Tenth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

I TAKE IT BACK, GO BACK TO FUCKING THE HOUSE!

(https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/2511.html?thread=3560655#cmt3560655)

Welcome back! Chat fandom, weird internet stuff, creative work, games, books, anything! Meme listens, and sometimes even replies!

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

Comments

Re: Books

[(Anonymous)]

I just learned that Tom Felton's autobiography is subtitled: "Beyond the Wand". :D

Re: Books

[(Anonymous)]

Also TIL this book exists, also a contender for punniest title:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31420651-bringing-in-the-sheaves

Re: Books - Bringing in the Sheaves (Rev Richard Coles)

[(Anonymous)]

Thought I might as well read this.

One chapter in. It's tedious. Good foreword, about a bumbling attempt to console a man on his deathbed, then it's all downhill from there. Just tons of information about the daily schedule of priests. If I wanted to know the daily schedule of a priest, I'd be a priest.

Friend surprised at part where Rev seems to believe in transubstantiation. "But he's Anglican! Isn't the *whole thing* with Anglicans that they don't do that...?"

I figure Anglicanism is a church invented so King Henry could bang hot chicks, so the Rev's prolly just making it up as he goes along, but who knows. Remains unexplained, so far. Describes how he met his boyfriend by giving a service where he said how the bible wanted people to be gay as long as they were gay in a Christian way, or something. Keeps referencing random people he knows; I realised too late that this was a sequel to a first memoir. Oops.

I was hoping for better from this. The Rev's funny on panel shows. There *has* been a funny description of a tense sartorial showdown between the black-suit-wearing protestant puritans and the elaborately dressed Anglo-Catholics, but that's about it. (Though will say, he astutely recognises that the fancier attire appealed in poorer areas because people wanted a break from the ordinary, rather than some kind of wealth attracting wealth situation.)

Misc: The title is in the same rhythm as "Puttin on the Ritz" and so it starts playing in my head every time I see the book. Took several days to work out why on earth Puttin on the Ritz kept playing in my head.

Idk if I'll keep reading this. It's split up according to a priest's yearly schedule of events/periods/whatever they're called, and then a bundle of anecdotes from that time of the year are told. All a bit piecemeal and the anecdotes so far aren't strong enough to compensate for the lack of an overall arc. May give it another chapter or two to see if it picks up, but currently I just don't care what colour socks he wore during Michaelmas or whatever.

Re: Books - Bringing in the Sheaves (Rev Richard Coles)

[(Anonymous)]

Ok started chapter 2, long description of a holiday in Wales, absolutely bog standard holiday in Wales; I don't think I can do this. The font isn't even big.

Please, everyone, stop writing memoirs unless you've got something interesting to share, *please*.

Re: Books - Bringing in the Sheaves (Rev Richard Coles)

[(Anonymous)]

Wonder if it's a target audience mismatch. I, not being British, would find an absolutely bog-standard trip to Wales interesting, but I, not being British, also have no idea who Richard Coles is and no interest in finding out.

Re: Books - Bringing in the Sheaves (Rev Richard Coles)

[(Anonymous)]

> I, not being British, also have no idea who Richard Coles is and no interest in finding out.

But I'm gonna tell you anyway! He's an ex-popstar from a band famous for making synthy falsetto disco tracks v popular in gay bars (The Communards; you might've heard of Jimmy Somerville, the more famous half of the band). He decided to quit the celeb sex'n'drugs lifestyle to become a reverend instead, as you do, but he also works part-time as a TV presenter and goes on comedy panel shows a lot, as you do. I'm not particularly interested in him, but this weird-looking autobiography was lying around, and he's usually an entertaining speaker, so I thought I'd give it a read. But it's boooooring, and looks like Goodreads agrees, and they say that this doesn't change.

Re: Books - Bringing in the Sheaves (Rev Richard Coles)

[(Anonymous)]

And trip to wales = climbed a hill, saw sheep.

Re: Books - Bringing in the Sheaves (Rev Richard Coles)

[(Anonymous)]

> you might've heard of Jimmy Somerville, the more famous half of the band

In this moment I am xkcd #2501.

Re: Books - Bringing in the Sheaves (Rev Richard Coles)

[(Anonymous)]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1RHBAd5YUR8

Re: Books - Bringing in the Sheaves (Rev Richard Coles)

[(Anonymous)]

(I think Coles is the one on the keyboard)

Re: Books - Beyond the Wand (Tom Felton)

[(Anonymous)]

Aight, let's read this crap.

Re: Books - Beyond the Wand (Tom Felton)

[(Anonymous)]

So here we are. Tom Felton's (probably-ghostwritten) autobiography.

I have no interest in Tom Felton. I know fuck-all about him. He played Draco Malfoy. I think he's pretty blah as an actor, though not as bad as Emma Watson or Daniel Radcliffe.

The book opens with 3 pages of endorsements. From which publications are these sourced? Goodreads. Hm. "Tom tells his story so easily that he takes you through his life with great detail." Get ready for LITERATURE.

