Whatcha reading?

[Dr. Medulla]

Bedtime reading:

Tim Lott, When We Were Rich. I learned a couple days ago that Lott produced a sequel to White City Blue, so I'll be giving that a spin.

[Silent Majority]

21) From Russia With Love - Ian Fleming. Paperback. 1957. The fifth James Bond novel and the last new to me one in the series. That's them all read now. This was an excellent thriller that works on the basis that Bond is a vain rube, easily manipulated by a more ruthless and intelligent foe. I can see why JFK loved this one. Might charge back on to Dr. No, the next in the series, again before too long.

22) Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson. Audiobook. Jesus Christ, this made me laugh. I took this stone faced seriously the first few times I read it, completely missing the comedy. Could have saved myself the martyrdom of emulation and had a few less crashing comedowns if I'd seen the main purpose was to be funny the first few times. To be fair to myself, I think Thompson himself also lost the point of the book and ended up destroying himself trying to live it. It's a truly brilliant novel that resounds because its hyperbolic outrage and exaggerated lysergic terror in the Nixon years are just the mundane reality of the second Trump administration.

23) There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen's “Born In The U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland - Steven Hyden. Audiobook. 2024. Podcast research. A music writer and Springsteen fanatic, I'm not certain that Hyden has written the book he wanted to. It's got a lack of focus that's almost disguised, though not brilliantly, by the friendly and passionate writing. Just about recommended.

24) Brown at 10 - Guy Lodge and Anthony Seldon. Paperback. 2011. I have been reading this book, on and mostly off, since February 2019. This means it's taken me twice as long to finish as the time Gordon Brown spent as Prime Minister. I wasn't even spurred on my journey by paranoid imaginings of Tony Blair's plots to sabotage me. I think the reason I took so long was that Brown is an almost uniquely frustrating figure, constantly, very nearly almost being admirable before drawing back and being a pompous, disorganised, unfocused, bullying prick.

[Dr. Medulla]

21) From Russia With Love - Ian Fleming. Paperback. 1957. The fifth James Bond novel and the last new to me one in the series. That's them all read now. This was an excellent thriller that works on the basis that Bond is a vain rube, easily manipulated by a more ruthless and intelligent foe. I can see why JFK loved this one. Might charge back on to Dr. No, the next in the series, again before too long.

I flat-out am baffled by the novels' popularity. Premise, sure, I get that in the context of the Cold War. But I found them boring as hell.

22) Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson. Audiobook. Jesus Christ, this made me laugh. I took this stone faced seriously the first few times I read it, completely missing the comedy. Could have saved myself the martyrdom of emulation and had a few less crashing comedowns if I'd seen the main purpose was to be funny the first few times. To be fair to myself, I think Thompson himself also lost the point of the book and ended up destroying himself trying to live it. It's a truly brilliant novel that resounds because its hyperbolic outrage and exaggerated lysergic terror in the Nixon years are just the mundane reality of the second Trump administration.

I really should re-read this as it's been awhile. I know I tried to revisit his Campaign '72 book a few years back and had to abandon it. I think it was familiarity breeding contempt in me. What seemed so adventurous and iconoclastic, just romantic insanity, the first time around felt superficial and strained when I came back, having read the bulk of his work. The danger of every rebellious artist, succeeding so well that you end up seeming a cliche of yourself.

23) There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen's “Born In The U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland - Steven Hyden. Audiobook. 2024. Podcast research. A music writer and Springsteen fanatic, I'm not certain that Hyden has written the book he wanted to. It's got a lack of focus that's almost disguised, though not brilliantly, by the friendly and passionate writing. Just about recommended.

I don't think I've ever read a Brooooose book, but am moderately interested. Can you think of something else that might better succeed?

[Silent Majority]

21) From Russia With Love - Ian Fleming. Paperback. 1957. The fifth James Bond novel and the last new to me one in the series. That's them all read now. This was an excellent thriller that works on the basis that Bond is a vain rube, easily manipulated by a more ruthless and intelligent foe. I can see why JFK loved this one. Might charge back on to Dr. No, the next in the series, again before too long.

