Tales from the Bedroom Floor

London: Virgin Publishing Ltd, 2001 Why is this book on the bedroom floor?: There are innumerable books about The Beatles out there, it doesn't take long for you to stray into the lives of those they met. Unfortunately, this will sometimes include the distasteful. While macabre, I ordered this from eBay so I could get a more rounded picture of what happened that dreadful night in December 1980. About the Author: Jack Jones is an investigative journalist who has written about the American penal system for a number of years, which included a spell working undercover at Attica maximum-security prison. This led to an exclusive, conducting the first personal interviews with David Berkowitz, the notorious 'Son of Sam'. Plot: The murder of John Lennon, through the eyes of the murderer. Jones conducted over 200 hours worth of interviews with Mark David Chapman, and this is the result, helping us to understand the why, the how and the aftermath of an event we are still yet to mak...

London: Bantam Press, 1988 Why is this book on the bedroom floor?: I ordered it from a bookseller on eBay, having never come across it in any library or second-hand. It’s like it was deleted from history, and be that because of its size or notoriety, the only way I was going to be able to judge it for myself was to pay a few quid. About the Author: Albert Goldman was an academic and biographer whose writings on American pop culture appeared in a number of leading publications. A widely-praised biography of Lenny Bruce was eventually followed by a notorious biography of Elvis Presley , in which critics saw reflected Goldman’s apparent dislike of his subject. At the time of his death in 1994, Goldman was working on a biography of late Doors lead singer Jim Morrison, which was unpublished. He taught at numerous universities in New York during his life, finishing his life as an associate professor at Columbia University. Plot: Without a shadow of a doubt, the most controversial biograp...

London: Omnibus Press, 2001 Why is this book on the bedroom floor? - I’m currently researching a new novel with a background in the music industry, so I’m interested to learn how supergroups of ABBA's calibre reached the top. This book is cheating slightly - technically it belongs to Worcestershire Libraries, but when I came to borrow it, there was a fault because the library has had a new database and this book doesn’t exist on it, having been missed in their scanning exercise. So this is a non-book, in my possession, but like a good ex-librarian, I very much intend to return it. About the Author - Hailing from Sweden, Carl Magnus Palm is one of the world’s foremost ABBA historians, and in addition to acclaimed books about the band, he has been heavily involved with special editions of the band’s reissues and work with the ABBA museum with Stockholm. Although he has written about other artists, his focus seems to be continuing research into ABBA and what he doesn’t kno...

London: Abacus, 2000 Why is this book on the bedroom floor? - I used to own a copy of David Baddiel’s debut, Time for Bed , because Frank Skinner described it as having “at least one belly laugh per page”. I don’t recall any of those, if any, but nevertheless when I saw this for the princely sum of 50p, I thought it was worth a bash. About the author - one of the UK’s best-known stand-up comedians, David Baddiel graduated with a double first class degree in English from Cambridge University and immediately began a career in comedy. As part of The Mary Whitehouse Experience team, Baddiel found fame, which only increased when he and partner Rob Newman broke away to write and perform Newman and Baddiel in Pieces . The partnership dissolved acrimoniously in 1993 following a headline gig at Wembley Arena. Baddiel then enjoyed a second fruitful endeavour with Frank Skinner, hosting Fantasy Football League , leading to a number one single, ‘Three Lions’. Baddiel has recently returne...