TSF Book Club
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So you've been publicly shamed by Jon Ronson.
I think this has been reviewed before here, really enjoyed it . Very thought provoking , most of the people shamed were decent people who were jumped on by the perennially outraged who lurk on twitter looking for someone to bully. He looks into how people deal with public shaming and how anonymity makes people behave so appallingly. There's a bit in there about the Stanford prison experiment too.
His other book men who stare at goats is very good too, nothing at all like the movie.
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I suppose this could go in the music thread also.... I've been pulling out my old hardcore records after reading it.
Harley Flanagan - Life of my Own
If you dont know.....Harley Flanagan pretty much invented the whole hardcore music scene in the states... was a child prodigy and family friend of Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg amongst others.
By age 10 he was playing regurlarly at Max's Kansas City and CBGB, drumming in his aunt's punk band The Stimulators, and socializing with Blondie's Debbie Harry and Cleveland's Dead Boys.
all befroe the age of 12 He became close to many stars of the early punk rock scene like Joe Strummer, Ian Dury, Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry the UK Subs etc etc etc. Was taught to play bass by members of Bad Brains. Hung out and caused havoc with the Beastie Boys before they turned into rappers. Madonna even gets a mention (something along the lines of - I knew her when she was just another club skank, before she became an international pop star/club skank) He then went on to start the notorious pioneering hardcore band Cro-Mags.
Basically Harley was brought up on the streets of the Lower East Side, pretty amazing that he even survived childhood immersed in a jungle of crime, drugs, abuse and poverty.
Such a good read.... Anthony Bourdain described it as folows: "Don't even pretend to talk about New York... if you don't read this." "This book is the punch in the face you want and need."
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Finished one, read one and started one while on holiday
Finished - Yeah, yeah, yeah! A complete history of pop - Bob Stanley
A pretty comprehensive and reasonably timelined history of who and what was making the charts in various eras with good background as to how it evolved. The writer picks up a thread and runs with it only to have to backtrack a bit to then pick up another. Even though I sped through a few chapters that held no interest to me most of it was good.Read - Soldier Spy - Tom Marcus
An inside account of the work of MI5s surveillance team by an ex operator and the personal toll on his life. A good read even if some of the technical stuff has been well explained before by the likes of Stella Rimington. Some great detail from inside a few operations although at times I got the feeling that some of what he was writing was guesswork on detail outside of his compartmental unit in order to flesh the stories out.Started - Stuart MacBride's latest (non Logan McRae) gruesome dsyfunctional police story, 'Dark so Deadly'
Love his warped and twisted world and can't wait for someone brave enough to start a TV series based on his work. -
@Rocky-Rockbottom said in TSF Book Club:
just reread Anton Olivers 2005 book, a real page turner.
What I'd like to find is a complete list of AB's biographies and work my way through the lot.
How about everyone else here do all the legwork and compile the list then I'll track 'em down and read them. Here let me start:
2005: Anton Oliver.
Can't be that many. How many come out a year, about 2 or 3?
Recall reading a few as a kid, Meads, etc.
ps, Jesus! Laurie Mains! What a cock!
Mitchell, Deans, more cock action.
Murray Mexteds is awful, he lost me when he started talking about spoofing. Jeff Wilsons is not that good either , nor is Cullens.
Norm Hewitts is pretty interesting, Jonahs is good too.The best one I've read is Dan Crowleys, unfortunately hes not a former ab.
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The old book club has been a bit slow recently.
Thought I would add in the 'Spy' series of books by Mick Herron. A bit hard to describe in many ways. Characters like a Stuart MacBride novel mixed with a bit of Le Carre.
The whole premise sets up some great possibilities. Basically a bunch of fuckups from MI5 that seem to attract the trouble they have been hidden away from.
Definitely start a the first book to get best effect.
Would make a great TV show. -
Peter F Hamilton has a new book out shortly - will be all over that!
I recently read Darien: Empire of Salt by Conn Iggulden. I really enjoyed his Caesar and Ghengis series, this isn't based on actual history (although it talks a bit about 'old earth').
A good read, keen to get the second book in the series now!
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Seveneves
Neal Stephenson loves him a technical discussion, as anyone who had read Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle would know. Here, it is no different.
Its modern day, at a point where something fucks the moon up into a few big chunks. People are initially curious, then slightly terrified, as various scientists project that the moon will break into more and more pieces, eventually fucking the Earth up. So they need an escape plan.
Its a concerning read to start with, when you understand that we're pretty vulnerable as a 1-planet species. Companies like SpaceX give me hope that we can at least get off the planet, but jeez there are a shitload of challenges to face once that is done.
I won't spoil it but eventually there is light at the end of the tunnel. You'll no doubt discover this upon reading, when you realise the present-day aspects of the book finish about two-thirds in, and therefore provide far more in terms of story.
4 out of 5 extremely long technical explanations.
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I finished the two-parter biography on Sinatra by James Kaplan, supposedly authoritative and critically praised.
The first part “The Voice” (2010) was about 500 pages and detailed his rise to fame, his downward trajectory, and then ended when he won an Academy Award for Best Support Actor in “From Here to Eternity.”
The second part “The Chairman” (2015) is 900 pages and continues with the Greatest Comeback In Show-Biz history until his death.
I’d recommend it for only two reasons: 1) It tells the story chronologically; and 2) it appears to support & confirm everything that Kitty Kelley wrote in her infamous and condemned bio from a couple decades ago.
And there’s the rub. If you want to know about his numerous connections to the mob and how he was scoring hookers for Jack Kennedy and how much of a raving bi-polar psychopathic lunatic Frank Sinatra was, I’d save a thousand pages and go straight to the Kitty Kelley version. It’s not chronological, but all the good dirt is there. Legend!
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@Mokey Is this writing as good as I think it is? Surely must be a finalist for the Man Booker prize
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@stockcar86 Lots of women have been having fun with this. The task was to describe themselves the way a male writer would, and male writers always have female characters thinking about their tits in the oddest of ways.
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@mokey said in TSF Book Club:
@stockcar86 Lots of women have been having fun with this. The task was to describe themselves the way a male writer would, and male writers always
have female charactersthinkingabouttheirtitsin the oddest of ways.That's why.
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Seems like the Slow, Fat Bastard hasn't been completely sitting on his hands and he's going to have a book out before Christmas - it just won't be the one I'm waiting for.
He's going to be 70 later this year - "Witless is coming"!
Fire and Blood
