Reading Diary
a) Rock and Roll Cage Match: Music's Greatest Rivalries, Decided, edited by Sean Manning
My wife got me this for I think my birthday (or maybe it was Christmas -- one thing that sucks about having your birthday really close to Christmas is you actually forget things like that by March), just because she saw it and thought it was the kind of rock critic nerd thing that would appeal to me. And she was exactly right, in fact I had already been thinking about picking it up since a couple dudes I kinda know (Breihan and Matos) authored chapters in it. I've actually developed kind of a strong distaste for the kind of false dichotomies rock criticism so often relies on that are the foundation of this book, but in a way the best essays in here really examine the pairings for the artificial constructs they are, and goes somewhere more interesting with it. I haven't finished it yet, but so far my favorite chapter is Mark Spinz on the Cure vs. the Smiths, in part because he totally acknowledges how different they are, and actually posits that their rivalry may come from the fact that their huge shared fanbase kind of forced a comparison that never really should've existed. But he still picks a winner, and gives a compelling reason why, which on a completely different level is satisfying.
b) White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is one of a whole wave of young novelists that got a lot of press 5-10 years ago that I kind of casually followed but casually dismissed, sometimes because it didn't seem like my kinda thing and sometimes because it seemed like maybe too much my thing but there are still a lot of older books I should be reading instead. But over the years Smith had managed to impress me again and again and again every time an essay or non-fiction piece by her appeared anywhere, which really displayed an incredible combination of heart and wit and invention (most recently the 'Speaking In Tongues' one in the New York Review of Books), so I finally gave it up and said OK, I should read her novel. And it is very flawed and precocious but also pretty charming at times, and though there are definitely whole sections of the book I love and sections I strongly dislike, but still, not a bad read, and ultimately I do like her as a writer, although more in non-fiction.
c) Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
My brother got this for J.G. for Christmas, back in the run up to the movie, and so far both of us have read parts of the book but have yet to actually go see the movie. I might try to finish it before seeing it in the theater, but more and more those are looking like two mutually exclusive options I'll have to choose between. I haven't read comic books on the regular since I was like 12, and even then I wasn't super heavy into them, so it's a little funny getting acclimated to them again reading this, and remembering that even the best comics (er, 'graphic novels') still have the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I mean parts of this are just ridiculous. I'm enjoying it, though, looking forward to seeing the flick, fanboys be damned.
My wife got me this for I think my birthday (or maybe it was Christmas -- one thing that sucks about having your birthday really close to Christmas is you actually forget things like that by March), just because she saw it and thought it was the kind of rock critic nerd thing that would appeal to me. And she was exactly right, in fact I had already been thinking about picking it up since a couple dudes I kinda know (Breihan and Matos) authored chapters in it. I've actually developed kind of a strong distaste for the kind of false dichotomies rock criticism so often relies on that are the foundation of this book, but in a way the best essays in here really examine the pairings for the artificial constructs they are, and goes somewhere more interesting with it. I haven't finished it yet, but so far my favorite chapter is Mark Spinz on the Cure vs. the Smiths, in part because he totally acknowledges how different they are, and actually posits that their rivalry may come from the fact that their huge shared fanbase kind of forced a comparison that never really should've existed. But he still picks a winner, and gives a compelling reason why, which on a completely different level is satisfying.
b) White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is one of a whole wave of young novelists that got a lot of press 5-10 years ago that I kind of casually followed but casually dismissed, sometimes because it didn't seem like my kinda thing and sometimes because it seemed like maybe too much my thing but there are still a lot of older books I should be reading instead. But over the years Smith had managed to impress me again and again and again every time an essay or non-fiction piece by her appeared anywhere, which really displayed an incredible combination of heart and wit and invention (most recently the 'Speaking In Tongues' one in the New York Review of Books), so I finally gave it up and said OK, I should read her novel. And it is very flawed and precocious but also pretty charming at times, and though there are definitely whole sections of the book I love and sections I strongly dislike, but still, not a bad read, and ultimately I do like her as a writer, although more in non-fiction.
c) Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
My brother got this for J.G. for Christmas, back in the run up to the movie, and so far both of us have read parts of the book but have yet to actually go see the movie. I might try to finish it before seeing it in the theater, but more and more those are looking like two mutually exclusive options I'll have to choose between. I haven't read comic books on the regular since I was like 12, and even then I wasn't super heavy into them, so it's a little funny getting acclimated to them again reading this, and remembering that even the best comics (er, 'graphic novels') still have the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I mean parts of this are just ridiculous. I'm enjoying it, though, looking forward to seeing the flick, fanboys be damned.
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on Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 10:52 PM.
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