What Just Happened?!: Dispatches from Turbulent Times (The Sunday Times Bestseller)

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What Just Happened?!: Dispatches from Turbulent Times - Goodreads What Just Happened?!: Dispatches from Turbulent Times - Goodreads

These pieces are as you would expect from someone, working themselves into a frenzy over little celebrities, are FROTHY and full of SHOUTY capital letters, sometimes whole sentences, and yups. Not living in the UK, I am not ofay with a level of detail that I would likely need to appreciate, to have lived through, to get the most from this selected collection of Guardian thrice weekly articles written by the author. So whilst I can appreciate some superlative comedic writing, I know that I am in all likelihood missing a key element in truly appreciating the work to its fullest.A full state banquet of crazy: Marina Hyde’s Guardian column has been a reliable place to turn to for comic relief when the grotesque incompetence, chaos, sleaze and lies of our betters threaten to overwhelm. Arguably, a collection of journalistic hot takes on an unusually turbulent period in our history - this volume starts in 2019 and ends in the defenestration of Johnson - runs the risk of seeming horribly dated but we need this as a reminder, and a laugh out loud one at that, of all that has happened. Due to high demand, this event has changed venues and will now take place at the Assembly Roxy. We are planning for there to be a book signing following the conversation. So much wrong with our politics, but the writer balances her critiques with wit and ridicule too. Ridicule is an excellent way to puncture the pompous. She’s quite good at throwing out phrases describing characters and events too. For example, the tendency of some of our privately schooled politicians to throw Latin phrases, or long anarchic words, into their mundane speeches led her to describe them as posing as the ‘classic stupid-person’s-idea-of-a-clever-person,..’. Marina’s sharp insights and dry humour make her regular Guardian columns a must read highlight. I often find myself re-reading paragraphs in wonder - thinking how cleverly they have been constructed, so sharply cutting through to the point at hand.

What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde | Waterstones What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde | Waterstones

I sort of forced myself to read this present of a book as it’s outside my idea of relaxing reading - reading a summary of newspaper columns written over the last 5-6 years. The motivation for doing so was that the columnist is someone I’ve read sometime ago, when I once regularly read English newspapers. She writes for a newspaper whose views vaguely agree with mine, having a generally liberal outlook. In fact, the only UK Daily I’d give my time to. This book provides a collection of those columns from 2016 to 2022 - covering a highly charged turbulent period in not just politics but across society in general. The material is strongly UK flavoured but includes discussion of political topics and themes that will be familiar and relevant more broadly (the US elections, Covid-19). Tom Lehrer declared that satire died the day Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. Hyde would disagree, as she argued in a piercing recent piece for Esquire. I suspect Craig Brown would second her on that. Sniggering at our betters might not get us anywhere. But it’s important to keep doing it, while we still can. On the one hand, there is merit here. Mariana Hyde is a good writer, who understands how to write engagingly about topical news. She does a very good job of capturing the readers attention, and the format of the book helps to keep up momentum. This book is a collection of Hyde's Sunday columns of the same name. It typically takes a piece of topical news and skewers it in a snarky, smug, centrist way. Therein lies another merit; this is a handy primer for anyone wanting a gentle way to remember the past five or so years. Unfortunately, the last five years being what they are, even Hyde's very light touch commentary can turn the reader's stomach.He sniffed: ‘People with knives will end up stabbing themselves,’ which sounds like something Iain’s mother might have told him when he was 13 to explain why he was still using a spoon to eat his lunch.” Though Geldof was annoying she was turning a corner and was on her way to becoming an interesting woman, but we will never know now what she might have become, will we? We've lived through a political maelstrom in the last few years. Brexit tore many families apart (we had to ban the top from my family WhatsApp) and what happened to the UK in the elections that followed was even more divisive. That my family are all still talking, still very close, is a minor miracle. Politics took centre stage for lots of people that never normally bother with it. We tuned in to live debates and votes. During the pandemic, we watched our 'leaders' every day on the tv putting it to us! And what I found bizarre about reading this collection which documents just how it all unrolled, is just how much I'd forgotten. It kept getting more and more bizarre. It's STILL getting more and more bizarre. Have we become normalised? An infinite number of gag-writers, working all day in a gag factory, couldn't come up with any of the perfectly-formed one-liners that populate Marina Hyde's hilarious writing . . . But behind the wit lurks real anger, argument, exasperation and intelligence. Her writing is more than a gentle poke in the it's a well-wrought and deftly aimed smash in the teeth.'