Books I'm (Not) Reading
My brother has already read two full novels this year, which makes me feel like I'm slacking. My casual reading has really taken a nosedive since I started pursuing what folks in the industry like to call a "terminal" degree. My brother's 2-book lead on me also reminds me that tomorrow begins yet another semester of teaching, another thing that really takes the piss out of my reading plans.
But I did manage to start a few books over the break, and, with any luck, I may even finish a few of them. So here are the books I'll be trying to finish between now and late spring:
Books I Will Likely Finish Reading Quite Soon:
Jack Cole and Plastic Man by Art Spiegelman & Chip Kidd
This is more of an extended essay on Cole with a lot of reprinted stories from the classic era of Plastic Man, one of the seminal comic-book heroes of the Golden Age. The design of this book is insane--panels and half-panels strewn everywhere in glorious four-color dot print. The essay isn't bad either, though Cole's life doesn't end happily.
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
The novels in this series get progressively more ludicrous. At the beginning of this volume, the heroes of the story are trapped on a monorail train travelling at hundreds of miles an hour through a barren wasteland. The helpless passengers are engaged in a riddle game with the monorail (named "Blaine") in an attempt to save their lives by stumping the train with a riddle it hasn't heard before. (The references to Bilbo's game with Gollum are constant throughout this section of the book. At one point, Blaine even shouts in frustration, "We hate you forever!") When the game is won by the passengers, they find themselves in the Topeka, Kansas of King's The Stand, one of his less ludicrous novels.
As ridiculous as this book is so far, I find reading King's pop-centric writing style is kind of like playing around with those candy cigarettes as a kid. At first, they are very amusing and seem daring, but after a while you are ready for a real smoke. I speed through these books because they only require my brain to process a simply narrative while keeping my eyes open and moist.
Low by Hugo Wilcken
Another in the fabulous 33 1/3 book series, each volume of which features a long essay on an important album in popular music. This one focuses on David Bowie and, I believe, is the 24th or 25th book in the series. I've enjoyed every one of these, and usually get through about one book a month. There is no end in sight to the series, and I've noticed more bookstores starting to stock them. Well worth a look.
The Sopranos on the Couch by Maurice Yacowar
Sort of a glorified episode guide written by a popular culture professor, so it really counts as dissertation reading, not as part of my obsessive fascination with all things Tony Soprano (who ranks just below Andy Sipowicz as the TV character I will most resemble, physically and mentally, in 15 years).
Books That Will Likely Take Me a Bit Longer to Finish:
The Beatles: The Biography by Bob Spitz
This sucker is over 900 pages long, but even in the first 100 pages or so, I've been surprised by the extent of Spitz' research. I know a lot about the Beatles, but Spitz delves into the early biographies of each of the boys and traces the roots of their musical and cultural innovations. It's clear that Spitz favors Lennon as the leader and driving force behind the band, but that's no huge revelation. What is enlightening is how each of the boys were conditioned to become Beatles by the circumstances of their early childhoods. I haven't even got to the part where they all play together for the first time, and this is already the best book on the Beatles I've ever read.
Butterfly Stories by William T. Vollmann
I've now added Vollmann to my mental list of Authors Who Can Do No Wrong, Even If I Can't Always Figure Out What the Hell They Are Talking About. Also on this list: Harlan Ellison, Samuel Delaney, William Faulkner. Not to be confused with the list of Authors Who Consistently Piss Me Off But Who I Read Anyway: Harlan Ellison, Orson Scott Card, Stephen King.
Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang
I just bought this a week ago, and I haven't got past the author's bibliography, which consists of Words, Images, and Sound. Hip-hop scholarship seems woefully inadequate at this point, and Chang's social history is a welcome addition the the genre. Doesn't have very many pictures, though.
And If I Get Really Ambitious I May Even Read:
Algeria: 1830-2000 by Benjamin Stora
I became fascinated with Algerian history after seeing the Criterion DVD of The Battle of Algiers, a film I taught with last semester.
The Thomas Covenant Trilogy by Stephen R. Donaldson
I finally forced myself to finish the first book in this series, even though it was poorly written. But now I feel compelled by my OCD to read the other, what? Six books?
Fuck that, man. Don't I have a stack of papers to grade?
But I did manage to start a few books over the break, and, with any luck, I may even finish a few of them. So here are the books I'll be trying to finish between now and late spring:
Books I Will Likely Finish Reading Quite Soon:
Jack Cole and Plastic Man by Art Spiegelman & Chip Kidd
This is more of an extended essay on Cole with a lot of reprinted stories from the classic era of Plastic Man, one of the seminal comic-book heroes of the Golden Age. The design of this book is insane--panels and half-panels strewn everywhere in glorious four-color dot print. The essay isn't bad either, though Cole's life doesn't end happily.
