Book Diary
1. In A Sunburned Country
by Bill Bryson
After getting married in May, my wife and I went on a 2-week honeymoon in Australia, and naturally, being a fan of Bill Bryson's books, she took his travelogue about Australia, which I also read later in the trip. I already borrowed one of his books from her before, so I pretty much knew what his M.O. and sense of humor was and enjoyed it. And since I hadn't done much research or even thought very hard about where we were going before we got there, it was really nice to have a book full of really thoughtful prose about exactly why Australia is such a marvelous place and what's so unique about its culture and history. Bryson saw a lot of parts of the country we didn't get to (we stayed mostly in or near major cities on the eastern side of the continent), so it kind of made us want to go back even more and check out some of those places he say.
2. Slash
by Slash and Anthony Bozza
Debauched hard rock memoirs are generally a great subgenre of music books, my favorites that I've read in the past being Motley Crue's The Dirt and David Lee Roth's Crazy From The Heat. But while those were better books overall (by virtue of The Dirt's beautifully balanced multiple conflicting viewpoints, and DLR's gift for sparklingly witty horseshit), Guns N' Roses was always a way more important band to me than Van Halen or the Crue ever were, and Slash was probably the first guitarist I ever worshipped, other than maybe Hendrix. So I knew I had to read this book as soon as I knew it existed, and my wife gave it to me for Christmas last year, and I read the bulk of it on the honeymoon. Although Slash's personality has always seemed like kind of a blank slate, he actually conveys who he is really well here, and the deadpan nature of some of his insane tales of sex and drugs just makes it all the more entertaining and believable, like you know he wouldn't lie or exaggerate because this is just regular life for him. Some of the most entertaining things I learned in this book: 1) he was given the nickname Slash by actor Seymour Cassel, 2) he was really disappointed when he met Alice Cooper and found out that Alice just used snakes as stage props and wasn't super into them like he was, 3) he owned a mountain lion named Curtis. 4) Izzy jammed and wrote with the band that would become Velvet Revolver, and proposed they just do the band with him and Duff singing lead, which I so wish had happened. Slash is also really perceptive about exactly what made GNR great, and had some real musical insight, although maybe that was an area where Bozza helped out a lot.
3. The Road
by Cormac McCarthy
As I mentioned a while back, I started reading this around the time I saw the movie version of No Country For Old Men, and based on those 2 experiences I don't think I'm much of a fan of McCarthy. Ostensibly I guess he's going for a bleak and minimalist style, but every few pages there's some really embarrassing purple prose or some ridiculous metaphor that just makes me shake my head. And in between, there's a lot of storytelling and dialogue that tries so hard to be straightforward and no-nonsense that it actually ends up being hard to read; the 2 main characters in this are a father and son, but the narrator makes a big deal out of not giving their names, or using quotation marks, so there's sometimes long, confusing stretches of alternating "the man said" and "the boy said" sentences, which get super confusing anytime another (also male and unnamed) character enters the picture. And really, the story just isn't that compelling as it's written here, in light of all the other depressing dystopian fiction we've had the past few years. It could make a pretty good movie if executed right, though, probably better than No Country, so I'm kinda looking forward to that in a few months.
4. Dance Music Sex Romance: Prince: The First Decade
by Per Nilsen
My friend Mat has a pretty impressive library of music books and let me grab a couple things from his bookshelf for the trip, and one I grabbed is the Prince book he recommended most highly. This is really the exact kind of musician bio I like to read, and would maybe like to write someday: an account of how the music was made first and foremost, with personal details only coming into play when it provides a context for the songs and the recordings. The writing leaves something to be desired at times, but the focus is right where I want it to be, and the topic is one of my favorite artists of all time during his most productive period. And even though Prince (obviously) didn't participate in the book, there's a fair amount of interviews with band members and other people he worked with at the time. And it's interesting how Nilsen is very obviously a huge fan and shows reverence to the artist, but still provides some criticism and insight into some of the mistakes and strange decisions he made. One recurring theme is how Prince would take credit for other people's contributions, or credit them for things they didn't do or write, in seemingly arbitrary ways, even though Prince never had any shortage of material he wrote and played and sang himself. And there's also some pretty fascinating anecdotes about the making of those classic albums that really give them a whole different dimension. This should be required reading for all Prince fans.
5. Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital
by Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkins
Another one borrowed from Mat, another book about a really fertile period of music that I have a lot of interest in that packs in tons of info, but still has some weaknesses as far as the actual writing. Also, it was kind of funny to read all these books around the same time and get all these totally different stories about great music being made during the same period in the 1980s: Slash in the L.A. hard rock scene, Prince in the Minneapolis R&B scene, and all these kids in the D.C. punk scene. There's always been kind of a generation gap with me as far as being a lot more interested in the Dischord starting from mid-period Fugazi onward, so it was pretty fascinating to get a larger context about how these guys built a whole community from the ground up for ten years before that. And it was great to get an account directly from people who were there at the time, although Mark Andersen's first person testimonials got a little tedious and precious from time to time.
by Bill Bryson
After getting married in May, my wife and I went on a 2-week honeymoon in Australia, and naturally, being a fan of Bill Bryson's books, she took his travelogue about Australia, which I also read later in the trip. I already borrowed one of his books from her before, so I pretty much knew what his M.O. and sense of humor was and enjoyed it. And since I hadn't done much research or even thought very hard about where we were going before we got there, it was really nice to have a book full of really thoughtful prose about exactly why Australia is such a marvelous place and what's so unique about its culture and history. Bryson saw a lot of parts of the country we didn't get to (we stayed mostly in or near major cities on the eastern side of the continent), so it kind of made us want to go back even more and check out some of those places he say.
