This list has evolved from pure cardinality (hey, look at my library backlog) to a graph of reading connections and referrals. Any time you promote content for (now) nearly two decades, it shifts from update and cadence to professed allegiance and potential signal amplification. With the increased competition for attention, content spend and the scarcity of proper marketing for books, my low-gain repeat of authors’ signals is my contribution to the cause. And if it helps those authors earn a living wage, or explore their next projects, it is rewarding in multiple aspects.
I also update my reading list on the Fable app on an as-completed or as-DNF basis, if you want closer to real time updates on what’s in the queue.
1 “The Godfather of Poker,” Doyle Brunson, autobiography/poker, finished January 1.
My vacation reading concluded with Dolye “Texas Dolly” Brunson’s autobiography, purchased shortly after he passed away in the late spring of 2023. After seeing him reflected by so much of the poker canon – the tales of Andy Beal’s high stakes games, Stuey Ungar biographies, and the countless recommendations I’ve made of his “Super/System”, I felt it was time to explore his life in his words, with minimal bluffing. It’s not quite what you’d expect – there are very few tales of big games or tournaments, except where they shaped his goals or gave further insight into Bruson as a man of integrity. There are enough colorful characters for a Damon Runyon piece, and a solid biography that ran through his playing career with accents of his religious and spiritual travails, his family and dealing with tragedy, and his remarkable ability to befriend people on the fringes of legal, social and ethical norms.
2 “Surf City Confidential,” Daniel Waters, fiction, finished January 5.
The initial crime drama of a five-part series set on NJ’s Long Beach Island; the “Mickey Cleary” novels involve a female police chief in the late 1960s in the midst of the literal sea change on the Jersey shore. Old-school families, shoobies, long-time shore residents and the Pine Barrens in all of their lore feature prominently. The author is a cardiac surgeon who grew up in the Pineys and he captures the spirit and societal texture of that time to a figurative and literal “T”, down to the misogyny, racial tension and slurs, and “shoobie/bennie” politics that continue six decades later. It’s not Agatha Christie or Scott Turow, but it’s fun beach reading and will make my list of “Jersey Shore Books.”
3 “Long Road,” Steve Hyden, music, finished January 14.
I have a blank spot in my cultural knowledge from about 1991 through 1996; we had two toddlers at home and I was working in technology at the birth of the Internet so I have no reference point beyond children’s TV shows. In effect, I missed the Seattle music scene including Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots and the rest of the riff-laden, distortion heavy sound. With thirty years of perspective, it’s both fun and educational to get views like Hyden’s, where Pearl Jam was the soundtrack to his teen years that way Springsteen, Zeppelin, Rush and Yes were to mine. Having seen Danny Clinch’s iconic photograph of Eddie Vedder jumping across the stage at Wrigley Field in 2016, I figured I wasn’t too late to re-learn musical history. This book is really about the band and its music, not the dynamics between band members, labels, or managers; it is less of a hagiography of Eddie Vedder than an analysis of an intense musical career. There were plenty of waypoints that I recognized – Machine Gun Kelly’s cameo in “Roadies” (which I loved); BIlly Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins (having just watched Geddy Lee’s “Are Bass Players Human Too” featuring Melissa Auf Der Maur, who toured with Smashing Pumpkins) and some Phish and Dead references.
4. “Machine Vendetta”, Alistair Reynolds, sci-fi, finished January 31
What might be the last of the Prefect Dreyfuss books set in the Glitter Band world, Reynolds ties together a few long-running themes and provides an exit planet left for Dreyfuss. You really have to read these in order and remember the context of the various organizations, species, and political factions, and there are a lot of small details that justify future actions. Par for the sci-fi course in a Reynolds book, there’s action, mystery and a bit of existential crisis rolled into a fast moving story.
5. “Same Bed Different Dreams,” Ed Park, fiction, finished February 18
A day and a half after finishing this, I’m still not sure I get it. It’s EL Doctorow’s “Ragtime” meets “M*A*S*H” meets the cover of “Sgt Pepper” and …. It’s really three intertwined stories that all converge into both the backstory of the present-day characters as well as a continued callback to the mythical “Korean Provisional Government” that would have assured a unified Korea. Having visited Korea a few times on business and experienced the latter 20th century events that serve as historical and society anchors, parts of this felt personal and real, and yet parts were just so (intentionally, I think) outrageous that I laughed, perhaps inappropriately.
