**** Designer Magazine's Book Selections For The Month ****
October 2003

Talking Cock by Richard Herring

Cocks - were obsessed and fascinated by them from birth. How many times do you walk into a toilet and see the words "suck my cock" written on the walls? How many us could deny we've spend times in the pub boasting about the size of ours and how many rappers do you watch on MTV who can't stop grabbing theirs? Of course we could just write this away as 21st Century obsession if it wasn't for the fact that over the ages statues, paintings and works of art have centred around the male member.

Richard Herring with "Talking Cock" has provided a response to the Vagina Monologues. Based around a internet survey he ran for 12 months which questioned what people called their manhood, where they'd tried to stick it, whether they'd tried to suck their own (surprisingly high was the response) and various other questions that Herring had dreamed up late at night thinking about cock.

This book is damn near essential and one of the funniest reads this year. As either an accompaniment to the tour or as a read on it's own this could become a best seller.

Alex McCann

Hitler And The Power Of Aesthetics by Frederic Spotts
Fascism - A History by Roger Eatwell

Of late much of the political books and text has centred on the domination of America in the world and the resulting conflicts within Iraq. These two books however look further back than that to the Second World War and the problems leading up to them. With Robert Carlyle's portrayal of Hitler in the recent C4 2 part drama these released couldn't have been timed better to provide alternative looks at the rise of fascism and the Nazi party.

"Hitler And The Power Of Aesthetics" by Frederic Spotts takes a different look Hitlers aim for an aryan super-state. Claiming that this was to be expressed as much in art as in politics Spotts provides a reassessment of his life which looks at Hitler's obsessive artistry. "Fascism - A History" looks at the reason why Fascism took root so successfully in Germany and Italy, while not in France and Britain and seeks to define how we define fascism as a political movement.

Both books give a valuable insight and are useful documentation's of where it all went wrong. While fascism may exist in different forms now (and indeed more media savvy means as Blair and Bush well know) it's still very much in existence and it's only by looking at the past that we can truly understand where we are today

Alex McCann
 
 

Do You Mr Jones? Bob Dylan With The Poets and Professors
Edited by Neil Corcorran

Bob Dylan and his music and lyrics have been the subject of many books in the past. This one, as the title may suggest to you is a collection of essay written by Professors and Poets on different aspects of Dylan's work, edited by Neil Corcoran,who is Professor and Head Of The School Of English at the University of St Andrews.

There are fifteen different essays ranging "Bob Dylan's Names" by Daniel Karlin which explains the characters and place names featured in Dylan's songs to Sean Wilentz on "American Recordings on Love And Theft And The Minstrel Boy" about Dylan's recent highly rated "Love And Theft" album and the music of bygone Americans that influenced it. Particularly good reading is Simon Armitages "Rock Of Ages" which amusingly tells how he came to be a fan of Dylan, when he is not himself of the original generations of fans, through recommendation from friends. Fro instance when "Blood On The Tracks" was released in 1974 Simon Armitage was listening to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple or Yes.

All of the essays are interesting and give food for thought on a powerful talent

Derek McCann

I Can't Be Satisfied - The Life And Times Of Muddy Waters by Robert Gordon

The music of Muddy Waters is some of the most important of the last century. This book by Memphis writer Robert Gordon tells his story from his birth in 1913 in Mississippi when he was plain McKinley Morganfield, his hard times working the cotton fields as sharecropper, his discovery at the age of 28 by Alan Lomax while on field recording trips for the Library Of Congress, his migration north to Chicago in 1940 where he pioneered the use of the amplified electric guitar and with other musicians who would also become legends, created the sound known as the "Chicago Blues".

Author Robert Gordon has a vast knowledge of blues music and is able to put songs and incidents into context and tell the fascinating tale of how this great artists strode like a colossus across 20th Century American Music, not just being a giant of the blues world but also laying the foundations for rock and roll and more contemporary rock music such as The Rolling Stones (who named themselves after a Muddy Waters song title), Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin which is illustrated in the books foreword by Rolling Stone Keith Richards.

Derek McCann
 
 

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All books featured in Designer Magazine's Book Club are available at Waterstones
You can also make purchases online from www.randomhouse.co.uk
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BOOK CLUB ARCHIVES

May 2003
* Footnote by Boff Whalley
* Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser
* Clubland Confidential by Frank Owen
* Web Of Deceit - Britain's Real Role In The World by Mark Curtis
* Deep In A Dream: The Long Night Of Chet Baker by James Gavin
* Publisher Profile: Seven Stories Press

March 2003
* The Book Against God by James Wood
* Jesus by A.N. Wilson
* The Invisible Grail by John Simmons
* Tilting At Windmills: How I Tried To Stop Worrying And Love Sport by Andy Miller
* The Making Of Poets: Byron And Shelley In Their Time by Ian Gilmour

February 2003
* The Long Suit by Philip Davies
* Talk Of The Devil by Riccardo Orizio
* This Is Craig Brown - The Very Best Of Craig Brown
* Practical Astrology By Numbers - Simon G Brown
* Sound Recording Advice by John J Volanski

January 2003
* Gangs Of New York by Herbert Asbury
* Revolution – The Making Of The Beatles White Album by David Quantick
* Adult Entertainment by Chloe Poems
* Where Did It All Go Right? by Andrew Collins
* Hip Hop Immortals – Vol 1