The end of summer. For some reason the lowest monthly total of the year. Actually, I know the reason: I became obsessed with the songs and artists mentioned in the first two books of this month, and spent much of the next four weeks assembling spreadsheets of the songs and artists. The next phase of that project required a lot of research on YouTube. This research has fallen victim to the pandemic malaise that has affected pretty much everything else I tried to do in 2020. Again, this month featured only a single re-read (marked, as always with that ol' asterisk*).
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Story of Pop Music From Bill Haley to Beyoncé by Bob Stanley. 500+ pages, quasi-encyclopedic, and very entertaining (even when I don’t always agree with his opinions). Last quarter not as exciting because I just didn’t care enough about that music. (2 September)
Electric Shock by Peter Doggett. More pop-music history, this time covering the whole period of recorded pop music. Not as flamboyant as Stanley, perhaps, but covers much more ground. Now I want to build playlists… (4 September)
Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn. Supposed to be a comic masterpiece, I found it very depressing. None of the characters is really likeable, save for the old guy who dies before the halfway point. I can recognize the humour, but it’s all based on a degree of contempt for the characters. All of them. (5 September)
Go All the Way (ed. Paul Myers, S.W. Lauden) A mixed bag of essays about power pop. It has given me some ideas for new listening material. (7 September)
The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper. Climate change and epidemics in the fourth century? How timely. Liked this more than I’d expected to. Though I can’t fully agree with his arguments. (8 September)
Swordfish: The Story of the Taranto Raid by David Wragg. Pleasant enough read but not a great book; too little about the raid itself, and a lot of padding (did we need a full chapter on Pearl Harbor?) (12 September)
Department of Mind-Blowing Theories by Tom Gauld. A collection of his wonderful, quasi-stick figure cartoons (in a similar vein to XKCD). Huge amounts of fun. (16 September)
*Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan. Interesting idea: a history that tries to avoid being Euro-centric. Kudos for the attempt, but it seems to me there are a lot of gaps here anyway (Japan is hardly mentioned, and Africa doesn’t get as much notice as in Larry Gonick’s cartoon histories). Interesting to discover I’d actually read this book 4+ years ago, and had forgotten most of the first half. (17 September)
Malice in Blunderland, or How the Grits Stole Christmas by Allan Fotheringham. I probably would have found this funnier in 1982; today I was mostly aware of how the thing was constructed. (We’re not supposed to be able to see the wires.) Really took me back, to a time when I actually cared quite a bit about politics. (21 September)
A Saint From Texas by Edmund White. Two aspects of the author’s personality reflected in twin sisters from rural 1950s Texas (I caught hints in the family background of that of LBJ from the Hill Country of the 1930s). Amusing and engrossing in a way I don’t normally expect from mainstream fiction. (22 September)
The Police of Paris 1718-1789 by Alan Williams. An older book (1979) but full of fascinating detail. Wish I’d had it ten years ago… A bit of a tough slog, though: very academic in terms of prose style (i.e. dull and distanced). A birthday gift from Lorna (24 September)
The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London by Hannah Grieg. Another academic history, but not quite as dense as #234. Wonder why the last chapter focused on women who were bounced from society. Did no Georgian man ever cheat at cards? (26 September)
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle. Loved the fuckin’ movie, had never read the fuckin’ book before. I like this ending better than the movie. (27 September)
The Flâneur by Edmund White. Quick, gossipy read that told me more than a few things I didn’t already know about Paris. And about the French. (29 September)
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