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City of Spades

Today’s book purchase is a secondhand copy of the first novel in Colin MacInnes’ London trilogy (Absolute Beginners and Mr Love and Justice were the others). City of Spades was first published in 1957 but this is the 1985 reissue with a cover by Neville Brody which is the main reason for my picking it up. The books were reprinted in the mid-Eighties to coincide with the release of Julien Temple’s dreadful musical adaptation of Absolute Beginners, a film that must have done a lot to drive people away from MacInnes’ books; it certainly had that effect on me. Brody supplied all the faux-pulp covers for the reissued series.

MacInnes is remembered now by contemporary writers like Iain Sinclair for his pungent documenting of London lowlife. He was also something of a pioneer in writing about the Fifties’ gay scene in a matter-of-fact manner. You can read more about his works here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

8 out of 10 cats prefer absinthe

Well they would, wouldn’t they?

iPhone at last

So it arrived. Not much of a surprise after a year of “will they? won’t they?” but the combination phone + iPod + web device is certainly more than most people expected. New Apple products always feel like a little taste of the future and this is no exception. The touch-screen interface is very impressive indeed. The iPhone pages on Apple’s site have some nice demos of the interface at work, all of which look very familiar to users of the current Mac OS. In effect, it’s like OS X blended with the old iPod interface. I’m knocked out by the way they’ve given the iPod what amounts to iTunes in miniature, with the same Cover Flow feature for selecting albums. The web part of the device uses OS X apps Mail and Safari for email and web surfing (proper web pages as well, not WAP foolishness). And the way the screen display automatically switches from portrait to landscape when the phone is rotated is one of those gorgeous design elements at which Apple excels. I’ve been complaining about the interface on my Motorola since I got it; this machine is simply light years ahead. As for the wretched Zune, now looking even more like something designed by an overworked Soviet committee, I almost feel sorry for Microsoft after today (almost…).

Would I buy one of these? It’s very tempting even though it’ll have a heavy price (UK cost not announced yet) and probably be tied to a single carrier. They won’t be available in Europe until the end of the year anyway so there’s plenty of time to decide.