stick with Pazienza rather than Paz) is an interesting subject for a book and it's a shame that this one (written by a childhood friend) is too simplistic and hagiographic to ever really hit the mark. Pazienza truly did have a rollercoaster career and life that you couldn't make up and was certainly a larger than life presence in the sport even if he could never be labelled a great boxer. When he fought the equally eccentric and colourful Puerto Rican Hector Camacho in 1990 the pre-fight hoopla reached almost epic proportions of bad taste. Camacho brought a Pazienza Voodo doll to one press conference which he daubed in tomato sauce (like many white boxers Pazienza was a notorious bleeder) while Pazienza, amongst other things, threw a 'sanitary napkin' at Camacho and managed to insult 'gay activists' when he made some politically incorrect references to his opponent's dress sense. When he was obliged to apologise to the groups he'd offended he made his apology in a deliberately effeminate voice and insulted them all over again. The Camacho fight was Pazienza's career in a nutshell. He lost a wide points decision but the fight was fun and the build-up to the fight was even more fun. It didn't really matter that he lost. The Pazienza roadshow continued as marketable as ever. In terms of the promotional and theatrical side to the sport, Pazienza was rather like Prince Naseem Hamed or Jorge Paez, very World Wrestling Federation at times. Although Pazienza is personable, articulate and funny and I'd imagine you'd probably like him if you ever met him in real life, he is no saint despite his fanbase and generosity in terms of sending them autographs and helping good causes. He's been arrested several times and has had drug and gambling problems. There have been accusations of domestic abuse in amongst his busy private life (Pazienza has had a slew of girlfriends of the pole dancing variety and attracted 'boxing groupies' in his heyday) and whispers of steroids. Pazienza began his career at lightweight but actually challenged Roy Jones for the super-middleweight championship in 1993. There is a 30 pound difference between the two weights and the newly muscle and bulked up Pazienza was actually asked by a boxing journalist before the fight if he'd ever used steroids and how he gained so much muscle mass, given how difficult it is. 'What would you know about it you fat **** ?' replied the always tactful Vinnie. Anyone interested in boxing will find this readable and absorbing - and Pazienza's career was eclectic and lengthy enough to contain a few detours that even anoraks of the sport will be foggy on - but you do feel like this is somewhat of a missed opportunity. A more detached look at the Pazienza story from someone like George Kimball could have been very special. You can't really mention Vinnie Pazienza without giving a mention to Greg Haugen. Haugen and Pazienza fought three times and had an enjoyable rivalry both inside the ring and out of it. Haugen is one of my favourite boxers of all time. He was a white lightweight from Washington and like Pazienza had a way with words. When Haugen was 17 he hiked to Alaska and ended up competing in 'toughman' contests against men three times his size. '12 months of winter. It sucked!' said Haugen of his temporary home. Haugen had some Indian blood and with his high cheekbones and slicked back hair looked a bit like Harry Greb. There was something old-fashioned about Haugen both in the ring and out of it. Haugen and Pazienza became great friends after their battles but famously hated each other during their rivalry. The verbal sparring that abounded from their encounters is fun to relive. 'You are making me sick putting Pazienza on the cover!' Haugen told American boxing magazine KO in 1987. 'So he draws 30,000 in Rhode Island. Big deal! You can get 30,000 people to watch the tide go out in Rhode Island!' When Pazienza demolished a highly dubious and hopeless Venezuelan contender named Nelson Bolanos to get his title shot, Haugen made light of the South American's perfect 45-0 record. 'Who has he been knocking out? The village monkey?' As usual, Pazienza was up to the task of responding. 'I don't care if he fought his mother 45 times,' said Vinnie. 'I'm sure she would have got lucky at least once if he wasn't any good!' Fight or Die: The Vinny Paz Story is a book that boxing fans will find readable and interesting but it's nothing terribly special and does suffer somewhat from glossing over the more controversial chapters of Pazienza's life. The trawl through his boxing career is certainly fun at times though, especially his rivalry with Haugen. I wouldn't have minded a bit here though to be honest about Pazienza's later fights. He fought well into his thirties and found a new roster of rivals to fight and banter with (most notably a 120 year old Roberto Duran and Dana Rosenblatt, the latter a rather erudite white boxer who always rubbed Pazienza up the wrong way in the manner that Chris Eubank always rubbed Nigel Benn up the wrong way). On the whole this passes the time but could have been a lot better. At the time of writing you can buy this for under a fiver. Read the complete review |
