Trends change, fashions leap around, forever leaving millions of reviewers and bloggers to catch them. Sometimes, however, it isn't up to us to catch these trends, but to catch up with them. In the case of Bis, a band whose magpie musical styles made them impossible to categorise outside of 'pop' (a whole universe in… Continue reading Social Dancing by Bis
Really, I should have been in a college rock band. The problem was that I came from the wrong country, turned teen in the wrong decade, and my college was a stout tower block rather than a bustling campus with a radio station where all the best songs could be found left of the dial.… Continue reading College rock: a confession
SPOILERS AHEAD! Lois Duncan was a household name if your house was home to kids with library memberships in the 70s and 80s. Her books for young people were Young Adult before the genre became mainstreamed. Looked down on, these books were known back then as Juvenile Fiction. Not that Lois Duncan ever wrote fiction… Continue reading I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan – an examination
One of the earliest supporters of Happiness Is Wasted On Me was Scotlit Daily, the blog dedicated to all things literary in Scotland. They've tirelessly championed the Scottish scene and thank goodness for that. Last week we chatted about the book and Scotland's publishing scene, plus a few topics that you'll hopefully find interesting... https://scotlitblog.com/2021/10/17/interview-kirkland-ciccone-on-strange-towns-the-scottish-psyche-and-pandemic-publishing/
In all honesty, I prefer detectives who treat murder like an elegant puzzle to be solved. For me, the golden age detectives are the greatest of the genre. They were sophisticated figures, usually privileged well-dressed forces of nature who arrived at a location (a country manor for the most part), looked around a crime scene,… Continue reading The Kosuke Kindaichi Fan Club
This was a high school album on CD that I desperately wanted to own before the credits of the film started to roll. When it comes to music in movies, especially those aimed at young people, no-one did it better than John Hughes. A tastemaker, he wrote characters in his movies that listened to the… Continue reading Scream (Music From The Dimension Motion Picture)
Tickets for The Book Nook's first live gig *it's me* are now available! It's going to be a brilliant night, and we want it to be a success, so please snatch tickets now. Details are available on The Book Nook's site: https://thebooknookstirling.co.uk/events/ This is my first live event in two years and the first ever… Continue reading Tickets for Kirkland Ciccone’s Totally True Stories are on sale now!
MY FIRST LIVE GIG IN TWO YEARS! is happening on October 15th at The Book Nook in Stirling. It's called Kirkland Ciccone's Totally True Stories and is a rejigged version of my life story in books. Basically, we're all sick of digital events on a screen when everyone knows authors should be in book… Continue reading Kirkland Ciccone’s Totally True Stories *Live event at The Book Nook*
The very nature of a break-up album is that of catharsis, that journey the artist takes you on from the first note to the last second with the whole gamut of emotions in-between. The music becomes your guide through some intense feelings. Some of the greatest, most critically acclaimed albums ever recorded have been inspired… Continue reading Resolver by Veruca Salt
Sometimes a book becomes so impossibly huge that the author runs in the opposite direction. The Beach is one of those books. Alex Garland is one of those authors. I remember seeing his debut in Borders, the Glesga branch I spent most of my college years hanging about in. Oh, you could lose yourself in… Continue reading The Beach by Alex Garland
Kirkland Ciccone 
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