New to the catalogue

In recent years, female artists such as Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga and Adele have had huge commercial and critical success as well as massive media attention. As more and more female solo artists hit the mainstream the question arises: where are the girl bands? Why aren’t they getting the attention they deserve?

Does their gender solely define their music? Do they get gigs and attention just because they are female? Does the medai focus on what they look like undermine what they are doing musically?

Women Make Noise: girl bands from Motown to the modern is a collection of 10 essays about all-girl bands from the 1920s up to 2012. Its editor, Julia Downes, invites musicians, promoters, journalists, high profile artists and music fans to discuss their favourite girl bands: not the type who sing along to backing tracks – the real musicians, who can actually play their instruments.

From the country belles of the 20s-40s, Motown groups of the 60s, to prog rock goddesses and punks of the 70s-80s; from riot grrrl activists of the 90s to radical protesters Pussy Riot. These aren’t the manufactured acts of some pop svengali, these groups write their own songs, play their own instruments and make music together on their own terms.

Ten essays aren’t enough to dissect all of the all-girl bands in history but it is a good start on what is a lengthy topic. Including interviews with classic punk groups like The Raincoats and The Slits, as well as household names like Bjork and Beth Ditto, this book demonstrates that all-girl bands have made radical contributions to feminism, culture and politics as well as producing some unique, influential and innovative music.

Further details of Women make noise: girl bands from Motown to the modern can be found on our catalogue.

(Photo credit: Duckworth Overlook)

Today, 7th February 2012, is the bicentenary of Charles Dickens’s birth.

Although a writer from the Victorian era, Dickens’s work transcends his time, language and culture. He remains a massive contemporary influence throughout the world and his writings continue to inspire film, TV, art, literature, artists and academia.

During his thirty-five years at the top of the literary tree in the English-speaking world, Dickens published fourteen and a half full-length novels and a great amount of shorter fiction, including five Christmas books and twenty Christmas stories as well as a mass of sketches, essays, topical journalism and other prose.

He also edited a monthly miscellany for two years and two successive weekly magazines for twenty years. He made dozens of eloquent and powerful speeches to a great variety of charitable organisations up and down the country and busied himself with an immense amount of work in this field including, for many years, actively overseeing the running of a ‘Home for homeless women’.

During the last twelve years of his life he also gave phenomenally successful public readings of his own work to enraptured audiences throughout Britain and in the north-eastern United States.

Michael Slater has spent half a century reading Dickens, writing about him and most of all enjoying him. In his inspiring book, The genius of Dickens, Slater captures the ideas and beliefs, the social and artistic ideals of  ‘Dickensian values’ and the ambition that helped shape Dickens’s prodigious output.

You can find further details of The genius of Dickens on our catalogue.

(Photo credit: Hol Art Books)

Why do people get bored and tired in art museums and why does that matter? That is the question Amy Whitaker investigates in this humorous collection of essays.

She writes about the phenomenon of “museum legs” or as she describes it that feeling of having visited an art museum and leaving more exhausted than after a harrowing soccer match.  Does this make us uncultured with no stamina or is it something beyond us? 

Whitaker discusses why is it important for people to visit museums and what the museums themselves should be doing to encourage visitors.

Further details of Museum legs can be found on our catalogue.