Reviews for Changing Dimensions in International Education

The average rating for Changing Dimensions in International Education based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-12-31 00:00:00 Christopher Benavidez After finishing Graeme Thomson's Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello I needed to essentially sit with it for a week or two to process the thus-far arc of the musician I'd long enjoyed for his incisive--and often cutting--honesty and subject matter in which he successfully juxtaposed happy pop instrumentation against biting social commentary in his lyrics in such gems as "Oliver's Army." The young and angry Elvis as he emerges from his musical crysalis that he entered as Declan MacManus, played some gigs as D.P. Costello, and from which he sometime later emerged christened Elvis Costello, is a frustrated, angry, incredibly talented, sometimes arrogant young man who seemingly--and with great frequency--cannot get out of his own way. This perpetrator of the fight with Stephen Stills' backup singer Bonnie Bramlett which is still only referred to as the "Cleveland incident" is an a-number one, phenomenal asshole. (The late Ray Charles' reaction, however, simply reconfirms Mr. Charles to have been a genuine class act and generous human being.) I recall reading a good ways through the book and my husband would check in on my progress each evening. "Still an asshole," I'd report. Thankfully, by the time I was done--which I must note only takes the reader up through 2004--Elvis had worked beyond the phenomenal levels of arrogance, frustration, and asshattery expressed in his younger days to status as an incredibly talented seeker who regrets, but isn't altogether apologetic for, both actions and words for which a better man might still be apologizing. All told, I'm quite happy to have read this book. I discovered Mr. Costello (which, incidentally, he wanted pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable--Cos-TELLO, rhyming with Manilow--but has apparently given up on) relatively late in life (i.e., in graduate school), so was thrilled to learn of the influence on his career of such artists as Nick Lowe and T-Bone Burnett, whose work I'd long enjoyed. Best yet, I hadn't known that he didn't read and write music until around the time of his collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet on the Juliet Letters in the early 1990s. This book is written by a British music critic and reads as such. Thus, I can now more clearly place Elvis' work in the trajectory of post-punk, new wave music. His interactions with some of my favorite musicians from Squeeze and the Pogues places his work in an infinitely more familiar (to me) context. The British slang is definitely present, and there were only a few instances that required turning to a British slang dictionary (e.g., the reference to the Pogues as "tyros in the recording process" on p. 73). While distracting, this was hardly a fatal flaw, and one of which I'm sure American English speakers are equally guilty. My only potential criticism is that there seemed to be an ungodly emphasis on reciting the playlist from every performance. All told, however, those same playlists were revealing of both Mr. Costello's musical coming of age as well as his own emotional well-being and stability (or lack thereof) at the time of that particular performance. If one were ever teaching a class in biography, I'd definitely include this one. Among our discussion topics would be (1) placing an artist with an incredible breadth of performance styles in a particular genre or school of music, (2) writing about someone you probably really don't like as a person, and (3) how/where does the biographer insert him/herself in the writing. I think Thomson's book would be great grist for those and other conversations when considering biography as a genre. Glad to have read it, and happy to see what comes next from this prolific artist. If the past is any indication, it will definitely be interesting.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-12 00:00:00 Michiel Van Der Biest There’s certainly a lot for the serious Costello fan to chew on here, and overall, I enjoyed this biography, with a few reservations. First of all, there are various instances where the author voices his distaste for a particular Elvis song without really elaborating. Even if there was some elaboration, I feel that this type of criticism is inappropriate for a biography. If you’re going to offer a critique of Elvis’ work, then do that. If you’re writing a biography, do that. It seems uneven and sloppy for the biographer to randomly throw these observations into his book. Like a lot of the other Goodreads reviews I’ve seen, I found it somewhat redundant to encounter the various sections of the book that are basically “This album came out. Here’s what the critics said. Here’s how it did on the charts.” After a while, it becomes a rather predictable template. Also – and I suppose this is more of an observation than a complaint – if you’re not British, you definitely need some sort of British/American translator handy. A-Levels? Tea boys? Taking the piss? Sticking plaster? I did a lot of Google searching for various words and phrases while reading this book. Some topics seemed to get a lot more attention than they deserved, which I suppose is simply a matter of opinion. For instance, while I understand the significance of Elvis curating the 1995 Meltdown Festival, do we really need FIFTEEN pages covering every single aspect of this event? Overall, a solid biography with some great new facts and trivia that will likely be new for even the most diehard fan.