It's difficult to say where the humour is in all this; but if there is humour, it's very dark and always ironic. The title itself speaks tHorror story
It's difficult to say where the humour is in all this; but if there is humour, it's very dark and always ironic. The title itself speaks to that. That aside, it's a compelling read, though a bit too detailed for my tastes. In this era of spill-all autobiography, it's par for the course. What redeems it is the almost breezy nature of McCurdy's writing: the chapters are short, so there isn't much time for reflection on the latest bit of horror that is this book's default. It's heavy-going nevertheless, at times suffocating. I didn't want to put it down and didn't....more
Why? Because it really really really helps to have read Baldwin's novels. And even if you haven't and intend to, Boggs An excellent book . . . but DNF
Why? Because it really really really helps to have read Baldwin's novels. And even if you haven't and intend to, Boggs gives away endings. Of course, he has to, as he reads Baldwin into and out of Baldwin's novels. (I've read only Giovanni's Room and Just Above My Head.) So I read the first 200 pages and the Epilogue, which covers those two books.
In any case, I found that I didn't care for Baldwin the man that much (which, admittedly, is neither here nor there); but that in so far as I didn't, I began to notice how Boggs even-handedly handles what perhaps another biographer might judge: Baldwin's inability to handle money (at the expense of others), his messy ways, his juvenile and ill-advised attachment to Lucien, and so on. It's clear that part of the love story is Bogg's love of his subject; and that love extends to rescuing Baldwin from encroaching obscurity. (I have to say that I'd never recommend Giovanni's Room and Just Above My Head, not even as cultural documents: the former's internalized homophobia isn't even artful, and the latter's heterosexual framing is at dire odds with the homosexuality that should be at the centre of the book.)
I didn't think it fair to give the book a star rating as I DNF. But for what I did read, I would 100% recommend the book. Achingly well written and insightful....more
Paper Girl initially swept me up with the sheer verve of its prose, as Macy is, unquestionably, an energetic and affectWhat is this book trying to do?
Paper Girl initially swept me up with the sheer verve of its prose, as Macy is, unquestionably, an energetic and affecting writer. But once the spell of the style began to wear off, I found myself increasingly aware of the book’s structural looseness. The narrative pinballs from past to present, from family memoir to profiles of people like Silas, from political analysis to the opioid crisis, from journalistic reportage to personal confession. Linearity isn’t necessary for compelling nonfiction, of course, but here the effect is less artful collage than a kind of restless narrative stew.
Macy keeps introducing threads of genuine significance, only to abandon or dilute them as she shifts into the next topic. I found myself waiting for the “good parts,” the moments of real conflict that give a narrative its propulsion. And while those moments occasionally appear (her ex-boyfriend’s tirades, for example), they are quickly swallowed by the book’s roller-coaster structure.
What also troubled me is Macy’s moral framing. She aims for generosity toward people whose political beliefs she finds troubling; and while that impulse is admirable, it is hardly revelatory. We already know, in broad strokes, who populates these fractured American landscapes. Her concluding gesture, that of blaming Trump and the billionaires but sparing “the people”, feels unsatisfying, even evasive. Individuals make choices; their anger, spite, and hatreds are not mere by-products of structural injustice. Empathy may help us understand the paths they’ve taken, but it does not absolve them.
In the end, Macy’s refusal to hold individuals meaningfully accountable undercuts the force of her own reporting. The book wants to diagnose a national fracture, but by diffusing both its structure and its moral stance, it never quite sharpens into the indictment or the insight it promises....more
Light is by turns entertaining, informative, and engaging. I read his Frampton co-write, and it was similarly breezy aAbsorbing (though too singular?)
Light is by turns entertaining, informative, and engaging. I read his Frampton co-write, and it was similarly breezy and illuminating.
As much as I recommend the book, its singularity — the one album — became somewhat repetitive and, in terms of viewpoints solicited, unsurprising. It is almost perverse to state, here, that I wish Light had found some people who hated the album, if only to rescue Rumours from the heights upon which Light (and his interviewees) place it. Pitching an album so reverently is akin to eating too much dessert.