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Yes Sister, No Sister: My Life as a Trainee Nurse in 1950s Yorkshire - Jennifer Craig
by rosebud2001 Being a student can be a time of hard work and little money. Being a student nurse certainly is a time of very hard work for very little money and as such nursing is viewed very much as a labour of love. I am perhaps viewed as old fashioned these days as I have the utmost respect for nurses - I understand they are highly trained and ... skilled individuals and on several occasions I have needed them for their care and have been hugely grateful for it. In the modern era sadly nurses are often viewed as "fair game" in a section of society which respects no-one. This was brought home to me starkly three years ago when I scalded my arm and had to visit the A&E Department at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh and was shocked to discover there is a police station within the department. When I spotted Jennifer Craig's book "Yes Sister, No Sister" in a charity shop I was intrigued by the subtitle which informed the reader that this was a memoir of Craig's time as a trainee nurse in 1950's Yorkshire. I wondered if this would reveal an era where people were treated better by one another so I bought it. ~~The Book~~ Jennifer Craig trained as a nurse at Leeds General Infirmary, commencing her training in 1952. The book covers those years and the five years she worked in the area once she qualified in 1956. The book does cover a very different era to the one we live in today and this makes for quite interesting reading, even if your medical knowledge is as bereft as mine. The National Health Service was still very new and hierarchal demarcations were far more closely observed in this era. Craig's book takes a very personal look back at this time, and begins with us being introduced to 33 new recruits and ending with Craig making a decision to emigrate to Canada in 1961. Craig still lives in Canada today. ~~My Thoughts~~ First and foremost, this book isn't so much about patients as about the experience of nursing and specifically the experiences Craig had whilst training and once she had qualified. If you are expecting a book which focuses on how it was for patients on wards in the 1950s then you will be disappointed - this is definitely a book which stays at the care givers' side of a clearly marked line. Although Craig is originally from Yorkshire she spent much of her formative years in India. As she returns to cold and by comparison dingy Leeds to begin in her training, she introduces us to some of the 33 recruits who began training at the same time as her. What becomes evident rather quickly is how most of the young girls who signed up for nursing training came from middle class backgrounds and training was viewed as an ideal opportunity to find a husband. To be fair, Craig herself was a bit shocked by this view and clearly didn't subscribe to it. Her first impressions when starting as a student nurse are of how strict the discipline is - this manifests itself in several different ways - from the starched and not always practical uniforms worn at the time to the atmosphere of obeying your elders unquestionably, even when they were deeply flawed or just plain wrong. Student nurses were expected to rise to their feet when a sister entered the room - or the ward - in 1952 with few exceptions permitted. Craig quickly realises that not all sisters who train the student nurses are created equally with some being patient and taking the time to ensure their students are absorbing what they are being taught with others treating student nurses as skivvies. The students quickly nickname these sisters, with names such as "The Dragon" and "The Sod" bandied about. Patients don't seem to cause Craig any problems so I can only assume that the phenomena of nurses being attacked by drunks didn't begin until the 1950s were over. Craig never seems to have encountered any problem patients according to the book and she seems to have found sisters to be far less worthy of her respect - well at least those who were too blatant in their favouritism or those who were alcoholics. Craig does describe life in a nurses home well but by and large the jolly japes I read about when I was young regarding forgetting a late pass don't feature here - with one lone exception. Craig is quite honest when assessing her fellow students with the book inevitably focusing on those who became her friends. She does mention some colleagues who didn't make the grade for various different reasons too but in far less depth. The book does describe medical procedures without too much terminology which would confuse the layman and Craig tries to describe what she is doing in plain English whenever possible. Where the book slips up is it can't seem to decide what it wants to be. When Craig takes a back seat and describes some of her colleagues and the occasional memory of patients it is interesting and enjoyable. Less so is Craig's insistence on including letters she wrote in the 1950s which strike me as a lazy device to use to convey the passing of time. I also find she can be critical of others but less so of herself - whenever she encounters a sister she admires she claims