Reading List: Q3 2024
Music and fantasy and literal beach reading
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.
23. “100 Things Phish Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die,” Andy Smith, music, finished July 1
More like “100 of our most favorite Phish things from tour,” and at times it reads like a DARE course trying to explain the drug culture of the Phish lot. Now six years old, and therefore missing about the last third of “Phish 3.0” there are two dozen interesting themes here that would have made a well researched book about the band and its culture. But listing all of their albums, and the most popular venues (without including the Mann Center, site of some iconic Phish shows) seems like a cheap way to fill out the last 20% of the top 100 list.
24. “The Electric Church,” Martin Popoff, music, finished July 2
Handed to me by a co-worker who is equally into heavy metal and prog rock, this biography of one of the most unheralded bass players of the 70s and 80s is full of insight and surprises. Bill “Electric” Church played with Van Morrison, Montrose, and Sammy Hagar’s pre-Van Halen bands, and along the touring highway shared stages and stories with Boston, Journey, J. Geils Band, and the up and coming 80s hair metal bands. It is not a well edited or paced book, and at times reads like a transcription of interview tapes without cross-reference. There are few details about Church’s bass playing techniques, bass line construction, or song composition. His notes on various rock stars’ personalities, the history of some classic albums, and his confirmation of the overall strangeness of Van Morrison (which I observed first-hand at Boston’s Wang Center in 1985) made it a quick and fun beach read. Ed Note: Popoff’s books are largely not available through Amazon, and his website has his full catalog – including the Rush and Yes volumes which are quite good.
25. “Groove: An Aesthetic of Measured Time,” Mark Abel, music, finished July 13
I picked this up as a reference from Stephon Alexander’s book about jazz and physics, and calling this academic is a gross understatement. It is a scholarly critique and review of what makes Western music groove (or swing, depending upon your generation). While dismissing Adorno’s utterly narrow definition of valid music (Adorno didn’t quite get jazz, which means the Dead, Phish, anything blues based, and roughly 90% of the rock canon with a guitar solo as well) Abel attempts to convolve the time dimension division of music with our ability to enjoy it. He goes even further to equate time division with labor division, and therefore a hallmark of capitalism, and about three chapters previous to that I began skimming aggressively. As a bass player, this was mildly horrifying – you listen to the drummer, you fill in the spaces to feel people bopping, and enjoy (to quote Maceo Parker) life on planet groove.
26. “The Algebraist,” Iain Banks, sci-fi, finished July 28
Normally I plough through Banks’s work at an alarming rate, but found this one slower going – it’s one of the few not set in the Culture world and so required a bit more context. As usual, his characters range from the deeply disturbed and good-but-introspective to the self-absorbed bordering on comical. The Dwellers, an elder race of gas giant inhabitants, fill the role of the self-deprecating ship intelligences in the Culture world, and hold surprises of their own. I felt the plot twist at the end wasn’t adequately set up, and the book likely could have been edited down, but it was a worthy Banks volume.
27. “Fight Me,” Austin Grossman, fiction, finished August 17
Heavily endorsed by fave author Cory Doctorow, this “Big Chill” or “Breakfast Club” of high school misfits turned superheroes turned midlife crises digs into the how, what, and sometimes why of supernatural powers. Equal parts a Sartre worthy existential look at the lives of heroes and villains and coming to terms with whatever the mutant equivalent of midage paunch is, it’s a challenging and interesting book. I feel I missed some of the subtlety as I’m not immersed in the Marvel/DC universes, and I saw “The Big Chill” before it had bearing in my own life.
28. “The Book Of Elsewhere,” Keanu Reeves and China Mieville, sci-fi/fantasy, finished August 29
Mieville is another author whose entire output I consume upon release, and to see him team up with Keanu Reeves (yes, the actor, Bill and Ted and Matrix and hit blend). Mix in some Koscei the Deathless (thank you Cathrynne Valente for re-imaging that one for us) and another superhero as deities as super soldier existential and ethical exploration, and you end up here: where do religions come from? Are super secret government programs always corrupt, and how many levels deep do they go? Like “Fight Me,” this took me a while to get through (compounded by work, travel, and a new lens prescription that has taken a while to settle for me).
