A review by kalkie
With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant by Richard E. Grant
1.0
I think how you get on with a book depends, to an extent, on what you're feeling at the time you read it. Over the past few weeks I've been very busy and reading time has been at a minimum. Usually at times like this I need a book which will grab me and will keep my attention for a while. Unfortunately this book didn't, and I struggled to read 2 or 3 pages a night before falling asleep (hence why it's taken me so long to read!)
The book is a chronicle of Richard's (AKA "REG") time on his first few films up to "Pret a Porter". However, as a chronicle it was intensely annoying that he didn't include years in his dates which made it nigh on impossible to get a time frame for what was happening. Especially as he kept "name dropping" big stars who were around at the time. Having a year to put them in context would have been useful. And REG does like his name dropping!! The whole way the book is written makes him seem like an innocent bystander in his life who just "happens" to be an actor having lunch with Madonna, or Sharon Stone, or Steve Martin, or Antony Hopkins ("Tony") ... ugh! He seems to take no responsibility for what is going on and instead lets life wash over him. He starts the book off with some very personal information regarding his wife and first child, but the life of his second child is largely ignored and she only pops up now and again when "family come to visit". I'm sure he's not really so passive in real life, but there's no evidence to the contrary in the book.
He constantly refers to himself as "the Swazi" which is nails-on-blackboard annoying, and the RANDOMNESS of CAPITALISATION and itallicising (I may have made that word up ...?!) throughout the book is equally grating. May I also suggest that if REG is to write a follow-up, his editor sends him a big bag of "I"s, "We"s, "They"s, "She"s and "He"s as REG very rarely uses a pronoun in a sentence (and a book on sentence construction wouldn't go amiss either!)
As an author, REG is a good actor.
The book is a chronicle of Richard's (AKA "REG") time on his first few films up to "Pret a Porter". However, as a chronicle it was intensely annoying that he didn't include years in his dates which made it nigh on impossible to get a time frame for what was happening. Especially as he kept "name dropping" big stars who were around at the time. Having a year to put them in context would have been useful. And REG does like his name dropping!! The whole way the book is written makes him seem like an innocent bystander in his life who just "happens" to be an actor having lunch with Madonna, or Sharon Stone, or Steve Martin, or Antony Hopkins ("Tony") ... ugh! He seems to take no responsibility for what is going on and instead lets life wash over him. He starts the book off with some very personal information regarding his wife and first child, but the life of his second child is largely ignored and she only pops up now and again when "family come to visit". I'm sure he's not really so passive in real life, but there's no evidence to the contrary in the book.
He constantly refers to himself as "the Swazi" which is nails-on-blackboard annoying, and the RANDOMNESS of CAPITALISATION and itallicising (I may have made that word up ...?!) throughout the book is equally grating. May I also suggest that if REG is to write a follow-up, his editor sends him a big bag of "I"s, "We"s, "They"s, "She"s and "He"s as REG very rarely uses a pronoun in a sentence (and a book on sentence construction wouldn't go amiss either!)
As an author, REG is a good actor.