6. “Jump: 40th Anniversary of Attending the ‘1984’ Van Halen Concert”, Jim Serger, music, finished February 27
Like the band around which the book revolves, it’s possible for multiple, conflicting views to exist simultaneously. “Tonechaser,” the biography-of-friend of Eddie Van Halen, painted the band in extremes - incredible musicianship side by side with lack of vocal talents wrapped in showman’s clothing. I bought this (paper) book on an Amazon recommendation after finishing “Tonechaser,” with all of my own memories of Van Halen’s “1984” adding subtle context. The actual book is in serious need of copyediting, proofreading and typesetting help; it is repetitive and feels like a high school report that’s adding paragraphs to clear the length bar. Despite the mechanical issues, deep down it’s a story of life long friends, the guys with whom you tested boundaries and explored adult life, and a four decade love of a metal band through its various incarnations and dramas. Serger managed to cover every aspect of growing up in Ohio, a decade younger than me, at a pivotal musical moment when Kent State was a generation before and the internet wasn’t widely distributed.
7. “The Decibel Diaries”, Carter Allen, music, finished February 28
I read this in parallel with “Jump” providing two widely and wildly varying accounts of concerts (to be fair, I needed the break from the poor formatting of “Jump” and as a paper only book, it was relegated to planes and trains). Carter Allen was one of my favorite Boston area DJs in the 80s and 90s, and he chronicles his life as a live music fan from his teen years through his professional career with backstage access, interviews and on air favorites. He is, at all times, fair, not veering into idol worship or debauchery, and his ability to sprinkle lyrical references Katy Tur-like through his descriptions makes this a very fun book – with 50 short chapters you’d think it would be disconnected, and that would be a disservice to the detail observed and shared. Musicianship, song selection, show energy, even notes about venues modern and horrendous; with a dynamic range of artists from those on the way up at the time (Phish, Clifford Ball; Jack White) to those who had peaked (Joe Walsh) to those just started to hear the echoes of their bombast (Roger Waters, and a bit of U2).
8. “The Bezzle,” Cory Doctrow, fiction, finished March 4
Part two of the Martin Hench forensic accounting series, and only Doctorow can take accounting, private equity, Ponzi schemes, Catalina Island and copyrights and turn then into a wickedly fast page turner. There’s joy in a novel that centers around an incarcerated friend and the prison system, in both the conclusion and then the real conclusion, in which justice is served in multiple ways. “Bezzle” is a kangaroo word of “embezzlement” referring to the point at which you’re in too deep in a scam, and despite the obvious long-game play through the book there are several other warning shots fired.
9. “Ship Bottom Blues,” Daniel Waters, fiction, finished March 8
The second of the Mickey Cleary, life on LBI in the hippy 60s novels again draws on a wealth of Pine Barrens, Vietnam war and emergent beach mecca history, vernacular and culture. A tighter, faster book than his first, it picks up with some of the same characters in a different murder incorporated tinged and tangled weave of plot lines. I read his first feeling a bit nostalgic for LBI and now I’m gently becoming a series fan. Written only in the last five years, they capture the entirety of the South Jersey and “down the shore” ethos from five decades earlier with superb precision (aside from the reference to a Dunkin’ Donuts on Bay Avenue, I don’t think it opened until the early 2000s; it was always mom and pop coffee shops).
10. “Circumference of the World,” Lavie Tidhar, fiction, finished March 15
Another wonderfully layered book from Tidhar with EL Doctorow worthy sci-fi meets reality cross references and a requisite Dune shout out. A six-part harmony of dangerous books, mythology, family history, and the genesis of religion mixed with an epistolary bridge that makes you think you understand it only to see the true vanishing point of reality. I think. It will take me a few more reviews to fully digest this one.
11. “Great Falls, MT,” Reggie Watts, biography, finished March 24
Recommended as another treatise on “otherness” and finding your voice, I thoroughly enjoyed Watts’s views on very red states, finding artistic expression in comedy and music, and having to be the “stand out” to define an identity when he had exhausted all of the more mainstream labels. It neither starts nor ends where you think it will, and for that it’s a great reading journey.
12. “Go Up For Glory,” Bill Rusell, sports/biography, finished March 31
I’ll admit to a shameful purchase – I saw the spine of this one in the Brookline Booksmith, a favorite local bookstore for four decades, and bought the digital version later. Yes, I feel guilty about that and wish I could tip the Booksmith appropriately. The Boston bookstores curate sports books that capture the hierarchy of Boston sports religions: Bruins, Celtics, Red Sox, Patriots, the Boston Marathon, and the Beanpot. As the Celtics make a playoff bid, I find myself thinking about the summer I graduated from Princeton when the next great dynasty of green teams set the tone for my first fall of adulthood, and I decided to dig deeper into Red Auerbach, Bill Russell and Bob Cousy. Russell pulls no punches, and despite the now less accepted language, he captures the racial tensions of the mid-1960s that equally describe Dee Brown’s first month in Boston in 1990 and pockets of America today. It is not a basketball book; it’s a book about breaking established rules on and off the court, about personal leadership and integrity, and about how championships are forged.
Thank you, Hal. A lot of books to check out from this list!! Thank you for sharing.