I flat-out am baffled by the novels' popularity. Premise, sure, I get that in the context of the Cold War. But I found them boring as hell.

22) Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson. Audiobook. Jesus Christ, this made me laugh. I took this stone faced seriously the first few times I read it, completely missing the comedy. Could have saved myself the martyrdom of emulation and had a few less crashing comedowns if I'd seen the main purpose was to be funny the first few times. To be fair to myself, I think Thompson himself also lost the point of the book and ended up destroying himself trying to live it. It's a truly brilliant novel that resounds because its hyperbolic outrage and exaggerated lysergic terror in the Nixon years are just the mundane reality of the second Trump administration.

I really should re-read this as it's been awhile. I know I tried to revisit his Campaign '72 book a few years back and had to abandon it. I think it was familiarity breeding contempt in me. What seemed so adventurous and iconoclastic, just romantic insanity, the first time around felt superficial and strained when I came back, having read the bulk of his work. The danger of every rebellious artist, succeeding so well that you end up seeming a cliche of yourself.

23) There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen's “Born In The U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland - Steven Hyden. Audiobook. 2024. Podcast research. A music writer and Springsteen fanatic, I'm not certain that Hyden has written the book he wanted to. It's got a lack of focus that's almost disguised, though not brilliantly, by the friendly and passionate writing. Just about recommended.

I don't think I've ever read a Brooooose book, but am moderately interested. Can you think of something else that might better succeed?

I love it when the stakes of a Fleming novel are pifflingly small, like a guy who cheats at cards turns out, in the last thirty pages, to be embezzling money from the civil service or something. That's where a character like NovelBond exists and really flourishes. The action is well drawn and the books are good at showing the protagonist as being constantly very close to defeat, but, ultimately, if you're not here for the main character enjoying the sensual delights of a well cooked French gourmet deal, then John LeCarre or Mickey Spillane might be a better place for you.

I certainly wearied of Thompson's lazily self mythologising/parodying of himself that quickly snuck in. The dilated pupil archetype took up all the space, including the area where he used to write from.

I enjoyed Bruce's autobiography, it was there that I began to see the artist, the music, and the man away from the Kids In the Hall jokes and cliches about mechanics driving to glory. Bit of a time investment, but the dude knows the darkness and writes honest dispatches from the edge. If that looks like it'd be too long, go for the Nebraska book.

[Dr. Medulla]

I love it when the stakes of a Fleming novel are pifflingly small, like a guy who cheats at cards turns out, in the last thirty pages, to be embezzling money from the civil service or something. That's where a character like NovelBond exists and really flourishes. The action is well drawn and the books are good at showing the protagonist as being constantly very close to defeat, but, ultimately, if you're not here for the main character enjoying the sensual delights of a well cooked French gourmet deal, then John LeCarre or Mickey Spillane might be a better place for you.

Maybe you've hit on my problem right there, given that I love Spillane's 1950s Hammer novels. Ellroy's prose is often better (tho, like Thompson, it's gotten wearisome), but he's got that same romantic brutality that appeals (arguably they share fascist sympathies, if only aesthetic). Hammer is a good guy only by the side he chooses, not by his superior character. Spillane foretold Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns and everything that followed.

I enjoyed Bruce's autobiography, it was there that I began to see the artist, the music, and the man away from the Kids In the Hall jokes and cliches about mechanics driving to glory. Bit of a time investment, but the dude knows the darkness and writes honest dispatches from the edge. If that looks like it'd be too long, go for the Nebraska book.

I'm not sure I could go straight to memoir. Some critical framing would be better for me to start with.

[Silent Majority]

I don't think Fleming is a better writer than Spillane and in some ways Le Carre is worse than Micky, just alluding to the particular points of pleasure that he has to offer being so different to the EON movies or upcoming Amazon Cinematic Universe.

