Reading Diary
a) Time Served: My Days And Nights On Death Row Records, by Simone Green with Tara Coyt
I got sent this book a while back by someone trying to get some media coverage for it, and though I breezed through it in a day and found it a mildly entertaining read, I couldn't bring myself to try and give it any press. Mainly it's just so poorly written, and chock full of typos (references to meeting "DJ Quick" etc.) that I was actually appalled to realize just now when looking up this book that Green actually had a co-author who presumably was hired to help clean up and focus her story. Instead, seemingly half the book takes place before she even worked for Death Row, and she only came onboard after The Chronic blew up. A few juicy anecdotes, and a fairly vivid behind-the-scenes view of a pretty fascinating chapter in rap history, but not really enough to carry a whole book.
b) The Anthology Of Rap, edited by Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois
I didn't know this book existed before I received it as a birthday gift, and it's pretty neat! A collection of rap lyrics, even a lot of greatest ones every written, isn't the kind of thing you can read cover to cover, and it's not broken up with prose as much as Jay-Z's Decoded, but it's got some good essays and a pretty great selection of different artists/songs, and it can be eye-opening to look at some of those classics on paper after only listening to them for years and years.
c) The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay, by Michael Chabon
I haven't finished this yet, but I'm glad I finally got around to it after hearing about it so much and enjoying one of Chabon's non-fiction collections. I always kind of assume that these fat, dense, award-winning modern novels don't live up to the hype, but this one is pretty engrossing, I appreciate how fully it inhabits its world, in this case a world of comic book history that I've never been especially interested in, and creates its own little fictional but warmly rendered new corner of it.
I got sent this book a while back by someone trying to get some media coverage for it, and though I breezed through it in a day and found it a mildly entertaining read, I couldn't bring myself to try and give it any press. Mainly it's just so poorly written, and chock full of typos (references to meeting "DJ Quick" etc.) that I was actually appalled to realize just now when looking up this book that Green actually had a co-author who presumably was hired to help clean up and focus her story. Instead, seemingly half the book takes place before she even worked for Death Row, and she only came onboard after The Chronic blew up. A few juicy anecdotes, and a fairly vivid behind-the-scenes view of a pretty fascinating chapter in rap history, but not really enough to carry a whole book.
b) The Anthology Of Rap, edited by Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois
I didn't know this book existed before I received it as a birthday gift, and it's pretty neat! A collection of rap lyrics, even a lot of greatest ones every written, isn't the kind of thing you can read cover to cover, and it's not broken up with prose as much as Jay-Z's Decoded, but it's got some good essays and a pretty great selection of different artists/songs, and it can be eye-opening to look at some of those classics on paper after only listening to them for years and years.
c) The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay, by Michael Chabon
I haven't finished this yet, but I'm glad I finally got around to it after hearing about it so much and enjoying one of Chabon's non-fiction collections. I always kind of assume that these fat, dense, award-winning modern novels don't live up to the hype, but this one is pretty engrossing, I appreciate how fully it inhabits its world, in this case a world of comic book history that I've never been especially interested in, and creates its own little fictional but warmly rendered new corner of it.
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