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
The novels in this series get progressively more ludicrous. At the beginning of this volume, the heroes of the story are trapped on a monorail train travelling at hundreds of miles an hour through a barren wasteland. The helpless passengers are engaged in a riddle game with the monorail (named "Blaine") in an attempt to save their lives by stumping the train with a riddle it hasn't heard before. (The references to Bilbo's game with Gollum are constant throughout this section of the book. At one point, Blaine even shouts in frustration, "We hate you forever!") When the game is won by the passengers, they find themselves in the Topeka, Kansas of King's The Stand, one of his less ludicrous novels.
As ridiculous as this book is so far, I find reading King's pop-centric writing style is kind of like playing around with those candy cigarettes as a kid. At first, they are very amusing and seem daring, but after a while you are ready for a real smoke. I speed through these books because they only require my brain to process a simply narrative while keeping my eyes open and moist.
Low by Hugo Wilcken
Another in the fabulous 33 1/3 book series, each volume of which features a long essay on an important album in popular music. This one focuses on David Bowie and, I believe, is the 24th or 25th book in the series. I've enjoyed every one of these, and usually get through about one book a month. There is no end in sight to the series, and I've noticed more bookstores starting to stock them. Well worth a look.
The Sopranos on the Couch by Maurice Yacowar
Sort of a glorified episode guide written by a popular culture professor, so it really counts as dissertation reading, not as part of my obsessive fascination with all things Tony Soprano (who ranks just below Andy Sipowicz as the TV character I will most resemble, physically and mentally, in 15 years).
Books That Will Likely Take Me a Bit Longer to Finish:
The Beatles: The Biography by Bob Spitz
This sucker is over 900 pages long, but even in the first 100 pages or so, I've been surprised by the extent of Spitz' research. I know a lot about the Beatles, but Spitz delves into the early biographies of each of the boys and traces the roots of their musical and cultural innovations. It's clear that Spitz favors Lennon as the leader and driving force behind the band, but that's no huge revelation. What is enlightening is how each of the boys were conditioned to become Beatles by the circumstances of their early childhoods. I haven't even got to the part where they all play together for the first time, and this is already the best book on the Beatles I've ever read.
Butterfly Stories by William T. Vollmann
I've now added Vollmann to my mental list of Authors Who Can Do No Wrong, Even If I Can't Always Figure Out What the Hell They Are Talking About. Also on this list: Harlan Ellison, Samuel Delaney, William Faulkner. Not to be confused with the list of Authors Who Consistently Piss Me Off But Who I Read Anyway: Harlan Ellison, Orson Scott Card, Stephen King.
Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang
I just bought this a week ago, and I haven't got past the author's bibliography, which consists of Words, Images, and Sound. Hip-hop scholarship seems woefully inadequate at this point, and Chang's social history is a welcome addition the the genre. Doesn't have very many pictures, though.
And If I Get Really Ambitious I May Even Read:
Algeria: 1830-2000 by Benjamin Stora
I became fascinated with Algerian history after seeing the Criterion DVD of The Battle of Algiers, a film I taught with last semester.
The Thomas Covenant Trilogy by Stephen R. Donaldson
I finally forced myself to finish the first book in this series, even though it was poorly written. But now I feel compelled by my OCD to read the other, what? Six books?
Fuck that, man. Don't I have a stack of papers to grade?
posted by Chazzbot at 4:15 PM
2 Comments:
Two comments: 1) I think Stephen King has forgotten how to write. Some of his earlier work is quite good, and there's still an occasional gem (esp. "Dolan's Cadillac" out of Nightmares and Dreamscapes, which I rank as one of the best short stories I've ever read), but his later books frequently turn into drivel. Take the lead section of Hearts in Atlantis, for example, which, for the first two-thirds of its considerable length, is a wonderful story about a boy who meets a man who has magical powers. In the last third, however, King reveals that the man is really an escapee from his Dark Tower series, and the people from that world show up to drag him back. Simply awful: there was absolutely nothing in the first two-thirds to account for such an ending. Dreamcatcher was similarly plagued: the first two-thirds is a great horror story about a group of friends up in the woods being slowly killed off by something, but in the last third King makes the whole ordeal into a world-wide invasion scenario and one of the "friends" is revealed to really be an alien hiding in human form, who reveals himself to save the world. Again, simply awful: there was nothing in the first third to account for such an ending. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for sudden revelations that change the course of the story, but King relies too much on the "deus ex machina" plot device for my tastes; I fully expect one of his upcoming works to end with, "And then Jimmy woke up and realized it was all a dream."
2) I highly recommend Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I found it in the children's section at a local bookstore, but it's really quite advanced fantasy. This is Clarke's first book, and for very good reasons it was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and Guardian First Book Award. Neil Gaiman called it "Unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years," if you're into name-dropping like that. Although it is quite long--1000+ pages--it's every bit worth the read.
That's three novels, slacker!
--bill
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