I love it when the stakes of a Fleming novel are pifflingly small, like a guy who cheats at cards turns out, in the last thirty pages, to be embezzling money from the civil service or something. That's where a character like NovelBond exists and really flourishes. The action is well drawn and the books are good at showing the protagonist as being constantly very close to defeat, but, ultimately, if you're not here for the main character enjoying the sensual delights of a well cooked French gourmet deal, then John LeCarre or Mickey Spillane might be a better place for you.

Maybe you've hit on my problem right there, given that I love Spillane's 1950s Hammer novels. Ellroy's prose is often better (tho, like Thompson, it's gotten wearisome), but he's got that same romantic brutality that appeals (arguably they share fascist sympathies, if only aesthetic). Hammer is a good guy only by the side he chooses, not by his superior character. Spillane foretold Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns and everything that followed.

I enjoyed Bruce's autobiography, it was there that I began to see the artist, the music, and the man away from the Kids In the Hall jokes and cliches about mechanics driving to glory. Bit of a time investment, but the dude knows the darkness and writes honest dispatches from the edge. If that looks like it'd be too long, go for the Nebraska book.

I'm not sure I could go straight to memoir. Some critical framing would be better for me to start with.

Then definitely Nebraska by Warren Zanes.

[Dr. Medulla]

I love it when the stakes of a Fleming novel are pifflingly small, like a guy who cheats at cards turns out, in the last thirty pages, to be embezzling money from the civil service or something. That's where a character like NovelBond exists and really flourishes. The action is well drawn and the books are good at showing the protagonist as being constantly very close to defeat, but, ultimately, if you're not here for the main character enjoying the sensual delights of a well cooked French gourmet deal, then John LeCarre or Mickey Spillane might be a better place for you.

Maybe you've hit on my problem right there, given that I love Spillane's 1950s Hammer novels. Ellroy's prose is often better (tho, like Thompson, it's gotten wearisome), but he's got that same romantic brutality that appeals (arguably they share fascist sympathies, if only aesthetic). Hammer is a good guy only by the side he chooses, not by his superior character. Spillane foretold Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns and everything that followed.

I enjoyed Bruce's autobiography, it was there that I began to see the artist, the music, and the man away from the Kids In the Hall jokes and cliches about mechanics driving to glory. Bit of a time investment, but the dude knows the darkness and writes honest dispatches from the edge. If that looks like it'd be too long, go for the Nebraska book.

I'm not sure I could go straight to memoir. Some critical framing would be better for me to start with.

Then definitely Nebraska by Warren Zanes.

SoulSeek has provided me both audiobook and epub. Merci bien.

[Silent Majority]

I love it when the stakes of a Fleming novel are pifflingly small, like a guy who cheats at cards turns out, in the last thirty pages, to be embezzling money from the civil service or something. That's where a character like NovelBond exists and really flourishes. The action is well drawn and the books are good at showing the protagonist as being constantly very close to defeat, but, ultimately, if you're not here for the main character enjoying the sensual delights of a well cooked French gourmet deal, then John LeCarre or Mickey Spillane might be a better place for you.

Maybe you've hit on my problem right there, given that I love Spillane's 1950s Hammer novels. Ellroy's prose is often better (tho, like Thompson, it's gotten wearisome), but he's got that same romantic brutality that appeals (arguably they share fascist sympathies, if only aesthetic). Hammer is a good guy only by the side he chooses, not by his superior character. Spillane foretold Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns and everything that followed.

I enjoyed Bruce's autobiography, it was there that I began to see the artist, the music, and the man away from the Kids In the Hall jokes and cliches about mechanics driving to glory. Bit of a time investment, but the dude knows the darkness and writes honest dispatches from the edge. If that looks like it'd be too long, go for the Nebraska book.

I'm not sure I could go straight to memoir. Some critical framing would be better for me to start with.

Then definitely Nebraska by Warren Zanes.

SoulSeek has provided me both audiobook and epub. Merci bien.

