#NowReading - adored every damn page of steve waksman's "this ain't the summer of love," broadly about the unceasing #metal / #punk / #underground collision, but beautifully granular, connecting micro-scenes to #musicology. it equally brought alive conversations i know about in detail (punk), ones i don't (metal), & made me thirsty to read more #zines, listen to more #music, etc.. combined with his masterful "live music in america," i now wanna read everything waksman has written. @bookstodon
#nowreading "Czego nie pamiętamy" - hit w Niemczech, wczoraj wyszło pierwsze wydanie polskiego tłumaczenia. Christiane Hoffmann rusza w podróż śladami ojca, wypędzonego po wojnie z terenów, które weszły w skład Polski. Ale to tylko jeden z poziomów historii. W zasadzie nie zamierzałem czytać tej książki od razu, bo mam ileś jednocześnie otwartych wątków i sporą kupkę wstydu, ale ona jest tak napisana (i przetłumaczona), że z "tylko spojrzę" zrobiło się natychmiastowe wejście w lekturę.
My lovely friend sent me his copy of Choosing Death! I only ever got about 1/4 of the way through this book the last time and had to return it. It really is an interesting read, and now that I’m not too busy I’m excited to read the rest!
Fans of Death Metal, Grindcore and punk will love this!
After loving The Final Empire (#Mistborn Book 1), I am really struggling with The Well of Ascension. About halfway through and it feels like literally nothing has happened yet. This is the same problem I had when I tried reading Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive a few years ago. The first book was excellent and the second was enough of a drag that I bailed on the series.
It’s weird though because this kind of epic fantasy is normally my bag (I love The Wheel of Time for gods sake!)
Museum and art people will, I think, very much appreciate Patrick Bringley’s All the Beauty in the World (2023). Bringley worked for ten years as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York City.
It’s a book about restoring ourselves through quiet contemplation and encounters with creative minds and hands. It’s also about how to see beneath the surface of things.
#NowReading - eleanor patterson's engaging new history of #radio & #television#preservation by fans, mostly non-music. fascinating close studies (that also capture the fun) of old time radio heads, buddy cop obsessives, australian trekkies, & regional wrestling VHS traders & their respective creative solutions to pre-WWW distribution challenges. an affirmation of #piracy's long, rich legacy & its vitality in the #streaming age. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087691#books
#NowReading - the reboot of sound collector audio review, large format #print zine i wasn't hep enough to read in the '00s. nothin' but writing about not-new albums (#jazz, #indie, #rock, #pop, #punk, more), long & longer form by record review standards, short by essay standards. many feel (in nice ways) like hyper-condensed 33 1/3 books. not all to my taste, but all passionate. beautiful antidote to the #pitchfork etc. bullshit. free at record stores: https://soundcollector.com/stockists@vinylrecords
This one's been on my to-read list for quite a while. I'm about halfway thru (switching back & forth btwn audiobook/library book bc I'm weird like that).
I'm really into it. The whole thing is fascinating - deep, complex, thought-provoking, mysterious, mind-bending. It's honestly like the epitome of really cool sci-fi.
Always such a thrill to find a book that just pulls you in, y'know?
#nowreading Outrageous by Kliph Nesteroff. A history of censorship in entertainment. Both sobering and entertaining book citing examples when censorship went too far (ie "communist" related censorship) to examples when censorship was necessary (ie canceling things like blackface). Not a book for the "you can't be funny anymore" Joe Rogan set, as author makes the case there's more free speech today than ever.
Also the Nazis banned jazz in 1937. Listen to jazz.
This was SO good. The stories are still rattling around in my head.
I think it'd have resonance even for someone without connections to that environment & society. I grew up in #Indonesia and my father (not openly until much later) was bi and had homosexual relationships while (and after) we lived there (wasn't someone asking about #familySecrets recently? Well there you go).
Have not read anything so devastating since The Road (McCarthy). I'm terrified by what's in this book, and I feel hollowed out from the experience, but, at the same time, I want people to recognize its brilliance.
Today I re-read the final pages. A literal chill went through me as the last words trailed off. Not hyperbole. A whole body flutter.
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Satoshi Yagisawa (2009, trans. 2023)
Poignant tale of a young woman who, through a series of mishaps, ends up working for her eccentric uncle in his secondhand book shop. Captures the spirit of very dark days that gradually turn into light, and at the heart of it all, magic that only comes from rediscovering the things you love.