We open with a foreword by Emma Watson. I'm not a fan, but I wondered if I'd like her writing in spite of myself. I wasn't sure if I'd be pleased by this, or annoyed. We'll never know. The foreword is pure narcissism. Over and over, the sentiment is "thank you, tom, for being present on my voyage of self-discovery". It actually makes you like him better, because you feel bad for him knowing Emma Watson.

She signs it off with "chapeau"; I guess she's a redditor now. And the autobiography begins.

I'm 3 chapters in. So far, I have discovered a number of facts about Tom Felton, but only one matters:

He is really fucking boring.

The anecdotes are dull. The way they are told is dull. Everything about his life seems crafted to be dull. He grew up in a boring house. His parents had a boring divorce. As he narrates, he gets sidetracked describing technical details of carp fishing.

I've got another 270 pages of this. Wish me luck!

Re: Books - Beyond the Wand (Tom Felton)

[(Anonymous)]

Chapter 3. Tom Felton tells the story of the time he didn't injure himself on set, because he obeyed the rules.

Re: Books - Beyond the Wand (Tom Felton)

[(Anonymous)]

Chapter 4. Tom Felton tells the tale of the time a director asked him to stop laughing, and he struggled at first, but then managed to stop laughing.

Re: Books - Beyond the Wand (Tom Felton)

[(Anonymous)]

Ok, chapter 6, telling the story of him completely fucking up an audition and making a fool of himself in front of Anthony Hopkins, is good.

Re: Books - Beyond the Wand (Tom Felton)

[(Anonymous)]

Chapter 10. Back to the shit anecdotes. Teenage Tom Felton acquires a gun!

It only fires blanks. He wants to try it out, but knows he'll get in trouble if he fires it somewhere people can find out.

So this is a story about how he got in trouble, right?

Wrong. He goes to a basement carpark, it makes more noise than expected, he legs it, and nothing happens. The end.

This story could've been okay if he'd just told it in a different order! Reveal it only fires blanks at the END!

But no. We then get a few lines about how he reckons he was worse than the real Malfoy in those days. Oooo, you hellion, you.

Re: Books - Beyond the Wand (Tom Felton)

[(Anonymous)]

The hellraising continues. He swaps out "fucking" for "fudging". The chapter about his batshit fans is good, though. He's polite about them while conveying the batshittery. There's a man who writes to his family saying he's changed his name to Lucius Malfoy, called his house Malfoy Manor, and he wants Tom Felton to legally change his name to Draco Malfoy and come live with him. The Feltons all just laugh about this and turn him down. Only years later does it occur to Tom Felton that the guy might have been "a *tad* sinister".

As far as fans go, all the absolute nutters seem to be American. Is anyone surprised?

Re: Books - Beyond the Wand (Tom Felton)

[(Anonymous)]

Chapter 14. Felton tells the story of the time he almost got attacked by a gang, but didn't.

He also describes his shocking secret teenage behaviour: he would tell his mother he was going to a friend's, the friend would do the same, but then they would *actually* go *fishing*.

Fetch the smelling salts!

Re: Books - Beyond the Wand (Tom Felton)

[(Anonymous)]

We get a chapter where he begs the reader to empathise with Emma Watson and how shit being famous is for her. Which is all fair enough, but the tone is so ott when describing her good points that now I'm suspicious that she ghostwrote this whole book.

Re: Books - Beyond the Wand (Tom Felton)

[(Anonymous)]

Then he describes Daniel Radcliffe's "fierce intelligence" and devotion to his craft as an actor. 🤭

Re: Books - Beyond the Wand (Tom Felton)

[(Anonymous)]

The chapters on LA and his time in rehab are a bit more interesting, but feel like they've had anything too detailed or revealing carefully cut out. I'm not sure why he bothered with an autobiography when he wants to be vague and skim over everything in his life. (Well, I assume he just wanted money).

The best parts of this book are the technical details about making films and TV. I also liked an anecdote about Michael Gambon: Felton kept accidentally messing up his lines on set. They took a break. He apologised to Michael Gambon for wasting his time. Gambon was just like "lol I'm getting paid so much per day, please keep fucking up, so I can buy another ferrari".

(Felton found this very conforting and wasn't sure if it was just said to calm him. I'm inclined to take it at face value; it's exactly how I would react in Gambon's situation. xD)

There's also a chapter about him being mistaken for other people:
Aaron Paul
Frankie Muniz
Eminem

I can kind of see the other two, but Eminem???!!!

Rowling doesn't feature much in the book; I suspect his agent took a chainsaw to it. He mentions he got a letter off her praising his work on HBP, and he still has it framed. And there's a chapter at the end with a vague plea for people not to react with kneejerk hatred online and allow people to express their opinions and discuss them, which I think is intended as a defence of her (it's just a bit of a crap one). Rowling isn't present in his dedication at the end, while half the film studio seem to be, but tbf he may have just been way closer to them. I still think she'd have got a mention if this had been published in 2018, not 2022. The overall impression I got from the book is that he has nothing against her, but his agent is keeping him on a tight leash, because he isn't famous enough to not be mistaken for Eminem. He gets on with his family, and I suspect they are all sane about gendershit, so I'm guessing he feels he can't be a hypocrite and hate her over it. Am certain he's heard much more offensive stuff from his brothers. :P