I wish, then, that Light provided more context for the album by sandwiching it in between extensive discussions Fleetwood Mac (aka the white album) and Tusk, since Rumours didn't come out of nowhere. I'd argue that Rumours is an extension of Fleetwood Mac; indeed, get rid of the latter's only misstep ("Sugar Daddy") and you could have a double album that is tonally one. Tusk is a turn away from that in Buckingham's near-solo turn, with Nicks and McVie continuing on the tried and true.
And oddly, in a chapter that speaks of the significance of women to Fleetwood Mac, Light gives McVie the short shrift in favour of all-too-present Nicks. Perhaps this is understandable, as Nicks is certainly more of a public figure and has a solo career. But it's strange to take umbrage at the neglect of women in rock and then enact just that neglect in your own book. (One singer I wish Light would have mentioned comparatively, even in passing, is Linda Ronstadt, who is, I'd argue, the singular vocalist of the 20th century.)
Perhaps, too, the book would have benefitted from more extensive interviews with people who grew up in the 1970s and how Rumours can be understood as a work that gathered up the loose, floating strands of mid-1970s popular music—rock, pop, folk, even touches of country—and distilled them into a remarkably cohesive whole. In retrospect, its greatness lies not only in its songwriting and emotional candour, but in the way Fleetwood Mac synthesized the era’s disparate musical idioms into a single, definitive statement. This is all to say that Light needs to extend the discussion far beyond the island upon which he locates the album.
In the introduction, Lennox writes that she always wanted to "release a book", which is telling in that this desireI love her music, but not this book
In the introduction, Lennox writes that she always wanted to "release a book", which is telling in that this desire, it is revealed, doesn't speak to any rationale as to why, other than that she can. We find out that she's "neurodivergent", which has nothing to do with the book or how we might understand her work; but I suppose that in these days of oversharing, it's par for the course.
The book begins, then, with some promise, as Lennox discusses how she started off with The Tourists, how touring was hard, how the band broke up, and . . . and then we're suddenly into the Eurythmics, with a focus on pictures and video stills from their most popular songs, with little reflection on how the songs were made and what they meant. The rest of the book follows suit.
The books slinks into a kind of Cindy-Sherman-lite, as Lennox explores various personas through photographic art. But this foray lacks the depth of Sherman's work, and so the book becomes a page turner in the worst way: flipping the pages quickly to see picture after picture, with scant text. Then it ends.
It's great that Lennox finds some kind of personal purpose in "releasing" this book. But there's no point to any of this somewhat disjointed effort, and the sense of retrospection that the title promises is misleading, if one is expecting greater context and insight. The book reminds me, in the end, of Debra Harry's inconsequential Face It, a book where less is actually less....more
I've read all of Shoalts' books, and this one is by far his most engrossing. He mixes adventure, mystery, detective wiles, biography,His best book yet
I've read all of Shoalts' books, and this one is by far his most engrossing. He mixes adventure, mystery, detective wiles, biography, and history altogether so smoothly that the read is compelling.
I can't say that I was taken by his two most recent books, Where the Falcon Flies and The Whisper On The Night Wind, though they are still very fine. This latest effort recalls what I think are his best two books, Beyond the Trees: A Journey Alone Across Canada's Arctic and Alone Against the North.
Shoalts' gift is an economy with words combined with an eye for detail, a balancing act that few writers possess. He is always a pleasure to read, and not just for the thrills (which are plenty!)...more
Read the 3rd edition, which should soon give way to a 4th. Lots of stats, no compelling narrative. The story is pretty much that BImportant but boring
Read the 3rd edition, which should soon give way to a 4th. Lots of stats, no compelling narrative. The story is pretty much that Barcelona and LA are outliers when it comes to positive hosting experiences; otherwise, the Olympics and the World Cup bring nothing but financial negatives to host cities, all the while making the Olympic and World Cup governing bodies (and their cronies) rich. The end....more
**spoiler alert** Two stories, really, with the second a bit strained
The book has what I'll call a “90-degree turn” — when Billy dies and Jack leaves **spoiler alert** Two stories, really, with the second a bit strained
The book has what I'll call a “90-degree turn” — when Billy dies and Jack leaves prison, then meets Sally — and it feels like the book splits in two. The first half is about confinement, masculinity, and the brutal determinism of environment and class; the second half almost experiments with the idea of what might happen if Jack could escape all that — if he could be, in a sense, “reborn.”
