If you’d asked me about a year ago, I would never have guessed that Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home, and this book, would appeal to me and set my mind on fire as much as they did.

I still remember vividly one of my better memories of school, and one of my better memories of the teacher and school in question, when instead of talking about boring Shakespeare or Austen (just exaggerating for effect, you understand), my English A-level teacher came in the room with a tape recorder, had decided to do something for a change, and had printed lyrics sheets and cassettes of songs by Dylan and Suzanne Vega for us to listen to and talk about. I got the feeling everyone else in the room got nothing out of that ‘lesson’ but I came out the beginning of a fan of both those artists. Though I’ve collected a lot of Dylan bootleg stuff over the past few years, until this book and Scorsese’s movie came along I really hadn’t listened to him as much as I’d always intended to since that first encounter.

(Apologies, that last paragraph was more blog than review I guess, but I don’t care :-P)

Dylan reads like some of the authors he praises – Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” is a clear and heavy influence. There’s none of the nonsensical lyrical stew of “Tarantula” here, just a little time jumping and that’s as complicated as it gets. I can’t wait for the rest.

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