she will be like this when she becomes a sister and apart from one small passage later on in the book where she does express some self doubt, she ensures she comes across as almost perfect in every way. My biggest criticism of this book however is the section in which Craig describes an IRA bombing in Leeds in the 1950s and the aftermath of dealing with children who were killed and injured waiting at a bus stop. I was curious when reading about this as it wasn't an event I had ever read about before and I consider my knowledge of post war British history to be pretty good. Despite some fairly extensive research I can find no evidence of this taking place and this, along with Craig suggesting a friend of hers asked her in 1961 if she wanted to "swoon over the Beatles" - despite the Beatles still not having released a record at the time - put me off the book. The Beatles comment could be sloppy research but the IRA bomb story does make me question the veracity of much of this book. It seems to have been added purely for dramatic effect and I felt cheated when my research revealed this seems to be a work of fiction - I was close to tears reading about dead children who in reality seem to have been a figment of Craig's imagination - or dead children she encountered in altogether less shocking circumstances moved to a fictitious situation for poetic licence. Either way it's incredibly distasteful. It's a shame Craig felt the need to do this as it spoils a book and it lost her my trust as a reader. She also fails to follow up on the colleagues she trained with, leaving lots of unanswered questions. Even if she lost touch with some of these people in the end, telling us what she knew of them would have been a nice touch. ~~Finally~~ I did enjoy this book - up until I realised that some of it quite patently isn't true. I can forgive minor errors but and slip ups but there appears to be more than just a little minor embellishment in this book and as such it made me question how much I could really trust in Craig's prose. This is a shame because Craig does write well - she is particularly good at capturing people's little foibles in her descriptive prose - and with the exception of her insistence in writing in a person's lisp when they speak or using thick Yorkshire dialect to let people know a patient is working class - she avoids a lot of clichés here. However the fact of the matter is that Craig lost my trust halfway through this book by embarking on a section which doesn't deserve its place in a book which is filed under "Non Fiction". Those crystal clear memories she seems to have of people she worked with and situations she found herself in all of a sudden didn't seem to ring true with me and it was hard for me to consider if she really did encounter a drug addicted anaesthetist who she claims injected himself in front of her, claiming to be a diabetic. Did she really witness the quite heartbreaking death of a baby from meningitis TB and did his stoical parents really exist? Had she been truthful throughout the book I wouldn't even find myself asking these questions and that's the saddest thing about this book - and it's also why I cannot recommend it. Read the complete review |
C Biography |
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2 reviews Genre: Biography / Author: Angela Cannings / Paperback / 288 Pages / Book is published 2007-10-25 by Sphere |
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Genre: Biography / Author: Joanna Coles, Peter Godwin / Edition: New Ed / Paperback / 304 Pages / Book is published 2000-06-05 by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd |
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1 review Genre: Biography / Author: Kerry Cohen / Paperback / 304 Pages / Book is published 2008-07-03 by Ebury Press |
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1 review Genre: Biography / Author: Frank Chalk / Paperback / 226 Pages / Book is published 2006-09-02 by Monday Books |
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Genre: Biography / Author: Dwain Chambers / Hardcover / 270 Pages / Book is published 2009-03-01 by Libros International |
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Genre: Biography / Author: Henri Charriere / Paperback / 288 Pages / Book is published 1975 by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd |
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1 review Genre: Biography / Author: Sloane Crosley / Paperback / 240 Pages / Book is published 2008-08-01 by Portobello Books Ltd |
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1 review Genre: Biography / Author: Johnny Cash / Edition: New edition / Paperback / 320 Pages / Book is published 2000-04-03 by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd |
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33 reviews Genre: Biography / Author: Alan Carr / Paperback / 352 Pages / Book is published 2009-06-01 by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd |
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1 review Genre: Biography / Author: Charlotte Church / Paperback / 336 Pages / Book is published 2008-07-01 by Orion |
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