Tag: Reminiscences

Spike Milligan – A Celebration | Review

Title: A Celebration

Author: Spike Milligan

Type: Poetry/Fiction

Page Count: 160

Rating: 3.75/5

This book was pretty cool because it covered quite a wide variety of Spike Milligan’s career, including little snippets of TV and radio shows, doodles and drawings and bits and bobs of poetry. Milligan was also a huge influence on a whole range of different people, from John Lennon to Monty Python, who admittedly isn’t actually a person.

It’s essentially almost a best of book, with highlights from a bunch of Milligan’s different works, as well as reminiscences from people like Dennis Norden and Jim Dale. That in itself makes it an interesting read, but the humour itself is spot on as well. It’s even missing most of the casual racism that eked its way into Milligan’s stuff, which is a bonus for me with my hella woke modern sensibilities.

Would I recommend it? Yes, if you like silly humour and stuff.

Learn more about A Celebration.


Emma Rosen – Milk | Review

Title: Milk

Author: Emma Rosen

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count: 326

Rating: 3.75/5

I was sent a copy of this book by the author in exchange for a copy of one of mine, but while I think it’s important to include a disclaimer here, it doesn’t affect my opinion of the book. In fact, I was a little worried that I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy it purely because of the subject matter. It’s basically a mixture between a memoir and a how-to guide for breastfeeding, but there are a few things to it that I think make it accessible to a more general readership than new and expectant mums.

For a start, there’s the research that Rosen carried out, and indeed at the end of the book there’s a comprehensive list of all of the sources that were used if you want to read more. This is coupled with Rosen’s own reminiscences, so you get just the right mixture of anecdotal versus scientific evidence. For me, that’s something that I actively try to seek out in the books that I read, and I think that Rosen did a cracking job of things.

The only thing that I can really complain about here is the fact that it felt a little bit top heavy, in that the first half of the book dealt with her first child, then the following third dealt with her second and the final sixth of it covered her third and final child. But I suppose  that can’t be helped because of the nature of the book – by the time that she had her third child, there was less for her to learn, although there were still a few bits here and there that she still had to discover.

All in all, I’m sure that this book isn’t for everyone, but then I thought it wouldn’t be for me and I was pleasantly surprised. Good stuff!

Click here to buy Milk.