James Acaster – James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes [REVIEW]

April 19, 2024
Authors A-E (By Surname)Non-Fiction

Title: James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes

Author: James Acaster

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 308

Rating: 4/5

This collection of non-fiction comes to us from Scrapemaster General James Acaster, who joined fellow comedian Josh Widdecombe on his XFM radio show for a weekly spot where he talked about some of the awkward situations that he’d got himself into throughout his life.

The book, then, is basically the written equivalent of that weekly spot, pulling together a bunch of disparate stories like the time that he agreed to juggle as part of a performance as a kid, despite not knowing how to juggle. The results were predictably awkward.

One thing that stood out to me was the way that it was said that if he’d just stopped to think for a moment before acting, most of these scrapes wouldn’t have happened. That’s pretty relatable, because who hasn’t ended up in trouble because they acted or spoke on impulse?

Acaster is a funny guy, and his idiosyncratic sense of humour comes across in the book in exactly the same way that it does when you see him on TV. I haven’t checked out the source material, but I think it’d be interesting to see how different the book is to just being a transcript of what was said on the radio.

Given the nature of the book, I think it could also be a pretty good audio book if it was narrated by Acaster, and while I haven’t checked it out, I’m sure such a thing exists. Judging it as just a book, without the extra context of listening to the radio shows, I still think it worked well and it was lots of fun for me to read on the exercise bike. If I wasn’t a fully-fledged fan before, I am now.

Learn more about James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes.

Louis Theroux – Theroux the Keyhole [REVIEW]

April 17, 2024
Authors P-T (By Surname)Non-Fiction

Title: Theroux the Keyhole

Author: Louis Theroux

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 374

Rating: 4/5

Do you remember during the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdowns when people all over the world were using the time to learn new skills or to get projects done? Yeah, this is Louis Theroux’s project.

It all started with him keeping a diary during the early days of COVID, and that diary then evolved into a book where he looked back at its impact. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is a COVID book though, because it’s so much more than that.

Louis Theroux has written three books by this point, and they show that as well as being a decent broadcast journalist, he’s also a talented writer. It’s actually a testament to his abilities as a writer that he’s able to convey that same sense of wry humour here as he does in his TV shows.

This is quite a different book to his other two, and I think that it’s inherently more personal. It’s also an unflinching self-examination in parts, and it doesn’t come across though he’s a particularly good person. He freely admits that he’s drinking too much and that it’s having a negative effect on his relationships with his family.

On the plus side, the way that he writes about his children is fun and engaging, and it really helps their characters to come to life. Those kids of his are pretty funny, often more so than Theroux is, and so if they join the family business then we’re in for a treat.

Ultimately, this is a fun little read that’s easier to read than some of Theroux’s other books, even though this is literally just a collection of his diaries during the pandemic. Published diaries rarely work, with the exception of Samuel Pepys and Alan Bennett, so I’m glad that this one turned out okay.

Just be warned that it’s not great escapist reading because it’s so tied to the COVID-19 pandemic that it’s impossible to separate the two. That’s left it feeling dated already, and it’s only a couple of years old. I’m not sure how it’ll fare in a couple more years.

Learn more about Theroux the Keyhole.