ENTERTAINMENT

BOOKS

FREE
CHRIS ANDERSON
OUT 2 JULY, €22

In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, drew the world’s d attention to a new business model that had grown up with the internet, and now he’s repeating the trick with Free, The Future of a Radical Price. It’s fascinating stuff, packed with real world examples of how free can make great business sense, especially in a digital age when the cost of storing and serving bytes is coming close to zero. It’s not all high tech, though, and Anderson muses on such phenomena of free as salt, once used as a global currency, but now so cheap as to be given away free in every fast food restaurant. Then there’s coffee, which is provided free in almost every office, yet seems only to encourage people to go out and pay for a premium version down the road.

Anderson’s skill lies in his ability to locate and champion these paradigm shifts, and while his conclusions on free are far from definitive – Rupert Murdoch recently announced that free may not be the way forward for his online newspapers after all – Anderson has once again placed himself at the heart of a debate that will prove fundamentally important to all of us.

VOODOO HISTORIES
DAVID AARONOVITCH
OUT NOW, €20

JFK was killed by the CIA. So was Marilyn Monroe – using a deadly suppository. The Apollo moon landing was faked. The Pearl Harbour attack was orchestrated by President Roosevelt. Princess Diana’s death was planned by Mossad/the CIA/MI6. If you’ve ever listened with appalled fascination as an otherwise rational person has expounded on any of the above, then David Aaronovitch’s highly enjoyable account of conspiracy theories throughout history is for you.

After an overview of what they are and when they’ve occurred, Aaronovitch sets about his main business of retelling key conspiracy theories and demolishing their claims. It’s clearly a task he enjoys and he does a good job of dramatising the incredible leaps of logic and selective evidence used to underpin them. He traces the way that conspiracy theorists rely on preceding theories to give weight to their claims, and one of the great pleasures of the book is seeing the extent to which different theories and theorists quote and borrow from each other. But rather than just debunking nonsense, he also engages with the question of why we are so drawn to conspiracy theories and suggests that, among other things, they can be linked to the human desire for narrative, even absurdly convoluted narrative, rather than chaos.

As he writes at one point, “conspiricists are always winners… their arguments have a determined flexibility where any inconvenient truth can be accommodated within the theory itself.” There are already reviews on Amazon claiming that Aaronovitch is in the employ of big business and the government, and has written this book to silence the truth. Well, if they were able to fake the moon landings…

THE FRUGAL LIFE
PIPER TERRETT
OUT NOW, €12

Financial journalist, MSN blogger and Velocity contributor Piper Terrett knows a thing or two about how to make her money go further. Her popular Frugal Life blog has included various challenges, including living on the equivalent of the state pension for a month and going vegetarian to see if it really is cheaper than eating meat, and now she’s brought all of her experiences together in this book.

An entertaining and timely read, it tries to prove that living frugally needn’t mean being miserable. It has a range of ideas and activities to try depending on how far you want to take your frugality. Eating vegetarian a few nights a week sounds fine, but killing, skinning and gutting my own rabbit is taking things a bit far – especially the descriptions of how to empty its bladder. Structured with lots of subheadings and bullet points, the book is designed for dipping in and out of. So if you want to live a cheaper and a better life and you’re looking for some inspiration The Frugal Life could be just what you need.

MUSIC

WILCO (THE ALBUM)
WILCO
OUT NOW, €10

Wilco’s catalogue juxtaposes itself. The band either embraces warm, dulcet Americana or it veers towards experimental, psychedelic folk. They tend not to mix the two, preferring to excavate the best of each world to uncover its merit. But on Wilco (the album), they address both sides simultaneously, producing another challenging record. The oddly titled album begins with an oddly titled track: Wilco (the song) asserts a more down-country rock influence similar to older songs on A.M. or earlier moments in Summerteeth. It’s simple, strum led and heartfelt, a song that pours through songwriter Jeff Tweedy’s subconscious, excoriating the demons that flood earlier works, such as careful love and devotion. But all this changes at Bull Black Nova, as the distortion kicks in, recreating the craftsmanship of A Ghost Is Born. And so it goes, as the band tries on both hats at once, coming out of it with more successes than stumbles. It’s not perfect, but then Wilco never have been.

BEACONS OF ANCESTORSHIP
TORTOISE
OUT NOW, €10

For Tortoise’s sixth album, their first since 2004, the Chicago septet again prove why they are one of the more relevant instrumental outfits still at it. By using elements from myriad styles, including dub, electro, rock, jazz, reggae and experimental drone, another new aesthetic is painstakingly woven from scratch, one that builds on and improves on each element it borrows from. Once again, the band splits its time between acoustic and electric, mainstream and left field, using percussion as a compass over traditional guitar or keyboards. While it should end up a righteous mess, their virtuosic instrumentation, matched with clever melodic interplay and hearty syncopation, keep everything current, refreshing and genre-defying. One moment a fork-and-spoon percussive blend leads the way, the next deep dub, or ebullient post-rock. For a band as criminally underrated as Tortoise, let’s hope this masterpiece becomes the beacon that draws in listeners.

MOVIES

IL DIVO
OUT 27 JULY, €18

Il Divo, by Paolo Sorrentino, is a cinematic swipe at the crime and corruption that runs through the Italian state. It’s the story of Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who was prosecuted but acquitted for involvement in Mafia activities. The real Andreotti was controversial, but Sorrentino’s interpretation is almost inhuman. A schemer brokering murky deals and committing crimes to pursue a greater good that adheres only to his ambition and moral compass, this Andreotti is a damning account of the man and of Italian politics more broadly.

THREE MONKEYS
OUT 6 JULY, €23

In Three Monkeys Turkish director Nuri Bilge s Ceylan presents a noir-ish thriller filled with plot r twists. When politician Servet accidentally kills a pedestrian in a hit and run incident, he persuades his long-serving driver Eyup to take the blame in return for cash. Eyup agrees, but while he’s in prison his wife is forced to turn to Servet for an advance, and the two begin a relationship that will lead to yet more misery and deception. It comes close to implausibility in places, but is powerful enough to hold interest in its characters’ decline.

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