Tag Archives: books

Geeta Dayal’s Another Green World

I think I speak for every­one when I say that Gee­ta’s take on Bri­an Eno’s Anoth­er Green World for the 33 1/3 series was hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed. I can think of few titles in the series that gen­er­at­ed as much excite­ment from the time her pitch was accept­ed to pub­li­ca­tion. Those who wait­ed will be rich­ly reward­ed by her insight­ful look into Eno and his approach to record­ing his land­mark album, Anoth­er Green World.

Gee­ta avoids the land­mines that sur­round a work like this. She brought her A game when it came to research­ing this book, dig­ging up cool quotes and get­ting great input from the peo­ple who helped Eno make this record. She does­n’t fetishize Eno’s genius; rather, she inves­ti­gates his meth­ods to demys­ti­fy the way in which Eno made the album. For any­one who’s been intim­i­dat­ed by Bri­an Eno as a mono­lith, this is a great way to get into his work, and the book offers a glimpse into his approach to his lat­er ambi­ent works that makes them much more accessible.

For a book series that can be pret­ty hit or miss, Gee­ta’s take on Anoth­er Green World sets the bar high for oth­er authors who want to dis­sect an album they love. Con­grat­u­la­tions, Gee­ta! It was well worth the wait.

Buy it from Ama­zon for just $7.88!

My Take on the 33 1/3 Books Series

I final­ly fin­ished read­ing The Kinks Are the Vil­lage Green Preser­va­tion Soci­ety (TKATVGPS) Andy Miller’s con­tri­bu­tion to the 33 1/3 books series. It’s not a long book, but it took a minute for me to actu­al­ly get into it, even though the Kinks are prob­a­bly my favorite band of all time, and this album is of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance to me. Why? Well, like many of the books in the series, it’s not exact­ly the smoothest read.

The book’s struc­ture is strange. It first tells the sto­ry of how the album is made and the var­i­ous stum­bling blocks that the Kinks — or rather Ray Davies — ran into along the way. That’s the sort of sto­ry I’m inter­est­ed in read­ing and it was an engag­ing one. How­ev­er, once that sto­ry ends, it begins again, this time as a painstak­ing account of each song that was writ­ten and record­ed dur­ing this peri­od, along with some spec­u­la­tion about why it had or had­n’t appeared on the final ver­sion of The Kinks Are the Vil­lage Green Preser­va­tion Soci­ety. It does­n’t sound as bad when I write it here, but trust me, read­ing the same sto­ry told two dif­fer­ent ways smacked of a wit­ness per­jur­ing him­self on the stand.

Such is the rep­u­ta­tion of the 33 1/3 books series. Every author approach­es his or her book dif­fer­ent­ly, and even the most adven­ture­some  music fans approach the series with trep­i­da­tion. These are beloved albums after all.

Now comes word that the series itself has hit a snag due to the cur­rent state of the econ­o­my. I’m not sure any­one would be sur­prised con­sid­er­ing how both the music and pub­lish­ing indus­tries have fared late­ly. I just hope that Gee­ta Day­al’s Anoth­er Green World book sees the light of day. (Of course I’m root­ing for Christo­pher Wein­garten’s It Takes a Nation of Mil­lions book, too, but that’s in the more dis­tant future.) As author Dou­glas Wolk once (infa­mous­ly) wrote of 33 1/3, “the series that more peo­ple want to write than to read!” I guess that makes the 33 1/3 series the Vel­vet Under­ground and Nico of microniche music books!

MAKING A CALL FOR COMICS

This item caught my eye over at Book­slut last Fri­day as I whit­tled away at my feed read­er. As I checked out io9’s plea to Hol­ly­wood, it under­lined how much I need to start read­ing comics again. But there’s more to it than that. If you’re one of the poor souls fol­low­ing me on Good Reads, you know I’ve been work­ing on David Had­ju’s lat­est book, The Ten Cent Plague, for­ev­er. It’s been a fas­ci­nat­ing read, but an inter­rupt­ed one. The upshot? I want to read comics like nev­er before!

A lit­tle back­ground: I’ve nev­er been a com­ic book read­er. A lot of that I’ll chalk up to tim­ing. Being born in 1977 to par­ents in then very rur­al Berks Co., Penn­syl­va­nia, meant not hav­ing access to a lot of things cul­tur­al (read: cool.) It also meant not being exposed to such-like until lat­er in life. My friend Ben Warfield hand­ed me a few comics dur­ing high school, mem­o­rably the Martha Wash­ing­ton series and V for Vendet­ta, both of which I con­sumed hasti­ly when I should’ve been read­ing stuff like Ethan Frome. I haven’t read much since then, oth­er than falling in love with Amer­i­can Splen­dor a few years ago when the movie came out, just like every­one else.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I plan on track­ing down some of io9’s sug­ges­tions, start­ing with Heavy Liq­uid, which is con­ve­nient­ly being reis­sued at the end of Sep­tem­ber. Treat their list like a primer. I’m also reach­ing out to folks who I know are into comics (Toby and Dou­glas, you’re my only hopes. Send links!)

But what would a blog post be with­out a seri­ous qual­i­fi­er? Here it comes: I’ll issue the caveat that it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that I’m not going to end up devot­ing myself to comics (maybe I’m wrong?), but I’d love to be exposed to some cool, new stuff. If any­one has sug­ges­tions, or is as curi­ous and in the dark as I am on this stuff, feel free to hit up the comments!

(P.S. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how I want to for­mat titles on Black­mail Is My Life. Tell me if you pre­fer all caps to what I’ve been doing. You can also let me know if you think the font is easy to read, or if changes should be made. Thanks!)

I visited Philly Book Company yesterday.

If there’s some­thing Philadel­phi­a’s real­ly miss­ing, it’s a book­store like the Strand. What makes the Strand great is the same thing that used to make some record stores great: pro­mos. We need some­thing like this. I thought Philadel­phia Book Com­pa­ny might be the answer, but it isn’t yet.

When I wan­dered into the ware­house on Frank­ford, it looked promis­ing. There are book dis­plays in the cen­ter of the space sur­round­ed by met­al book­shelves stacked high with who knows what. It seemed like the answer to my prayers. Who knew that uwishunu would lead me astray?

But it’s not real­ly uwishunu’s fault, at least not entire­ly. It’s the Philadel­phia Book Com­pa­ny’s web­site, which is essen­tial­ly a mas­sive affil­i­ate fun­nel for Ama­zon. What hap­pened was I had searched a few titles–right now I’m look­ing to pick up David Car­r’s mem­oir, Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise, George Lewis’ book about A.A.C.M., and Mark’s friend’s book about trib­ute bands–and they all appeared in the search results! Lit­tle did I know I’d over­looked the note that states that any book not found in their inven­to­ry returns Ama­zon search results. Bummer.

Philadel­phi­a’s lit­er­ary Shangri-La remains a myth, at least for now. I hold out hope that some dar­ing entre­pre­neur will open a used book­store that’s more than a garbage heap for books, but with the way things are going for the pub­lish­ing indus­try, it’s prob­a­bly only a mat­ter of time before review copies become a thing of the past, and that inde­pen­dent book­stores, which are already strug­gling to sur­vive, qui­et­ly slip off, too.