29. “Darkome,” Hannu Rajaniemi, sci-fi, finished August 30.
I’ve been waiting for this for nearly four years. Hannu shared an early reader copy, and I had read the very early draft as well as attended one of his talks (he’s an RNA researcher by day, sci-fi author by other day parts) and can see where this germinated. Quite simply: wow, equal parts completely terrifying and imaginable as well as a fast-paced thriller where you’re never really sure who is on which side or why. The two decades future world is as rich as that of the “Quantum Thief” series, but the science is quite real, the scenarios are plausible, and you can hear the echoes of Covid, politics, tech bro-ism, and calls to regulate AI.
30. “Last Summer At The Golden Hotel,” fiction, Elysse Friedlan, finished August 31
Local author who generates local Jersey shore flavored beach reading. The premise of a failing Catskills hotel and the family structures tending it and themselves over time was well researched and close to home (parts reminded me of our winters at Host Farms in Reading, PA before it turned corporate). Her characters, however, are largely single dimensional and don’t have room to grow within the narrative – there are reveals large and small but they feel like exclamation points placed for a movie adaptation, as they don’t pivot the story or move the characters in any direction.
31. “I Don’t Want To Go Home: An Oral History Of The Stone Pony,” music, Nick Corasaniti, finished September 1.
I have deep family roots in Asbury Park: a great uncle who co-owned the Palace, my father who worked there, shows at the Stone Pony and Fast Lane, and the lore of growing up in Freehold but knowing Bruce Springsteen drove the Asbury music scene. Add in so much history and backstory that was still novel after consuming all of the Springsteen, Little Steven and Jersey rock books within reach, and add so much of the punk history of which I was oblivious, top it with Danny Clinch, Al Schneir (from moe.) and Tom Marshall filling in like a revival chorus, and this book practically sang to me. It’s literally an oral history; fragments of interviews from owners, bouncers, bartenders, musicians and promoter who made the Stone Pony the longest-lived (my claim, not theirs) sub-5,000 venue in the NY Metro area. Reading how the club outlived Maxwells, CBGBs, City Gardens and the neighboring Fast Lane was a music business education.
32. “Jackpot Summer,” fiction, Elysse Friedland, finished September 2
Another one-day in the chair read, and my little bit of rope for her books is now retracted. More unidimensional characters including the “funny octogenarian who turns out is cool,” the “stoner kid who saves the day in a heartwarming way” and “work obsessed lawyer who sees the light before it’s a heart attack or divorce.” This time they hit the Powerball and the money makes them penny foolish and pound even more foolish.
33. “Those Beyond The Wall,” fantasy, Micaiah Johnson, finished September 11
I adored this book, for its passion, storytelling, character reveals, and exploration of trust, love, entitlement, power, and the steganography of deep family relationships. It is an angry book; it’s an exploration of gender and gender norms; it strips down entitlement and historical racism to brutal lifestyles. I think you could read this – a King Arthur like heir to a displaced throne trying to avert a time travel armageddon (and yes, it all makes sense in context) – as any number of parables, and they would all be equally valid. One of the best books that made me think long and hard about privilege this year.
34. “The Bright Sword,” fantasy, Lev Grossman, finished September 25
Another retelling of the legend of King Arthur, but this time a post-humous tale of the remaindered Knights of the now broken Round Table. While picking up the themes of the Arthurian canon (might versus right, old versus new ways, loyalty) Grossman eschews the bright and shiny parts for the harder stories – how and why the various knights ended up in Britain, what it means (or meant) to be Angle-ish and how alliances are forged stronger than blades. There’s fairy dust literally and liberally sprinkled throughout, and some modern themes time-shifted centuries back, but that’s the magic of King Arthur - his canon frames the story but the legend is left to interpretation.