My pleasure. I don't expect you to ever love the music, cos there's a desperate need for hope in the writing (which I like) and a maximalist approach to the arrangements and production (that I don't). I think, knowing your tastes, that they'll remain deflection points for your interest, but the story is an interesting one with an insanely driven and damaged character trying to good at its centre. You know, like a Bruce Springsteen song.

[Dr. Medulla]

I love it when the stakes of a Fleming novel are pifflingly small, like a guy who cheats at cards turns out, in the last thirty pages, to be embezzling money from the civil service or something. That's where a character like NovelBond exists and really flourishes. The action is well drawn and the books are good at showing the protagonist as being constantly very close to defeat, but, ultimately, if you're not here for the main character enjoying the sensual delights of a well cooked French gourmet deal, then John LeCarre or Mickey Spillane might be a better place for you.

Maybe you've hit on my problem right there, given that I love Spillane's 1950s Hammer novels. Ellroy's prose is often better (tho, like Thompson, it's gotten wearisome), but he's got that same romantic brutality that appeals (arguably they share fascist sympathies, if only aesthetic). Hammer is a good guy only by the side he chooses, not by his superior character. Spillane foretold Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns and everything that followed.

I enjoyed Bruce's autobiography, it was there that I began to see the artist, the music, and the man away from the Kids In the Hall jokes and cliches about mechanics driving to glory. Bit of a time investment, but the dude knows the darkness and writes honest dispatches from the edge. If that looks like it'd be too long, go for the Nebraska book.

I'm not sure I could go straight to memoir. Some critical framing would be better for me to start with.

Then definitely Nebraska by Warren Zanes.

SoulSeek has provided me both audiobook and epub. Merci bien.

My pleasure. I don't expect you to ever love the music, cos there's a desperate need for hope in the writing (which I like) and a maximalist approach to the arrangements and production (that I don't). I think, knowing your tastes, that they'll remain deflection points for your interest, but the story is an interesting one with an insanely driven and damaged character trying to good at its centre. You know, like a Bruce Springsteen song.

Not a problem—I compartmentalize intellectual interest from more personal or aesthetic interest. I've often had to explain to students that the stuff I talk about isn't an endorsement of the music, just an interest in the ideas they raise or that they help illustrate what I'm trying to get across. By the same token, I rarely get to talk about the bands I love the most because I haven't been able to fit them into an interesting problem. I remember a student writing a term paper on Rush's 2112 and the Cold War. He told me I should listen to the album while reading it. I laughed and said, "I'm very interested in your argumet, but you'd have to pay me more money than you have to make me also listen to that record."

[Olaf]

23) There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen's “Born In The U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland - Steven Hyden. Audiobook. 2024. Podcast research. A music writer and Springsteen fanatic, I'm not certain that Hyden has written the book he wanted to. It's got a lack of focus that's almost disguised, though not brilliantly

Nice one.

[Silent Majority]

25) Don't Look Back, You'll Trip Over: My Guide to Life - Michael Caine. Audiobook. 2024. In the Mel Gibson thriller from the 1990s, Conspiracy Theory, the main character has been brainwashed to always buy Catcher in the Rye any time he sees a copy so when he does an assassination at their command he'll look like a lone nut. I'm starting to suspect that someone's done the same number on me, but with Michael Caine's books. This is set out as a series of interviews from a conservative journalist who tries to nudge the actor into giving good advice and make sweeping generalisations. He does a bit of the former and manages to sidestep an admirable amount of the latter. Totally inessential, I had a nice time being charmingly lectured by Grandad despite the man's ill thought out politics

[Dr. Medulla]

Last night I finished Lott's When We Were Rich. It's a sequel to White City Blue in that it involves the same characters, beginning four months after the original story ended and following them for another eight years (2000 to 2008). But more properly it's a spiritual sequel to his novel Rumours of a Hurricane, about a working class family that is run over by Thatcher's revolution in the 80s. Instead, these are middle-class 30-somethings in Blair's Britain who, generally, embrace the pursuit of upward mobility and cosmopolitanism, but with similar destructive effects. Maybe because he'd already done something similar with Rumours, but this felt flat and forced, the characters far less interesting than in WCB. It's not a bad book per se, but it never seems a tale worth telling.

