David Byrne
Bicycle Diaries
€ 13,95
In 1978, David Byrne's post-punk pop group, Talking Heads, released an album called More Songs About Buildings and Food. The title was ironic. Then, as he acknowledges here, David Byrne was "more interested in irony than utopia". Now, though, having cycled all over the world in the past 30 years, he seems equally interested in both. Bicycle Diaries – the title may be an ironic echo of Che Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries; who knows? – is a deceptively straightforward book, an impressionistic glimpse of some of the cities that Byrne has explored on his pushbike. As anyone familiar with David Byrne's oeuvre might expect, it is not really a book about cycling per se, more a book in which cycling is, if you'll pardon the pun, the cog for Byrne's thoughts about architecture, music, art, travel, politics, religion, kitsch, decay and – a recurring theme – our "quality of life". This is not the place to come if you want to know how to fix a puncture or what kind of bike to buy, though the appendix does offer some cursory tips on security and maintenance. It may, though, make you want to buy a fold-up bike, which is Byrne's preferred mode of exploration when he is touring the world as a musician.

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