When Jack meets Sally, the rhythm, tone, and even the lighting of the novel change. The prison world has been one of violence and male-coded intensity, especially through Jack’s relationship with Billy, which is tender and erotic but constrained by the codes of their environment. Billy’s death feels like the extinguishing of one possible version of Jack’s humanity.
Then, suddenly, he’s outside, in a world that’s “open,” but also disorientingly empty. Meeting Sally feels less like narrative progression than like a hard restart. It’s as though Carpenter asks: if a person who has been shaped entirely by brutality is suddenly offered normal life — love, domesticity, a home — can he do it?
Sally represents the possibility of conventional redemption: work, marriage, fatherhood, an “ordinary” life. But Carpenter renders that experiment with almost anthropological distance. Jack tries to play the role, but the earlier part of the book has taught us that identity isn’t something you can just adopt through willpower.
The tone becomes eerily calm, but there’s an undertone of futility — as though we’re watching someone act out the script of rehabilitation, knowing he’s still carrying the damage that the first half of the novel chronicled. The tragic irony is that even in freedom, Jack remains psychologically imprisoned.
The sharp break gives the book its existential power. Carpenter isn’t just telling a story; he’s testing whether narrative itself can offer redemption. The book refuses closure: rather than cycling back to the beginning (as a naturalistic novel might), it veers sideways, into another register of life altogether.
The“90-degree turn” dramatizes the impossibility of narrative coherence for someone whose life has been fractured by social and emotional dispossession. It’s as if Carpenter says: a man like Jack can’t have a single, unified story, but only successive attempts to start one.
I see the Billy–Jack section as the book’s emotional and moral center; Sally is the afterlife, the haunting. After Billy’s death, Jack’s search for connection becomes hollow because he’s already lost the one relationship that approached love without pretense. The shift to Sally’s world exposes how gender and heteronormative expectations fail to heal what trauma has done. The domestic experiment can’t replace the intimacy and understanding that Jack glimpsed, and lost, with Billy.
Here's my problem: In the first half, Jack’s intelligence is intuitive, streetwise, reactive. He sees systems and hypocrisies clearly, but his thinking is visceral rather than reflective. Then, once he’s out of prison, he’s suddenly reading Dostoevsky and grappling with existential questions as if he’d always had a latent intellectualism waiting to bloom. The problem is not that such a transformation is impossible — people do find unexpected depth in confinement — but Carpenter doesn’t quite dramatize the process of that awakening. We see the result (Jack reading, philosophizing), not the inner struggle that gets him there.
But I'll push back against myself. There’s another way to read it: not as Carpenter losing his grip, but as Jack constructing a fantasy of self-redemption. Reading, thinking, philosophizing become ways for him to believe he’s transcended his past, though the novel quietly suggests he hasn’t. The intellectual awakening might not be “realistic” in a naturalistic sense, but psychologically, it might be Jack’s defense: he’s trying to replace a lost sense of intimacy (with Billy, with any real community) with ideas. Seen that way, the unreality of the second half becomes part of the book’s emotional logic — a kind of self-delusion masked as enlightenment.
It is as though the author had a thousand hours of interview tapes and felt compelled to use every single oneInformative, but really needs a good edit
It is as though the author had a thousand hours of interview tapes and felt compelled to use every single one, in any way she could. The result often reads like a transcript, with a lot of unnecessary chit-chat.
Certain people get way too much air time, like Prince. The author rightly notes the misogyny of the rock world, but once quite unreasonably says that one male rock critic has a "hatred" for women, something not at all apparent in his review, which she cites. Richard Blade is taken to task for calling them "hot babes" (and yes, this is, in retrospect, sexist); yet the author uncritically cites a few men whose relation to various Bangles members is based purely on what they profess to be physical attraction.
