BOOKS THREAD

Picked this one up after reading about it here and finished it in a couple of days. A fun read, but certainly not too deep. I can't believe that the manager of the featured team went into his pocket for over $300k to fund a team of gamers.

 

i put bret hart on hold and picked up "the great derangement" by matt taibbi.

fantastic thru the first 125 pages. the section about how joe barton trying to weasel thru the House rules a new energy bill in the immediate wake of katrina is enough to make some want to kick barton in the nuts with steel tipped boots.

 

Finished Taibbi's book. I think I have a literary crush on him. Can't wait till his new book.

Matt puts Americana together like Hunter.

 

BTW, the chapters in which he goes through the process of joining John Hagee's megachurch are among the best/perverse things I've ever read.

 

half-price sale at McSweeney's!
store.mcsweeneys.net

 

Taibbi's awesome, I'll have to pick this up.

 

Just finished Mr. Playboy, the huge new bio of Hugh Hefner by Steven Watts.

Very good look at the life and times of Hef and his mag.

 

I read "American Wife," Curtis Sittenfeld's supposedly thinly veiled novel about Laura Bush, over the past couple of days. The Bush family has been moved to Wisconsin, and W. buys into the Milwaukee Brewers, not the Texas Rangers. Also, they have only one child.

I thought the writing was a bit overdone, though it flowed pretty well. The best parts for me were about the female lead's family relationship. Laura Bush was really that intimidated by Barbara, and has such disdain for her husband? I have my doubts...

 

If I wanted to read some Chomsky, where would I start? Or would it be like trying to find a place to start reading Faulkner? Just pick one and jump in?

 

Diary of a Punk by Mike Hudson

Even though this is a very light read at 160 pages, this might be the best autobiography I've ever read. Mike Hudson is best known for his role as the frontman for the Cleveland-based punk rock band the Pagans in the late '70s. Though the Pagans were only known somewhat in the Midwest, Hudson's rather anonymous and lowly existence found a way to intersect with the lives of some of the most important people in rock 'n' roll including Chuck Berry, Madonna, Johnny Rotten, AC/DC, the MC5 and even Bobby Womack.

While his diary serves as a solid snapshot of Cleveland in the late 70s, it's a lot less about nostalgia than it is about chronicling the failure of Cleveland's rock 'n' roll cultural elite to see what was going on right under their noses. While other cities like London, San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles embraced their punk rock uprisings, Cleveland buried it, drove it away or executed it on the spot. Hudson was one of these victims.

What makes this book stand out from other punk rock memoirs is Hudson's talent with the pen. Throughout his life, his day job has always been one of a journalist. A 10th grade dropout, he somehow managed to become a sports writer in the '70s for a Cleveland-area newspaper and continued writing for various publications and wire services such as Field & Stream (!), The Associated Press, Hustler and Master Detective throughout his life . Although he was never good enough to work for the Plain Dealer, he now owns and operates the Niagara Falls Reporter - an alternative weekly.

Of course, when you're dealing with rock 'n' roll you expect a healthy dose of sex and drugs in the mix as well. This book delivers on that level too, but Hudson crushes any romance to be had in it. The years of drug abuse led to the demise of many of relationships and ultimately the loss of a son - who emulated his father's lifestyle, but died before he reached 30.

 

I think Manufacturing Consent is the most typical route for Chomsky curiosity.