Don’t give up, **Wal **- lordy I LOVE that book. Murakami is a top-3 author for me - he has 3 books similar in feel: A Wild Sheep Chase, Hard Boiled and Kafka - although they were written years apart with other books in between. They, IMHO are best read in that order given his progression as a writer, but that is hard to control if you stumble across a book and like it. Give it time - and if you can, read his collection of short stories, The Elephant Vanishes. Much Murakami goodness.
I just finished Backstage Passes and Back-Stabbing Bastards by Al Kooper. He played the organ part on Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone - with a legendary story behind that how, not playing the organ, he talked his way into the session. He was EVERYWHERE back then - he played when Dylan went electric at Newport; he produced Lynyrd Skynyrd, played with Hendrix and was given a guitar by him, started the band Blood, Sweat and Tears and was working with George Harrison the day Lennon got shot. He shares all this with a “jeez, there I was” self-deprecating kind of humor and he touches on a lot of the more colorful aspects of 60’s and 70’s life, including drugs and sex…and you get an overview of the history of pop music from the 50’s through today from one person’s perspective - entirely worth the read.
I also just finished Born Standing Up by Steve Martin. It isn’t an autobiography, because it doesn’t cover everything. The central theme is how he came to be a stand up comedian, how he came up with his unique style and perfected it and why he ended up walking away. It is similar in intent to Dylan’s Chronicles Volume 1 which is essentially about how Dylan found his voice - but Martin’s book is shorter, references a lot of his famous material and is written in a much more clear, linear style. Superfast and very, very insightful - Martin clearly dug deep into himself to create his comedy but was fully aware the entire time, so can articulate the experience. He touches on his relationship with his father as the central pain that fueled his desire to succeed and provides real insight as to how that played out - and somewhat resolved. Again, entirely worth reading…
Just finished Bad Land: An American Romance by Jonathan Raban, nonfiction dealing with the early 19th-century experiment in farming the high plains of Montana. Good enough to make me overlook the annoying way he handles dialogue.
Just abandoned half-way through Only a Few Bones: A True Account of the Rolling Fork Tragedy & Its Aftermath by John Philip Colletta. Author tries too hard to bring story to life, ends up distracting reader with overly modified prose.
I finished Michael Crichton’s The 13th Warrior, previously known as Eaters of the Dead. Very good, and you’re right, it’s a retelling of Beowulf. In particular, Crichton tried to tell the actual events that may have led eventually to the Beowulf legend, as viewed by an outsider, Ibn Fadlan, a real-life Arab who in the 10th century AD really did travel to Scandinavia and write about the Vikings he encountered.
Today, I begin reading John Burdett’s Bangkok Haunts, the third in a truly excellent series featuring Bangkok policeman Sonchai Jitpleecheep, who is the product of an affair between a Vietnam War-era US soldier and a Thai prostitute. John Burdett and his creation, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, are firmly up there with Tony Hillerman and HIS creation, Navajo policeman Joe Leaphorn.
I enjoyed the first two, but I’ll warn you away from the 3rd. It put me off the Dexter series. Skip it and see if the forth (when it comes out) is any good.
Last night I started on Trespassers Will Be Baptized : the unordained memoir of a preacher’s daughter, by Elizabeth Emerson Hancock. It’s light and mildly amusing, which is about what I’m looking for at the moment. I was raised Southern Baptist, so it rings true to me.
Although I’m now an atheist who gets easily irritated in discussions of religion, and the author of this book still seems to be a believer, I’m not finding it a problem. I don’t think there’s anything here that would upset anyone on either side of the fence.
I read this last month. Do you have a Montana connection? That’s why I picked it up; most of my family is still there. It was interesting to hear locations and towns that I know so well described by someone so alien to the place.
Reading The Name of the Wind now and enjoying it so far. I know many people on the board have read it, so here’s my question: Does the entire book take place in flashback? Or will they switch back and forth between the present time and Kvothe’s story?
I read Naomi Novik’s newest book in the Temeraire series, Victory of Eagles, where Napoleon invades England. It was good, but terribly depressing. These have been getting darker, and this one was really a downer, with hardly any of the ususal humor. I’ve caught up to the author now, so it will be a year before I find out of poor Laurence gets any relief.
I’ve started The Time Traveler’s Wife. At 100 pages in I’m fascinated. I only hope she doesn’t continue with the pitiful attempts to explain the time travel as some sort of genetic anomaly.
No, no Montana connection, just a grandparents-were-poor-farmers connection. Still, Raban is such a good writer that he had me fascinated by people I had never heard of and places I have never seen and probably never will. I think I picked up Bad Land because of its subject-matter relation to Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time, which had impressed me so much.
Still, Raban is such a good writer that he had me fascinated by people I had never heard of and places I have never seen and probably never will. I think I picked up Bad Land because of its subject-matter relation to Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time, which had impressed me so much.