The author, at the outset, defends her use of "girls" in the biography as the Bangles had apparently adopted the term, knowingly, and that it also reflected the era. This is a clear misstep as the usage plays in tandem with the sexist attitudes that the author enumerates, resulting in the very diminishment of the women's lives, musical and otherwise, that the author disparages.
The book ends somewhat unceremoniously with the band's breakup, with two members driving off, feeling numb about it all; and the chapter ends -- and then suddenly, we get a couple of pages that state that they later regrouped and created two more albums, the end. What? How did that reunion come about, especially after a breakup that ambushed two of the members? Why did Michael not return? Why did she refuse to be part of this biography?
Perhaps unfortunately, the author thanks thanks THANKS the Bangles, in the Acknowledgements, revealing how she likely softened her depictions of the acrimony in the band, seeking not to villify any one figure too much for the band's internal disputes. There is, then, perhaps a better, future biography to be written that has a good deal more objective distance than what we get here....more
My primary interest in TH is Remain in Light (though not the overplayed "Once in a Lifetime"), and so I was wondering how they got there.
HOverwhelming
My primary interest in TH is Remain in Light (though not the overplayed "Once in a Lifetime"), and so I was wondering how they got there.
How they got there involves an almost numbingly detailed account of the origin of rock, with forays into the now-obligatory 'rock music stole from Black music' lecturing. (Gould may be right to point out that Black musicians were sidelined while white rock bands rose to fame. But it’s misleading to frame this as deliberate ‘theft’ by the Beatles or Stones, amongst others. They were influenced in good faith, often acknowledged their sources, and even helped bring attention to them. The real issue was the racial bias of the music industry and audience reception. If we want acknowledgment, it should focus less on blaming individual bands and more on how to correct the historical record, ensure recognition, and celebrate the cross-cultural exchanges that actually made rock possible.) It's a thread that continues to underscore the music being discussed and it comes off as moralistic rather than constructive.
Then there is detail, and detail, and more detail, combined with a writing style that is so flat and uninvigorating that the band(s) being discussed become equally bland. This is likely because there are no interviews with band members, which leads me to argue that Gould should have considered not attempting this project. It's an assemblage of material that essays lives and times but lacks the kind of insight that might arise from talking to the artists themselves. The worth of the book, then, might be that it provides a foundation for someone else who manages to secure interviews in the future....more
The first 50 pages were intensely readable, especially as I thought that Bradford was gently getting at the truth of what theAn unhappy life-and-times
The first 50 pages were intensely readable, especially as I thought that Bradford was gently getting at the truth of what the Durrells were all about. But it is at this point that he begins in earnest to discredit both Larry and Gerry (which, I suppose, is warranted), to the extent that I didn't want to spend any time with two men who were, apparently, egomaniacs who didn't much like people. To that end, Bradford reads the two brothers into and out of their writings, and it is a kind of psychoanalysing that is not so much revealing as it is damning.
Well, fair enough, I guess. I was expecting more, though, from the Corfu years -- even the colourful dust jacket itself nods to the recent TV series' introductory tableaus, promising, perhaps, a focus on those years. Nope. What you get is primarily the lives of Larry and Gerry after Corfu, with Margo and Louisa making guest appearances. Of Leslie there is next to nothing. Bradford really dislikes Larry's writing, and downplays Gerry's successful books (which, admittedly, I didn't like).
