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I'm currently reading Perfecting Sound Forever by Greg Milner which is basically a history of recorded music and how music itself and its role in society has changed due to the nature of recording technology, record companies, etc. It's very good. The last really good non-fiction book I read before that was You Can't Win by Jack Black, who was a hobo and petty criminal at the turn of the 20th century who was based largely in San Francisco but roamed all over the American west. It's a fascinating book that explains a lot about the criminal underworld and hobo societies of that time, and it was a major inspiration to William S. Burroughs. I'm also occasionally reading from Escape Velocity which is a collection of writings by Charles Portis, both fictional short stories and non-fiction from his journalist career. Most recently I read a piece he wrote in the early 60's on the history of country music and the development of the recording and live music industry in Nashville, it was great, just as entertaining as his fiction. I'm also reading Nikita Kruschev's memoirs although their status as non-fiction is not entirely certain. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 13, 2014 21:23
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ulvir posted:in the biography department, I've got the autobiography of Malcolm X in my reading queue, as well as the Feynman biography that's currently a TBB book club. Any other biographies that are worth reading that I should get into at some point? Strange Fascination by David Buckley is a very enjoyable biography of David Bowie, though obviously rather incomplete given Bowie's recent career reboot. I think the most recent edition is from 2010 and covers everything up through Reality.
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Mar 22, 2014 00:40
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I'm currently reading Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh, it's by a dude who grew up in middle class southern California and then went to grad school in Chicago to study sociology, became interested the poor black neighborhoods that surrounded the school and decided to focus on studying them, and then wound up becoming friends with a gang leader in the projects where he was essentially "embedded" in a way that is fairly rare for sociologists and allowed him to have a lot of very direct involvement and observation. Really interesting book that focuses a lot on the relationship between the gang and the non-gang residents of the projects and how they rely on and feed off one another.
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Mar 29, 2014 17:15
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I am currently in the middle of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West which is a rather massive travel book written by a Briton travelling as a tourist through Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Serbia in 1937. Since she is a well off and somewhat well known figure she has friends who are professors, poets, and so forth scattered throughout the Balkans to greet her wherever she stops and engage in lengthy discussions of the local history, culture, ethnic tensions, and so on.. and though all of these people are friends with the author, they often dislike one another for those same reasons which leads to some interesting conversations and shifts in perspective about whatever piece of local history is being discussed at the moment. The most interesting thing about the book, of course, is that it's from 1937 - only four years before the German invasion of Yugoslavia, but of course no one in the book is aware of this. There is quite a lot of political tension of course, much left over from WW1, but by and large it's life as usual in Yugoslavia which means that many areas are full of German tourists, whom West sometimes interacts with and attempts to describe their outlook. By this time Hitler had been in power for some years and Mussolini even longer and tensions were quite high, and everyone - the author included - is completely obsessed with race, but much of this is more in the background than the foreground. I can't say I've ever read anything quite like it, it's great not only because West herself is a very entertaining writer and imparts a huge amount of knowledge but also because the book itself is a unique artifact from a time and place where everyone was teetering on the brink of destruction and chaos, with little conscious idea it was coming but with all of the signs right there. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Jun 27, 2014 |
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Jun 27, 2014 14:19
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Abu Dave posted:Any good non fiction reccomendations for works about police officers? I definitely recommend Cops by Mark Baker which is simply a collection of anonymous stories of life on the job from cops all over the US, mostly from the 1970's. Since it's all anonymous there's no telling how true it is really, but it's a rather frightening book if even half of that poo poo is real (which I suspect it is). It's a good read either way. On a different note I've also read No Angel which is the story of an ATF officer who was supposedly the first law enforcement officer to successfully infiltrate an outlaw biker gang, focusing primarily on the Hells Angels. Fairly interesting but again, not exactly easy to tell just how non-fiction it really is. Story follows the general "going too deep undercover" arc that you see in a lot of crime fiction.. which doesn't in and of itself mean anything but also the whole thing has a sort of Elmore Leonard vibe, so I wouldn't take it as an ultra realistic portrayal of the situation or anything (and of course several of the bikers have since claimed that they knew the dude was a cop the whole time etc.) Earwicker fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Jul 7, 2015 |
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Jul 7, 2015 01:59
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CestMoi posted:I'm reading THe Golden Bough and I keep alternating between cringing at how he keeps going on about how Aboriginals are by far the most underdeveloped of the human races and finding the sarcastic treatment of all of the weird magical rituals incredibly charming. IMO the most interesting part of that book is the explanations of all the weird rituals in western society. Like saying "bless you" after someone sneezes because, apparently, of an ancient belief that one's soul could fly out of their nose when sneezing (or maybe just because sneezing is a sign of potential illness)
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Jan 29, 2016 00:13
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Pick posted:It ends up feeling paper-thin and more like a novelization of The Wire than a serious academic work. I certainly agree that it's more of a narrative than a serious academic work (after all, it only has one title). But I don't think it was at all intended to be a serious academic work, this isn't the guy's thesis but a non-fiction work that is being sold commercially. And in that context I'd put the responsibility as much on his editor and the publisher as the author (and I'm not saying what they did was wrong) since they wanted a book that would actually sell. I mean, unless some element of the story is actually falsified, I don't see much of a problem, though I do agree the dude's tone was rather condescending at times.
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Apr 8, 2016 15:46
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Wheat Loaf posted:I've just finished DisneyWar and it was great. Is there anything else like it that's worth checking out? I could tell you the detailed story about how Disney completely ruined Hyperion, a publishing house they once owned then gutted and sold to Hachette.
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May 5, 2016 13:46
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I'm reading The Love You Make which is a history of the Beatles written by a guy who was friends with Brian Epstein and Cynthia Lennon, the book was a bestseller back in the 80's and apparently touted as "the real insider story". I randomly picked it up at a nice little shop in Maine. I'm about a third in, and pretty disappointed, as its much less about the music than about their personal lives, in an odd way that sort of glamorizes John and is rather needlessly meanspirited towards anyone else other than Brian Epstein. I keep hoping that will change and its still kind of worth it as I've never read a detailed book about the Beatles before and still find the history interesting, but if anyone's got a better recommendation I'll trade up.
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May 8, 2016 01:19
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I'm currently about halfway through Into Thin Air. I've never read any Krakuaer before other than the odd article here or there. I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying it. I find his prose a little overwrought at times, and to be honest mountain climbing is not a subject I've ever been particularly interested in, but it's an extremely compelling book, quite hard to put down.
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May 13, 2016 23:46
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thanks for the recommendation - I have encountered stories about the Mitfords while reading about various other things and was always intrigued and though I should learn more, so now I will.
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Jul 30, 2016 17:28
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I'm currently reading Sound Man by Glyn Johns. He was the producer and engineer on a shitload of classic albums from the 60's through the 90's. It's interesting but it has a lot less technical detail than I was expecting (and wanted), it's more about the personalities of various musicians and producers and other industry people and, every once in a while, a bit of explanation of some particularly weird or funny technique used in some particular song (for example there's a story about a Stones song that uses the sound of police batons being banged together which were borrowed from a couple of cops who walked into the studio unannounced one night)
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Sep 11, 2016 12:29
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