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John E,

I am not surprised that a poor review mentioned the photograph quality in the UK edition. They are terrible. What happened to quality control? After waiting for months, on pre-order, we sent our copy back to Amazon uk unread and have ordered one from the US. It should be here before Christmas!

J & J

J & J - Thanks for your comments. If anyone here hasn't ordered Sylvie's book yet, I suggest you do what I did; order an American copy from amazon.com and choose mid-price (global expedited) shipping. Choosing this method, my copy arrived in approximately two weeks. At present, this will still cost you less than £20 in total (which is less than the official price of the book). Ironically, the reason why quality is being downgraded is probably because the publishers are finding it hard to give Amazon the huge discounts they demand to maintain their monopoly in bookselling!

Thanks John,
for you review and advice on purchasing. I was waiting to buy the book here locally but I've just ordered it from Amazon USA (plus two LC songbooks and some other songbooks of sheet music for my violin).
Arrival date from 4th to 24th December. A nice Christmas present to myself!

Oh, I love what you wrote, Theresa. Your mini review of the first two chapters feels like a nostalgic trip back in time, in itself.

EXQUISITE photo , Wijbe and Willy !!!

Now, I'm REALLY glad that the only version that has been sent to me so far [after ordering all three] and the one I took with me to Austin [KNOWING I wouldn't be able to get to the mini event in time, yet still hoping to see Sylvie somewhere], was the Canadian edition that I had with me when we connected by divine providence, at the end of intermission... so that's the one I had signed, and for one reason or another, now may be emerging as the best one. It, otherwise, would have been the U.K. one taking first place, but with the apparent photo quality problem... who knows. The placement of the photos and some other things were nicking away at the U.S. one. I know that Sylvie was happy that I had the Canadian edition!

Simple but slightly interesting ' mindmap' of some of the connections between leonard cohen and bob dylan cited in sylvie simmon's book

http://mastermindmaps.wordpress.com/201 ... onss-book/

John Etherington wrote:J & J - Thanks for your comments. If anyone here hasn't ordered Sylvie's book yet, I suggest you do what I did; order an American copy from amazon.com and choose mid-price (global expedited) shipping. Choosing this method, my copy arrived in approximately two weeks. At present, this will still cost you less than £20 in total (which is less than the official price of the book). Ironically, the reason why quality is being downgraded is probably because the publishers are finding it hard to give Amazon the huge discounts they demand to maintain their monopoly in bookselling!

Thanks for the good advice

John E-

In the light of your extensive knowledge of all things LC, your approval of this biography is high praise indeed. I am halfway through it and yet, it leaves me confused at certain sections because it seems to jump between various time points. Is it me? Am I not reading it correctly or am I that uninformed as to his life? Even so, I am finding it such a rich weaving of the tapestry of his life.

Best regards,
Mary

Hi Mary,

Thanks for your kind words. Apart from a few and very clear references to different phases of Leonard's life, Sylvies book is almost totally chronological. I must say that I found that calendar dates given (especially in the earlIer part of the book) were a little sparse, but a a number of key dates were still given.

All good wishes, John E

Thank you for that John. I'm simply going to have to pay closer attention and not read it as I'm starting to fall asleep (only available time to read). Maybe that's my problem.

My copy of the book just arrived.
I had the same sensation about the pictures.
After reading this post, I think I'm going to send back to amazon, and buy the american edition as of us!!!

Thanks.

Piero

P.S. somewhere in the forum there was a note for some book mistake that need to be correct, I can't find anymore, do you know where this "note" is!?

Here it is maroo
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32913

Really thanks MaryB!!!

There was a review in last weekend's Sunday Times (UK), unfortunately hidden behind a pay wall.
Very complimentary it was too.

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/cul ... 157622.ece

However the most striking aspect of the review was that it was placed adjacent to a review of a book
by the consistently shameless Conrad Black. A sly joke on the books editor's part? How deliciously
Manichean

Getting to the Essence: An Interview with Sylvie Simmons
by KEVIN J. O'CONNER
SEATTLE
05 November 2012
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/koco ... e-simmons/

A passage that isn't unexpected, but is encouraging anyway:

It does mean he’s sort of speeding up the process of working; he realizes there’s only so many years left, from what he told me in December, when we last sat down to talk. And he said, you know, I really want to get my work done, and I don’t want to hang around. When this tour’s over, he’s going to be working on a new album, that he’s already started work on. That I do know; I don’t know when it’s coming out. But there is a sense of time running out. It sort of speeds up the older you get. But beyond that, he looks amazingly fit. When I saw him in December, he looked, you know—he doesn’t act like a 78-year-old. So, who knows?

in the review section of the mail on sunday.

A womanising monk in a Famous Blue Raincoat: The real man behind the voice of gloom

By John Preston...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/a ... ds-newsxml