Competition: RectoVerso #3 Christmas Buys

Yes alright, we can start calling it IrregularRectoVerso (apologies for my shambolicness, but there’ll be freebies at the end of the post to make up for it…keep readin’)

It’s sometimes difficult to review non-fiction, but I like to read a lot of it, and Christmas is the perfect time of year for gift books to come into play. RectoVerso has hap’ly received a number of interesting things through the post box in the past few weeks and without further ado here’s a top three best of Irish covering comedy, food and beauty that should cater for one or two people on your Christmas list (is it a co-incidence that they’re all written by bloggers or tweeters? Well, no…).

Tickling the English

Me and my preconceived notions. I had decided before reading that Dara O’Briain’s Tickling the English was going to be like a cross between ‘Round Ireland With a Fridge, McCarthy’s Bar and Joseph O’Connor’s Irish Male series. If you haven’t read any of those, my notions don’t matter much. If you have, well, it’s not like those at all. Tickling the English is what you get when you give a witty nerd a pen (also, to be fair, some paper). It’s no insult to Dara to say that his book, a travel diary of his recent tour around the UK (and Ireland, lest we forget the chapter on Vicar Street), is a largely witty offering and sometime miscellany of history and trivia. With each chapter detailing his adventures on show night in a new city, O’Briain shows off not just how well his storytelling style of humour translates well to the page, but also often breaks into a social commentary that lets the reader know he’s not just a jokester, but quite the clever fella. Well worth a look!

The Beaut.ie Guide to Gorgeous

It’s already been lauded all over the media and it’s true, the beautie’s have done themselves proud. Everything that’s popular about the beaut.ie blog has been brought to the page. The products are available here, the language retains its bantery style (“pink to make the boys wink”, “delira”, “by the hokey” and describing things as “the business”) and as well as all that it’s a manual on how to do everything from make your own hand cream to “Dye Your Betty” (we didn’t try that one) in easy-to-follow language. In fact, it is as the guys on For Nine Pounds might have said, an analogue blog. And (I’m crossing myself for being the first person I’ve come across to say a bad word about this book) but being an analogue blog is the only place where it falls down. It strikes me that there was a real opportunity in the transition to book to design up the how-to pages in a way you couldn’t on a blog. The book has a very bloggy feel. It’s text heavy and the text runs straight down the page in a blocky format with very little artwork. It might be the editor coming out in me, but tis only because when you get good copy, you owe it the justice of a good design. Nitpicking about how a ’1,2,3′ or bullet point format would’ve been ‘the business’ for the instructional sections aside, the info in this here beauty guide doesn’t put a foot wrong. Worth getting for the beauty conscious types in your life.

Good Mood Food

According to RTE.ie, Mr Donal Skehan is ‘Ireland’s answer to Jamie Oliver’. Being a big Jamie fan, there was the odd oul butterfly in the stomach when putting the Jamie cookbook in the press for a while and putting my trust in Good Mood Food for a week or two. Jamie has always served me well, but the only way to review a cookbook is try out the recipes, so Donal had his day. No disappointment here, it’s a lovely book. The recipes are easy to follow (they’d want to be. As the Culchies will tell you, I’m a kitchen disaster), the design is bright and full of pictures of scrummy looking dishes (which is exactly what you need in a cookbook, what were you thinking Ballymaloe ya photoless tome?) and there are some nice touches like how the page numbers are done as tabs on the side of the book and coloured by section, making things quite easy to find. Recommended recipes? Sesame Chicken Satay Skewers, Spinach and Potato Frittata and Cookies and Cream Chocolate Chip Oreo Cupcakes! One nitpick? Again it’s a design thing. It’s a softcover book, and cooking kitchens are full of mess and wet. Cookbooks need to be durable. Hardcover for the reprint lads? Buy it, even if only to drool over the pictures

And now, because I’m feeling a bit of Culchie Christmas cheer, would ya like all three books for free, or wha’? Just stick your name in the comments if you would and I’ll draw a winner on Christmas Eve so that one lucky reader can have an extra pressie to look forward to! They are my review copies, which means they have been read, but they’re in great condition and they all come recommended.

Merry Christmas!