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Now reading in 2015


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I've just noticed that our "Now Reading" thread is more than a little outdated...http://viachicago.org/topic/49623-now-reading-in-2014/ so I thought I'd start us off with a fresh new thread for this fresh bright Spring!

 

I've been gone for at least the past week or so, at least mentally, my brain swimming in vivid images of wartime Europe cast up by these two brilliant, spellbinding books:

 

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and

 

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I can't recommend them highly enough. Both are stories that will play out in my head for a lifetime, beautifully told, original, utterly captivating. Both are lock-yourself-in-the-bathroom-so-the-family-will-let-you-read-just-one-more-chapter books, books that you slow down reading to try to prevent them concluding. I'm jealous of all of you who still have these ahead of you!

 

Both invite rereading, especially Life After Life, which practically demands it.

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I reread a random story in Ford's Rock Springs every year or so.

 

Such a great short story collection, probably in my top 5.

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My first time picking up one of these 33-1/3 books and I am loving it. It's extra nice that the author, J., is an old high school friend of mine. Always was an excellent writer and it's nice to see him published. And he was always an R.E.M. fanatic (I remember him raving about their show at the UIC Pavilion during the Pageantry tour), so it's extra-extra cool that he was able to hook up with these guys to do the research.

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Glyn Johns Sound Man, kind of boring and not written very well.

 

Yeah, I finished that one about a week or so back. Was disappointed in how little he revealed about anything. The guys worked with everyone, and engineered/produced some of the greatest records of the past 40 years, but when it comes to telling his story, he seemed unwilling to share anything more than the most perfunctory details.

 

And as a musician, I was disappointed in how little he revealed about his recording techniques. He gave us his mic technique for drums, that was about it. And that info was pretty widely known already.

 

 

Anyway, now reading:

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"No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead" by Peter Richardson. Thirty pages in and its great.

 

Still plodding thru Shelby Foote's "The Civil War, A Narrative" Vol 1 as well. Lots of great insight and Shelby offers some funny tidbits but this fat bastard is killing me. There's two more volumes too.

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"No Simple Highway: A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead" by Peter Richardson. Thirty pages in and its great.

 

 

Read that last month or so --- one of the better reads on the Dead and the 60' San Fransisco scene in general.

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Read that last month or so --- one of the better reads on the Dead and the 60' San Fransisco scene in general.

Nice. Just got  So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead, by David Browne, which I heard was a good read with a varied angle.

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Is that the taper guy who's constantly pushing his book on the FB 80s page?

No, that's Scott Allen with his Aces Back to Back. I actually purchased the book last year before he started cramming it down our collective throat. I stopped reading it due to inaccuracies in it as well as out of spite due to his pushy nature. he's not a taper dude, I don't think. That's some other cat with a book that doesn't push nearly as much as Scott Allen does.

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