2. Slash
by Slash and Anthony Bozza
Debauched hard rock memoirs are generally a great subgenre of music books, my favorites that I've read in the past being Motley Crue's The Dirt and David Lee Roth's Crazy From The Heat. But while those were better books overall (by virtue of The Dirt's beautifully balanced multiple conflicting viewpoints, and DLR's gift for sparklingly witty horseshit), Guns N' Roses was always a way more important band to me than Van Halen or the Crue ever were, and Slash was probably the first guitarist I ever worshipped, other than maybe Hendrix. So I knew I had to read this book as soon as I knew it existed, and my wife gave it to me for Christmas last year, and I read the bulk of it on the honeymoon. Although Slash's personality has always seemed like kind of a blank slate, he actually conveys who he is really well here, and the deadpan nature of some of his insane tales of sex and drugs just makes it all the more entertaining and believable, like you know he wouldn't lie or exaggerate because this is just regular life for him. Some of the most entertaining things I learned in this book: 1) he was given the nickname Slash by actor Seymour Cassel, 2) he was really disappointed when he met Alice Cooper and found out that Alice just used snakes as stage props and wasn't super into them like he was, 3) he owned a mountain lion named Curtis. 4) Izzy jammed and wrote with the band that would become Velvet Revolver, and proposed they just do the band with him and Duff singing lead, which I so wish had happened. Slash is also really perceptive about exactly what made GNR great, and had some real musical insight, although maybe that was an area where Bozza helped out a lot.
3. The Road
by Cormac McCarthy
As I mentioned a while back, I started reading this around the time I saw the movie version of No Country For Old Men, and based on those 2 experiences I don't think I'm much of a fan of McCarthy. Ostensibly I guess he's going for a bleak and minimalist style, but every few pages there's some really embarrassing purple prose or some ridiculous metaphor that just makes me shake my head. And in between, there's a lot of storytelling and dialogue that tries so hard to be straightforward and no-nonsense that it actually ends up being hard to read; the 2 main characters in this are a father and son, but the narrator makes a big deal out of not giving their names, or using quotation marks, so there's sometimes long, confusing stretches of alternating "the man said" and "the boy said" sentences, which get super confusing anytime another (also male and unnamed) character enters the picture. And really, the story just isn't that compelling as it's written here, in light of all the other depressing dystopian fiction we've had the past few years. It could make a pretty good movie if executed right, though, probably better than No Country, so I'm kinda looking forward to that in a few months.
4. Dance Music Sex Romance: Prince: The First Decade
by Per Nilsen
My friend Mat has a pretty impressive library of music books and let me grab a couple things from his bookshelf for the trip, and one I grabbed is the Prince book he recommended most highly. This is really the exact kind of musician bio I like to read, and would maybe like to write someday: an account of how the music was made first and foremost, with personal details only coming into play when it provides a context for the songs and the recordings. The writing leaves something to be desired at times, but the focus is right where I want it to be, and the topic is one of my favorite artists of all time during his most productive period. And even though Prince (obviously) didn't participate in the book, there's a fair amount of interviews with band members and other people he worked with at the time. And it's interesting how Nilsen is very obviously a huge fan and shows reverence to the artist, but still provides some criticism and insight into some of the mistakes and strange decisions he made. One recurring theme is how Prince would take credit for other people's contributions, or credit them for things they didn't do or write, in seemingly arbitrary ways, even though Prince never had any shortage of material he wrote and played and sang himself. And there's also some pretty fascinating anecdotes about the making of those classic albums that really give them a whole different dimension. This should be required reading for all Prince fans.
5. Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital
by Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkins
Another one borrowed from Mat, another book about a really fertile period of music that I have a lot of interest in that packs in tons of info, but still has some weaknesses as far as the actual writing. Also, it was kind of funny to read all these books around the same time and get all these totally different stories about great music being made during the same period in the 1980s: Slash in the L.A. hard rock scene, Prince in the Minneapolis R&B scene, and all these kids in the D.C. punk scene. There's always been kind of a generation gap with me as far as being a lot more interested in the Dischord starting from mid-period Fugazi onward, so it was pretty fascinating to get a larger context about how these guys built a whole community from the ground up for ten years before that. And it was great to get an account directly from people who were there at the time, although Mark Andersen's first person testimonials got a little tedious and precious from time to time.
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