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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
lighthearted
slow-paced
Part memoir, part travel guide, part promotional, this book gave me a lot to enjoy
I laughed out loud frequently, learnt a lot about whisky and more than I ever wanted to know about cars and Scottish roads. But I didn't enjoy the overwhelming blokiness of the travel stories, the frequent binge drinking and (most of all) the lack of a single map in the entire book. For a travelogue, it's a serious error to assume that every reader will have the same intimate familiarity with a place that makes the writer so adept at writing about it.
I laughed out loud frequently, learnt a lot about whisky and more than I ever wanted to know about cars and Scottish roads. But I didn't enjoy the overwhelming blokiness of the travel stories, the frequent binge drinking and (most of all) the lack of a single map in the entire book. For a travelogue, it's a serious error to assume that every reader will have the same intimate familiarity with a place that makes the writer so adept at writing about it.
funny
informative
medium-paced
I enjoyed the sections on whisky and have made plenty of notes about drams I will need to 'research'. Banks was a petrol head (I'm not...hence 3 starts not 4) so I tended to skim over the sections describing his travels a cross Scotland. However, if you are into cars, no doubt you would enjoy the descriptions. He also does a good job at advertising the beauty of the Scottish landscape...but I already knew about that!
The book is just much about Banks as it is about whisky . Banks, the man, comes through the book in a way that writers don't/can't really reveal themselves in their novels. He seems to have been a man who simply loved life and enjoyed every day. He as clearly fond of the drink (I wondered whether this was in any way responsible for the gall bladder cancer that killed him). At the core of the book is how much friendship, fellowship, fun and laughter were central to is life.
The book is just much about Banks as it is about whisky . Banks, the man, comes through the book in a way that writers don't/can't really reveal themselves in their novels. He seems to have been a man who simply loved life and enjoyed every day. He as clearly fond of the drink (I wondered whether this was in any way responsible for the gall bladder cancer that killed him). At the core of the book is how much friendship, fellowship, fun and laughter were central to is life.
Not my usual genre, but I was looking for a good travel memoir on Scotland after my trip, and I found one! This is about 20 years old so it's a little dated to be a true travel guide now, but it's a super fun account of a local's road trip through Scotland searching for the perfect dram of whisky. I'm not a huge whisky fan, but I still found it greatly entertaining. The audible narration was also a 10/10 (especially if you like a Scottish accent). Banks creates some great scenes and has a lot of funny anecdotes with different friends he visited throughout his quest. I distinctly remember him describing a seagull that sh*t on his car as an "incontinent pterodactyl" and I'm locking that one away for a rainy day. He also loves cars, which isn't necessarily my thing but a cool-ish addition to the journey if you're a car person like him.
In the same way that Jaws is not a film about a shark, this is not a book about whisky... It's a paean to Scotland, to curry, to travel (especially travel that involves driving in fast cars), to political identity, to friendship and - of course - the joys of malt whisky.
It's a rambling, self-indulgent & occasionally slightly convoluted book. That given, reader, I loved it. This is the book that allowed me to say goodbye to Banksie (he totally let me call him that), in the best possible way. I am a bit of a fanboi of the 'Iain Banks' books and a late convert to the 'Iain M. Banks' stuff too. This however is the book that showed him as he was. And it seems, to me at least, that he was a wonderful man. Banksie, you are missed.
It's a rambling, self-indulgent & occasionally slightly convoluted book. That given, reader, I loved it. This is the book that allowed me to say goodbye to Banksie (he totally let me call him that), in the best possible way. I am a bit of a fanboi of the 'Iain Banks' books and a late convert to the 'Iain M. Banks' stuff too. This however is the book that showed him as he was. And it seems, to me at least, that he was a wonderful man. Banksie, you are missed.
Banks is at his Douglas Adamsyest in this memoir disguised as a whisky book. Banks gives his musings and reminiscences on whisky, cars, politics, cars, writing, Scotland, Scottish roads, cars, driving on Scottish roads, distilleries, his friends, cars and being a writer. I found it quite difficult to read in a continuous stream, mostly because I'm not that into cars. That said, I did take a lot of notes on my Google map of Scotland.
I should have loved this book. It has whisky, my favourite poison, and Iain Banks, a writer I enjoy, visiting all of Scotland's distilleries in search of the perfect dram. The book had featured on my wish list since forever, before a good friend sent it my way. And still I couldn’t enjoy it.
That is a shame because there is some excellent writing to be found here. A passage on countryside upbringing or an imagining of the walk to a secret still, yet another on Banks’ novel Complicity and his writing process – when the guy bothers he is one of the best living authors. Unfortunately, the writing on the intended subject of the book is not nearly so moving and there is so much extraneous waffle that I assume it can only have been included to hit a requisite word count.