Bedtime book:

Sam Adams, War of Numbers. I came across Adams in Loren Baritz' Backfire and then learned of a posthumously published memoir. Adams was a CIA analyst in Vietnam who asserted that the numbers that the Pentagon was using were deliberately minimized for political purposes, both to reassure the public and to satisfying the territorial interests of various branches of the military for funding and authority. And, of course, when he tried to bring all this to light to the decision makers, he had his legs cut from under him.

[Dr. Medulla]

Tub book:

Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History. A loooong time since I've read this, apart from snippets for citations. This came out at a time when historical interpretation was fighting back against postmodernist perspectives that bordered on (if not crossed over into) nihilism. So they're trying to recover an idea that there are some shared truths in historical work, that it doesn't have to be so fractured and relativistic as to become meaningless beyond each individual's view. I lean quite heavily to the relativist position (my Disneyland essay deals with that), but I clearly don't regard this as nihilistic or despairing, merely open-ended. I'm quite optimistic in my sense of limitations because, to me, it means the momentum needs to keep going, nothing is ever truly settled.

[Silent Majority]

26) The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien. 1967, written 1940. Audiobook read by Jim Norton. A reread of one of my favourite novels. Funny, dark, and postmodern in a way that's justified by the plot. A must read. From my notes on my original read in 2018: "... fantastically written. It's a descent through hell and purgatory in the manner of a comic shaggy dog story. It's heavy with symbolism of some kind or another, naturalistic Irish, absurd dialogue, and a fixation on bicycles. My kind of novel."

27) Be Here Now: Our Story - Ram Dass. 1971. Audiobook. The kind of hippy crap I like.

28) Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett. Paperback. 1989. The eighth Discworld novel, I realised on this journey through that I'd never actually read this from cover to cover before. As a kid, I would flick past the paragraphs that weren't about the characters I knew and liked from later novels. Loved the read and I think you can see Pratchett find his iconic character in real time in front of us. He's a blurred collection of clichés through the novel's first part and by the end, Vimes is the flint hard pragmatic moralist with a temper kept in check by his badge. Though, that is also the character's arc within the story but I wonder, when I go back to the previous seven novels, if this is a turning point in the series' transition from ripping the piss out of the fantasy genre to simply doing very well. Suspect that Granny Weatherwax would be another root in that tree. Here, a dragon becoming king of a city makes for a fine allegory on fascism and how people start scraping and bowling when they should be fighting and running.

[Dr. Medulla]

Finished listening to Carney's Value(s) this morning (damn thing is loooong). Stuff that persuaded, stuff that didn't. I appreciate and approve of his larger aim to restore the meaning of value from its reduced economic definition, something he seeks in order to introduce social purpose into business and economy beyond merely extracting as much profit as possible. He is, in short, a believer in ethical capitalism. Moreover, he's a sincere advocate of addressing climate change as an existential crisis (his admiration of Greta Thunberg throughout is quite obvious). Still, he never truly succeeds in persuading me as to the validity of an ethical capitalism. Maybe he's naive, maybe I'm scarred from coming of age under neoliberalism and the gospel of Milton Friedman. I dunno, but I remained wary throughout those discussions. More problematic for me is his approach is very macro, approaching issues from the perspective of the elite decision-makers and demanding they be more social minded. Nowhere in his analysis is the fate of the worker, their living and working conditions, their happiness and misery. Labour gets buried in the same abstraction as problems faced by decision-makers. He's writing from his experience as one of those major decision-makers, so fair enough, and there's always a risk in trying to do too much in a book. But the lack of attention or concern for human beings as human beings is off-putting. In the end, tho, he's a world-class economist and I can acknowledge that the disparity between our understandings of economics limit my ability to critique his perspective.

Up next:

Justin Smith, The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is. A philosophical critique of the internet, focusing on what it has become, so badly straying from the original hopes.