What is the point, then, of reading such a dour book? There isn't one, unless you have an investment in knowing that Larry was a really shitty human being and that Gerry preferred animals to humans. Indeed, it may be that these things are the case; but there are certainly better ways of making that case rather than pumping out 350 pages of an almost gleefully done character assasination. I was never hoping, going into the book, for a more polished and uplifting bio, as I don't really care about the Durrells one way or another; and I knew that the TV series was largely a fabrication. Still, this book was about as persistently unhappy as winter rain in Bournemouth. The lack of photographs beyond the very few of Larry and Gerry is also unfortunate. Missed opportunity....more
No doubt you've heard Maya Angelou's saying, "When people tell you who they are, believe them." Trucks begins this disaster with "TherAbsolute garbage
No doubt you've heard Maya Angelou's saying, "When people tell you who they are, believe them." Trucks begins this disaster with "There's a good chance you won't like this book." He then confesses that he is "basically a guy with no particular insight into the inner workings of either the band or the album in question." He says that he is inserting a lot of himself into the book and thus will be roasted by the critics for it. Lots of irony mixed with sarcasm. The rest of the book is a bunch of quotes from Lindsay Buckingham that anyone can find on the internet.
That is all you need to know.
The editors of the series have a lot to answer for for letting this abysmal piece of crap be published. Zero insight, self-indulgent twaddle. And if the point of the book is that Trucks mirrors in his writing the idosyncratic nature of the album itself, then that too is a failure. No one cares about Trucks.
I did something with my copy that I have never done before with any book: I ran it through a paper shredder, to ensure that no one else would be able to pick up my copy and potentially waste one second of their life with this trash.
The minute that you are taking to read my review is enough. Don't waste another second thinking about this "book." Move on....more
Does everything in life have to have an applied utility and an end goal? Apparently so. Early on, the narrator advises to ditch cRegurgitated bromides
Does everything in life have to have an applied utility and an end goal? Apparently so. Early on, the narrator advises to ditch courses (eg, geography, history) if you come to understand that they will have no future use for you. Good grief. I'm assuming he's talking about post-secondary education, where you have a choice as to what you want to study. And if so, he has no idea what a university education that includes history and geography is about. Certainly, it's about content. But moreover it's about fomenting and improving one's critical thinking and reasoned, original argumentation. The author fails to understand this, it seems; and it was at this point I started skimming the book.
What you get is a somewhat haphazard accounting of how to market yourself. As with most of these (useless) finance books, you are advised to anticipate consumer needs (if not create such needs yourself). Of course, doing so is quite often a matter of chance; and so the book invariably can't tell you how to gauge such need. Of course.
Don't waste your time with this compendium of insights-that-are-nothing-more-than-rah-rah-blather. Instead, read history and study geography. You'll be a much better person, and likely much happier....more
I came to this book after having read Crews'autobio, which is wonderful. I read the intro to that book as well, and the writer as much admits thatWhy?
I came to this book after having read Crews'autobio, which is wonderful. I read the intro to that book as well, and the writer as much admits that Crews' literary output was subpar, and that this book was perhaps the best of the lot. Well.
I got about 70 pages in and found that I Just Did Not Give A Sh!t about anyone in the book. Of course, characters don't have to be likeable. But I had the sense that the Knockout Kid was meant to be sympathetic, in some degree. I suppose he would be, if you're a person who doesn't like queer people or academics. And that Crews was an academic himself suggests that he is attempting to satirize such people -- only he doesn't, so much as he just disdains them.
The book, then, became one of me reading the author's manipulation of characters, and to that end Crews shows his hand repeatedly. I resisted this manipulation and got bored. Eugene's comment, early on, about AIDS, sure didn't help, along with his less than helpful depiction of queer people. I skipped to the end, read it, and thought, "This is dumb."
No more Crews for me. If you are reading this and thinking about where to start with Crews, I'd advise that you start and end with his autobio....more
**spoiler alert** I spoke to this guy and then I did this and then i did that and then . . . .zzzzz
While the book breezes along, the story is lost in **spoiler alert** I spoke to this guy and then I did this and then i did that and then . . . .zzzzz
While the book breezes along, the story is lost in the details because it's all about details, mindless and unimportant details. There's no conflict to prime the engine that any good story needs. There are merely bits of everyday life, supplemented by the history of the land and the histories of the people. It's like reading someone's diary with explanatory footnotes added. It's initially interesting until it becomes repetitive and full of particulars that matter not one whit, eg (at random): "Wayne has a slow timetable for his house. Last year they got the sauna tubes poured. This summer they plan to get the deck on. At this rate, it may be done for Willis' centennial." Does any of this matter to or amount to anything? Nope.