Banks is a self-confessed ‘petrol head’ and between his diversions on his array of cars, the features or otherwise of the particular A and B roads of his journey and the scattered rants on the Wars on both Iraq and Drugs – with reference to ‘a bunch of bag-arsed feminist nutters’ – he appears as a vaguely left-leaning Jeremy Clarkson. There is also page after page of Accidental Partridge, where any number of quotes could have been lifted direct from Norwich’s finest radio DJ: ‘I have a sort of parallel route that avoids the A9… where there is a good long bit of dual carriageway; this alternative route takes a good half-hour longer than using the A9 the whole way…’
We are treated to an entire page on speed limits as well as a perfect example of a line that never should have made it past the editor: ‘…I have to stick it [his Jag] round the corner in a car park at the back of the station. It was that or the nearby multi-storey. Should have gone for the multi-storey.'
Too much of the whisky writing itself feels cribbed from other sources – the many tours and visitor centres Banks passes through perhaps. I could have missed it, but there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to his journey. This reader wondered if the book could have benefitted from a few maps or photographs of the different locations. In the end, despite the best efforts of this talented writer, one set of scenic pagodas very much blend into the next.
That said, more than a few page corners were turned down because my curiosity was sufficiently aroused to want to taste them for myself, despite Banks’ acknowledgement of his uneducated palate. So not one for the whisky enthusiasts. Not a particularly great travel guide to Scotland, either, unless you like B roads and tales of driving them. Banks and his pals certainly seem to have enjoyed their presumably all-expenses-paid year of drinking, so fair play to them.
And while the initial premise is interesting enough – Scottish writer exploring the roots of its most famous creation, the execution is a clumsy, bloated and disappointingly dull read. Perhaps the year’s worth of hangovers took their toll on the prose. Or maybe the real difficulty I had with Raw Spirit was that it kept making me wish I had a drink in my hand instead of this book!
That is a shame because there is some excellent writing to be found here. A passage on countryside upbringing or an imagining of the walk to a secret still, yet another on Banks’ novel Complicity and his writing process – when the guy bothers he is one of the best living authors. Unfortunately, the writing on the intended subject of the book is not nearly so moving and there is so much extraneous waffle that I assume it can only have been included to hit a requisite word count.
Banks is a self-confessed ‘petrol head’ and between his diversions on his array of cars, the features or otherwise of the particular A and B roads of his journey and the scattered rants on the Wars on both Iraq and Drugs – with reference to ‘a bunch of bag-arsed feminist nutters’ – he appears as a vaguely left-leaning Jeremy Clarkson. There is also page after page of Accidental Partridge, where any number of quotes could have been lifted direct from Norwich’s finest radio DJ: ‘I have a sort of parallel route that avoids the A9… where there is a good long bit of dual carriageway; this alternative route takes a good half-hour longer than using the A9 the whole way…’
We are treated to an entire page on speed limits as well as a perfect example of a line that never should have made it past the editor: ‘…I have to stick it [his Jag] round the corner in a car park at the back of the station. It was that or the nearby multi-storey. Should have gone for the multi-storey.'
Too much of the whisky writing itself feels cribbed from other sources – the many tours and visitor centres Banks passes through perhaps. I could have missed it, but there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to his journey. This reader wondered if the book could have benefitted from a few maps or photographs of the different locations. In the end, despite the best efforts of this talented writer, one set of scenic pagodas very much blend into the next.
That said, more than a few page corners were turned down because my curiosity was sufficiently aroused to want to taste them for myself, despite Banks’ acknowledgement of his uneducated palate. So not one for the whisky enthusiasts. Not a particularly great travel guide to Scotland, either, unless you like B roads and tales of driving them. Banks and his pals certainly seem to have enjoyed their presumably all-expenses-paid year of drinking, so fair play to them.
And while the initial premise is interesting enough – Scottish writer exploring the roots of its most famous creation, the execution is a clumsy, bloated and disappointingly dull read. Perhaps the year’s worth of hangovers took their toll on the prose. Or maybe the real difficulty I had with Raw Spirit was that it kept making me wish I had a drink in my hand instead of this book!
In which Banks is commissioned to write a book on Whisky but delivers much more: part travelogue, part memoir, part musings-on-life-and-politics, and part hymn-to-the-power-of-friendship.
His conversational approach and obvious warmth make this a joyous read even where it could have benefited with a bit more editing. Nonetheless, it was great to spend time in the [virtual] company if the much lamented Banks, one of my favourite authors ever.
His conversational approach and obvious warmth make this a joyous read even where it could have benefited with a bit more editing. Nonetheless, it was great to spend time in the [virtual] company if the much lamented Banks, one of my favourite authors ever.