BOOKS THREAD

Don't know that this book is famous but economist John Manard Keynes and Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova were, in their time:

 

Don't let @The Big Ragu or @doctorquant know you're recommending a book about a subversive like Keynes! Spoiler alert: She speaks glowingly of "A Treatise on Monetary Reform'' and ''Inflation as a Method of Taxation.''

 

Finished this yesterday. The author is, among other things, TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air, so I've liked his stuff for a long time. He puts forth that we're in the platinum age of TV, which follows the golden age of TV. Lots of good insight and interviews. He shows lots of love to The Sopranos, which I appreciate. But even though he's writing about recent and current TV, he ties it in with stuff from the early days. I really enjoyed this. Joe Bob says check it out.

 

Just picked up The Accidental Life by Terry McDonell. This guy has lived some life as an editor. Look forward to reading it.

 

A book from 2011: "Smoking Typewriters" by John McMillian. It's a good look at the rise of the 1960s underground press and how it morphed into the "alternative" weeklies of the 1970s and beyond.

My favorite storyline in this book — as someone born in 1972 — is how the 1960s left wingers (and the newspapers they printed) went from a relatively unified "we have to change this corrupt system" message to literally fighting each other as they splintered off into smaller groups of bitter, frustrated and increasingly violent radicals.

Meanwhile, the alternative press morphed into lifestyle-oriented weeklies for the Yuppie crowd, and contributed to today's demise of daily newspapers by siphoning off young people before the internet took them away for good.

 

Took me just a few days to finish this. It wasn't what I was expecting it to be. According to what I read on the cover, I just figured it was about a dad with unrealistic expectations of his kid, something that I'm probably guilty of at times (though I try not to be). Instead, Tyler, the author's son, has a mild form of Asperger's, and part of the story is about the parents accepting the diagnosis and how they dealt with it, as much as it is about the kid and how he handles it.

Fournier's description of his son is a spot-on description of the kid of our best friends, but they've never had the boy test for Asperger's. I'm trying to figure out how to suggest they read this without offending them.

Anywho....I enjoyed it. Joe Bob says check it out.

 

Really fun read.

Currently reading two other editor memoirs: Avid Reader by legendary book editor, former New Yorker editor, Robert Gottlieb, and Another Life by Michael Korda. The two were colleagues as youngsters so it's interesting reading their different memories over the same event.

 

Did you happen to read Hothouse, about the history of FSG, by Boris Kachka, the books guy at NYMag? That's a good read. Also enjoyed Editor of Genius about Maxwell Perkins, though the movie was unfortunately subpar.

 

Yeah Hothouse is really good read too. And same with Editor of Genius; great book, tried watching the movie few months ago and fell asleep.

I've mentioned this before but I'm a sucker for any behind the scenes look, or histories of anything involving books, movies, newspapers, magazines, etc. I think every trip to The Strand, I come back with two or three more of them.

 

ya know, I been working in NYC for four years and have never made it down to The Strand, though it's been on my radar. Hope to go before I quit my job in NYC in a week and a half.