Sure, we all talk idly at times with friends and family, about nothing at all. It passes the time. But imagine reading someone else's 300 pages of reportage about people you don't know and their idle talk. Way too painful. DNF....more
A stunning book about being on the wrong side of history
Fuller is definitely a gifted writer, and the book is compelling, a quick and absorbing read. A stunning book about being on the wrong side of history
Fuller is definitely a gifted writer, and the book is compelling, a quick and absorbing read. Being white Rhodesians, her family was definitely involved, however passively, in upholding the (racist) status quo, something that Fuller notes but does not expand upon. It's a fascinating tour of a time and place that I've never read about before. (Her follow-up books are just as captivating.) Glad to see it's now a film!...more
SWW's jab at FB leadership clearly comes through in the word "careless," in that it comes to mean that the leaders could not caThe irony of "careless"
SWW's jab at FB leadership clearly comes through in the word "careless," in that it comes to mean that the leaders could not care less (as she points out late in the book). Of course, SWW implicates herself as one of those careless people in that she hung on and hung on and hung on -- until she decides not to. She is hung out to dry when she comes to realize that FB leadership refuses accountability.
It's obvious that the author must have kept a detailed diary of all that happened, and it is to her credit that she did. Her depictions of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are fascinating, in that SWW details how the two, so buffered from accountability because money, give themselves over to their most selfish impulses. It isn't so far removed from Trump and his enablers: money talks and the people without power listen. And, in the instance of FB, that includes SWW, until she stops listening.
An intensely readable book that is by turns fair and measured....more
The unstated significance of the book lies in its first (messy) half
Much of this we know, especially the second half of the book, which takes us from The unstated significance of the book lies in its first (messy) half
Much of this we know, especially the second half of the book, which takes us from the disastrous debate to Harris's assumption of nominee. It is here that the book gains linear coherence and has a propulsive narrative.
I wondered, though, after reading it, what the first part of the book was about. It is a hodge-podge of various people being "shocked" or "surprised" or "astounded" at Biden's demeanor, much of it pre-2020 but then into 2021/22. What is unstated -- and perhaps somewhat, though barely, implied -- is that Biden should never have considered running again in the first place. THAT is the "original sin" of the title, I'd say.
The book's coda, about Harris and her eventual failure, is a quick affair. We recall, much earlier in the book, a prescient statement by a Black politico who says that to not consider Harris the nominee would be political suicide for the Dems. And indeed, Biden couldn't really help himself by backing her immediately, starting an avalanche of support for her. And the rest is history.
The book has some value as a historical document, though, again, the first part is ill-served by a puzzling unwillingness to present information in a linear fashion. This is a library loan, if you must....more
Wanna know what the plan is? Dwell on things you likely already know about and write them down. Really. That's Not just useless but stunningly useless
Wanna know what the plan is? Dwell on things you likely already know about and write them down. Really. That's the plan.
Nothing here about creating a plan or what that might look like. What you get instead is a questionnaire that will remind you of those Cosmo questionnaires you read when no one was looking at you at the magazine stand. Then a lot of rah-rah about how great it is to write down your thoughts on the pillars of money, health, and happiness.
Do you really want to know more? Then just read the Table of Contents. For example: What's your biological age. Three practices for biological vitality. Three paths to happiness. Build relationships in advance. Your three levels of social connection. . . . And so on.
Here's my advice: Eat balanced meals, exercise regularly, don't smoke, don't overdo alcohol, save prudently, pay off your debts, don't run a balance on credit cards, maintain friendships, get out of the house and engage in social activities you like. There. Free.
I should have known that this would be a lousy book when I was reading and reading and waiting and reading and waiting for the book to take off, when I began to think, Gee, this is really overwritten.
Please do not buy this book . Don't even take it out from your library. This will merely encourage the author to put out another edition and make himself richer. (We know what colour his parachute is: it's green, as in money. And he's got my $25 that would have been better off saved in my bank account.) Caveat emptor (yes, a cliche, but very apt)....more
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