Blood, Sweat & Tea by Tom Reynolds Review

Title: Blood, Sweat & Tea: Real-Life Adventures in an Inner-City Ambulance

Author: Tom Reynolds (aka Brian Kellett)

My Rating: 4/5

Part of a series? Yes, there is a second book 'More Blood, More Sweat & Another Cup of Tea'

Genre(s): Non-fiction, Memoir, Medicine, Humour

Description/Blurb:

Is there anyone who hasnt wondered about the state of the occupant of an ambulance, screaming along with its sirens on and blue lights flashing? And have you wondered about the other people inside the ambulance? Meet Tom Reynolds, an Emergency Medical Technician who works for the London Ambulance Service in East London. He has kept a blog of his daily working life since 2003 and his award-winning writing is, by turn, moving, cynical, funny, heart-rending, and compassionate. From the tragic to the hilarious, the stories Tom tells give a fascinatingand at times alarming picture of life in inner-city Britain, and the people who are paid to mop up after it.

My review: 

I should start off by pointing out that this book is basically a collection of blog posts from the blog 'Random Acts of Reality' which is no longer updated as the author no longer works for the ambulance service full time and has moved onto other things. 

As you can probably tell from the rating, this is one of those books I truly enjoyed. Ok, I read it over a couple of weeks during the breaks between lectures when I had nothing better to do but just because I didn't get so sucked in I couldn't put the book down it doesn't mean this book wasn't gripping. The blog post type format made it easy to find a place to stop as the stories weren't really related so you're not compelled to turn the page to find out about what happened to the person you were just reading about.

This one can get a bit depressing at times, nobody thinks reading about sick children and dying patients is fun and games but there's enough humour (sometimes quite dark humour) to offset this. Oh, and reading about some of the reasons people call out the emergency services can make you lose a little bit of faith in humanity (I don't seem to be conveying how much I enjoyed the book very well here) but all those moments are worth it just to read the descriptions of traffic dodging and the weird panicky things people seem to do when they hear a siren.

Murder Most Fab: You'd Kill to be that Famous - Review

Title: Murder Most Fab: You'd Kill to be that Famous

Author: Julian Clary 

My Rating: 3/5

Part of a series? No

Genre(s): Humour, Contemporary, Crime, Adult. 

Description/Blurb:

Hello, I'm Johnny Debonair and this is my book - Murder Most Fab. Buy it. You won't regret it. Everything that has happened so publicly is explained. Of course, I'd prefer it if you remember me as I was at my height, before the past caught up with me so spectacularly - TV's Mr Friday Night with an enviable lifestyle and the nation at my feet. My fame might have looked easy to you at the time, but getting to the top of the celebrity ladder is hard work. It took talent, beauty, commitment and, uniquely in my case, a number of unfortunate deaths. If we were being picky you might describe me as a serial killer, but I really don't see myself that way. It sounds trite to say 'one thing led to another' but it's true.

My review: 

This book is quite funny if you can have a twisted sense of humour at times. I started reading this book as something to read on the train without particularly high expectations but found it quite enjoyable despite not me being more of an urban fantasy fan. I managed to find myself sympathising with a murderer, and find myself seeing how one thing could lead to another. The sex scenes were probably the most intensely described scenes in the book, some of the other scenes/settings could have been more detailed in my opinion. However this book doesn't pretend to be a literary classic (though it does use some classic poetry in rather fitting moments in the boom through Johnny's love of poetry) so the lack of detail doesn't take away any enjoyment from what is essentially a light hearted novel.