Category: Books
-
Books read in 2015
Obviously I read far too few books this year. From the best to the least best: Ben Yagoda, The B-side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song A very interesting history of the evolution of popular American music, particularly with its insights in the twenty years following World War II. Tom…
-
Pasaquan Regained
Over the course of your lifetime, every now and then you encounter something so strange and compelling and vivid that you know you will never forget it. Pasaquan is like that. On August 25 Sharon and I had the pleasure and honor of visiting Pasaquan, the home of visionary artist Eddie Owens Martin who renamed himself as St.…
-
Books 2013
Only one nonfiction book in this very random collection, but it tops the list in its insight and importance. From the best to the least best: Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future? George Saunders, Tenth of December Teju Cole, Open City Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge AM Homes, May We Be Forgiven Leavitt, Two Hotel Francforts…
-
Books about popular music
For whatever reason in the past couple of years I’ve been doing a lot of reading about popular music. Here are a few report cards, in ascending order: This must be the place: the adventures of Talking Heads in the 20th century : David Bowman C– I’ll sleep when I’m dead: the dirty life and…
-
Hitch-22 : Christopher Hitchens
Further proof that erudition does not equal intelligence. Despite a moving account of his youth, the book devolves into an extended rationalization of Hitchens’s approval of the Iraq invasion by his adopted country, the United States. That and the book’s meaningless, arbitrary title undermine its narrative and its pretension to intellectual rigor, by unfairly borrowing…