Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown

A review of Dan Brown's latest work, Inferno, written in the style of Dan Brown. Spot on, a bit mean, and hilariously funny.

The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was full of unnecessary tautology. They said his prose was swamped in a sea of mixed metaphors. For some reason they found something funny in sentences such as “His eyes went white, like a shark about to attack.” They even say my books are packed with banal and superfluous description, thought the 5ft 9in man. He particularly hated it when they said his imagery was nonsensical. It made his insect eyes flash like a rocket.

The Real-Time Beatles Project

One thing I’ve always found intriguing about the career of The Beatles is how quickly it all happened. Love Me Do was released in 1962, and Let It Be was released in 1970. That’s a measley eight years. And since Love Me Do was the only single they released in 1962, in reality we’re looking at seven years.

For a long time I’ve been thinking, what would it have felt like to experience that musical career as it unfolded in real time? Well, since we’re currently exactly 50 years on since it all started, it seemed like a good opportunity to give it a go.

So starting from the 5 October last year (50 years on from the original release), I added Love Me Do to the playlist I’m currently listening to, and I’ve followed on with Please Please Me (the single), and the full Please Please Me album (which was released 50 years ago today, as it happens).

Clearly I’ve heard all this music before, but it’s an interesting experience to be limited to just the music The Beatles had released by now 50 years ago, and I’m hoping that as I continue this over the next 7 years, I’ll get a better insight into what it was like to discover The Beatles’s music, as the band discovered it themselves and released it into the world.

If you want to follow along, follow me on Twitter, since I’ll announce what I’m adding to my playlist on there.

You Are Boring by Scott Simpson

If you're not a subscriber to The Magazine, then first of all you should be, but it also presuambly means you won't have read Scott Simpson's article explaining why you, yes you, are boring. And you should.

Incidentally, I'm not distancing myself from this, I'm totally that guy.

You are a Democrat, an outspoken atheist, and a foodie. You like to say “Science!” in a weird, self-congratulatory way. You wear jeans during the day, and fancy jeans at night. You listen to music featuring wispy lady vocals and electronic bloop-bloops.

You really like coffee, except for Starbucks, which is the worst. No wait—Coke is the worst! Unless it’s Mexican Coke, in which case it’s the best.

The Eagleman Stag

I'd been waiting to see the full version of this ever since I saw the trailer following the Baftas in 2011. Turns out I needn't have waited so long since it's seemingly been on Vimeo for the last nine months. Still, it was worth the wait even that wait was longer than was was entirely necessary:

(via)

Falling by Haim

While I'm on the subject of new singles, Haim have a new one too. Well, I say new, but in fact it came out last week, but I only found out today. It's wonderful though. They seem to get better every time they release a new song. It's the first track from a new EP coming in April:

As Derek Crook pointed out to me on Twitter, there's a great version of the song from Haim's Maida Vale session on BBC6 too:

Mind-blowing drumming and storming guitar and bass parts too. Wonderful.