Review: Nostalgia! ...lifestyles of "old" New Orleans

Nostalgia! ...lifestyles of "old" New Orleans by Marvin J. Perrett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An easy, one-sitting read of sing-songy doggerel and B&W pics of FDR-era NOLA at the daw of the Radio Ago: watermelon boats, evening walks, Roman candy, etc.

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Review: Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon

Canyon of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon by Harvey Kubernik
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

From my 2010 interview with Bill Mumy:

...In the last few months, a friend of mine loaned me the book Canyon of Dreams .

BM: Oh, yes. Harvey Kubernik's book.

Yes.

BM: Yes, with Henry Kubernik's photos and stuff. Yes, that's a great book.

And you're the subject of nearly an entire chapter.

BM: Yes. Well, you know? That happens when you live in the same place for 35 years. I'm just one of the old men in the canyon, I guess. Well Laurel Canyon's a great place to live. It's a wonderful artistic community. And certainly, if you're going to live in the middle of Los Angeles, which I have done all my life, it's very nice to come home and have this country kind of feeling. I mean, I got a mountain so to speak, and ten acres behind my house with deer and all sorts of creatures strolling by. It's very cool.


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Review: Mick Jagger

Mick Jagger by Philip Norman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It seems like a lot of biographies in this class focus on the seminal, important earliest years and fade out with nothing to say later, as in Life. (That autobiography gets pilloried as full of lies, such as Richards cuckolding Jagger with Marianne Faithfull.) As cannot be avoided, this is basically a Rolling Stones biography covering individual albums and tours. Along with also painting Mick as a heartless womanizer and ruthless business partner this goes deep into non-music parts of Mick's life, such as the Redlands bust and convincing arguments that it was an FBI-MI5 orchestration involving later New Wave impresario David Jove as the mysterious Acid King. There is much dirt on the philandering and infidelities and Jagger children. Mick's solo career gets coverage, though not as much details as the elusive acting career. The book goes up to 2010 and the formation of SuperHeavy.

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Review: Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present by Lex Williford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm: usually because they could not walk." - The Portable Nietzsche

It appears from the bios that "Creative Nonfiction" means poets writing elliptically about the saddest and darkest of topics: death, mental and neurological disorders, a pederast father, an assaulting pet, the after effects of promiscuity (Cheryl Strayed) and more. That certainly covers the bulk of the book. Toward the end, there are some exceptions like John McPhee seeking the "Marvin Gardens" from Monopoly. Don't get me wrong. This is affecting, moving material. Just apparently, at least to this editor, there is not much room for joy in contemporary creative nonfiction. Also, I keep hearing great things about David Foster Wallace, but his reportage of a Maine lobster festival dwelling on crustacean nociception left me "meh".

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Review: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another great collection from witty and melancholy Sedaris covering more life in France, quitting smoking, avoiding responsibility, and Engrish (whence cometh the title). This audiobook has a performance feel for being read by the author, featuring sound effects, and including some recordings from live reading events with audience reaction.

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Review: Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army and Other Diabolical Insects

Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army and Other Diabolical Insects by Amy Stewart
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Most of this short work is the Latin names of a pest, a witty paragraph of its pestilential effects that could fit on a gum wrapper and then a "Meet the Family" section with overview of related bugs. The overall feel is a compendium of trivia: unsynthesized knowledge on the Insect world and similar "bugs" from arthropods to earthworms. Longer pieces are more interesting, such as the origin of over-rated brown recluse fears, the actuality of urticating hairs in tarantulas and the most insidious of parasites and poison arrow compounds.

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Review: The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia

The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia by James Palmer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A really quite interesting biography of a Russian that arose in Mongolia in the violent reverberations from white "White" side of the Russian Civil War as doomed, cruel, and tragic proto-fascistic despot warlord betwixt China and the Soviet union. Here in the 1920s he favored the swastika as part of anti-semitic policy and cultivated occult trappings.

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Review: The Queen: Aretha Franklin

The Queen: Aretha Franklin by Mikal Gilmore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This biography of The Queen of Soul feels weighted toward the Aretha's earliest years: pre-career to recording debut. Wow, a mother at 12 and again at 14 in a broken home. How did all this help form The Queen? That is not explored as much here, then the subsequent decades from crowning to death are briskly covered without analysis as if the author needed to quickly wrap up the project.

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Review: Great Expectations

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I always find Dickens it seems too long of a read, yet a great read nonetheless. Pips twisted and tragic tale is a shaggy dog story of a love story. The unexpected twists cartoonish characters drew me into also enjoying a couple of BBC serial adaptations: 1981 and 1999.

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Review: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Nicely done. I am not sure of the specific "liberals" this author is trying to school. Whoever they may be they must be highly idealistic. Chang covers why things are more complicated than they seem and sweeping economic generalizations open to debate if not ridicule. "Duh?" What I like is the different point of view so that many of his example are from his native South Korea. Also, there is a nice summary of how widespread banking deregulation in Iceland led to ruin. In the end the author suggests liberal welfare state policies to life the working poor of the First World as well as significant financial aid to the Third World marking him as much more of a liberal perhaps than I had presumed.

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Review: Stories from the Storm: Hurricane Katrina Survivors, In Their Own Words

Stories from the Storm: Hurricane Katrina Survivors, In Their Own Words by Audible Studios
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These interviews were captured just a few months after the event; really while recovery was still happening. There are two first-person accounts from my Northshore area: Covington and Lacomb. It feels like interviews or prompters were present to keep the recollection moving and coherent and were then edited out. The result is compelling, personal oral history about caring for horses, the repugnance of liquefying chicken, house-crushing toppled trees, and more.

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Review: "I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa

"I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa by Charles Brandt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read this new edition in prep for seeing The Irishman

The extensive added backmatted further deepens support for the author's contention of Sheehas as Hoffa's killer, with extensive ties to the Kennedy assassination:

“Each of Frank Sheeran’s major confessions now has been validated: Gallo by the New York Times eyewitness and Detective Joe Coffey; Hoffa by Frank Pavlico and Billy D’Elia and the FBI subpoena of my tapes; and finally “Dallas” as a Mafia Commission conspiracy by Carlos Marcello at Texarkana and Tony Provenzano’s participation on behalf of the Genovese family.”

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Review: 1861: The Civil War Awakening

1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So much out there about the Civil War... Goodheart makes is different and engaging enough by highlighting such angles as:

1. The zouave craze
2. The outsized impact on the 1860s mind of Ellsworth becoming the first Union officer to die in the Civil War and the doomed defense of Ft. Sumter.
3. The role of former president Tyler and the shaping worldview of future president Garfield
4. The galvanizing effect of the conflict leading to mass-produced and displayed U.S. flags, etc.
5. The details of the individual fleeing slaves first met by Gen'l Butler and how the fact of these "contrabands" was considered in the press and in Lincoln's directions, etc.

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Review: Buried Beneath the Boarding House: A Shocking True Story of Deception, Exploitation and Murder

Buried Beneath the Boarding House: A Shocking True Story of Deception, Exploitation and Murder by Ryan Green
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this Halloween read (as it turned out) taking us into the Dorothea Puente spider lair and the drugger semi-consciousness or her cocooned, plastic-wrapped victims. I was first concerned with the short length yet in the end I felt I heard the complete story or dysfunctional, abused youth transmogrified into wicked boarding house proprietor. The only thing I would have liked to have had was some insight (maybe juror interview?) into how a jury deadlocked over responsibility for this unearthed graveyard of victims.

Also, very good job by Steve White (Narrator)

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