BOOKS THREAD

Bill Haley doesn't get the credit he deserves for being one of the pioneers of rock-n-roll. At least that's the position taken by the authors of this book, one of whom is Bill Haley Jr. The senior Haley had a meteoric rise to the top of the record charts, and then couldn't do anything to stay there. He kept recording and kept touring but never lived up to his glory days. It's a sad story, but an interesting book.

Joe Bob says check it out while listening to the Bill Haley channel on Spotify.

 

The day my dad became cool was the day he told me about seeing Bill Haley and the Comets live in Lethbridge, Alberta.

 

Mo Willems is one of my favorites. He writes mostly picture/beginning reader books for children, and I read Leonardo the Terrible Monster to our kids hundreds of times, and I loved it every time I read it.

In this one, Willems illustrates his post-college trip around the world with one cartoon a day. The drawing isn't always the most important thing that happened that day; sometimes it's just something that caught his eye. It was a fun read.

Joe Bob says check it out (and also check out Leonardo.)

 

I've started reading a new series I really like. It's the Buck Reilly series by John H. Cunningham.
It's the typical stuff I read, guy fiction: sea plane, fallen out guy, treasure, adventure, etc.
I'm on book 3 of 9.

 

Been a while since I reviewed any rock books here but I just finished The Islander: My Life and Music and Beyond by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell.

I enjoyed this a lot more than the bloated, name-dropping ego trip that was Clive Davis's memoir. Blackwell was pretty much present at the creation of the Jamaican music scene and there's lots of great stuff here on that as well as his dealings with Island stars like Bob Marley, U2, Cat Stevens, Steve Winwood, Grace Jones, Tom Waits and more as well as artists he whiffed or missed on like Dire Straits.

A while back I read Remain in Love by Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz. It's as much a a love story to his wife Tina Weymouth and a travelogue (lot of descriptions of meals, wine and hotels on the road) as it is a history of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club and a chance to bitch out David Byrne. Worth looking in to for fans of the band and the era they came from.

 

I haven't read any fiction in a while, and my daughter found this on the bookshelf in her room, unsure of how it got there. (Spooky!)

Anyway...I like most of King's stuff, and this wasn't an exception. Kids with certain mental powers are taken from their homes and put into The Institute, and that's all I'm gonna say about that because I'm not offering up any spoilers. I really enjoyed it. One review I read after I finished it said the book "could be a classic, as long as readers can finish it." I don't really agree with that, even though it was pretty long, at 557 pages. It never dragged, and the story kept me into it.

Joe Bob says check it out.

 

Joe Namath's surprisingly thin autobiography (just 230 pages). Okay read. Highlights: his witnessing of George Wallace trying to block integration at their alma mater (and his befriending of the courageous young woman in question) and the Bachelors III saga.

Sadly, no mention of his esteemed ghostwriter Dick Schaap or the groovy tv show they hosted together.

 

That one was on my TBR list until everyone seemed to be running to David Byrne to get his side of the story. Oh, stop. First it turns out that Warren Zevon and Lou Reed were mercurial cranks in real life and now we're in couples therapy with Byrne and the rest of The Heads? Glad to hear there's more to the story. Thanks for the review.

 

"Forget the Alamo" by Bryan Burrough ("Barbarians at the Gate," "Public Enemies" and "Days of Rage"), Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford.

Unique and fascinating read about the negative legacy of the Alamo. First half is history of the event and the second half is historiography/battles over legacy in the public history sphere.

As someone who worked in San Antonio for a few years and loves Burrough's work, I eagerly anticipated it. It doesn't disappoint.

 

I really enjoyed this, mainly because most of the TV shows and movies talked about were popular when I was a teenager, so I'd seen almost everything. It's about the men who made comedy in the '80s: Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, et al. And the book even admits that there were very few women being given significant chances in comedy during this time. It talks about the hits and also the flops that these guys made. Chevy Chase comes off sounding like a jackass (no surprise there), Eddie Murphy had a huge ego (and a crooked dick), John Candy was usually a nice guy.

Joe Bob says check it out.

 

In doing some research for a class I teach, I came across another teacher's syllabus that required this book for the class, so I found it in the campus library and knocked it out in a few days. It's a first-person account of a sailor - not GGM, though he's listed as the author - who was thrown overboard during a storm and survived on a life raft for 10 days.

It was...OK. While the story kept me engrossed enough - it was only 106 pages, so it didn't take long - I couldn't figure out the point of assigning the book for a journalism class. I'm sure Marquez had a hand in cleaning up the guy's story, but nothing about the writing just blew me away.

Joe Bob says....eh.