Tuesday, March 05, 2024

Time for the Stars by Robert A. Heinlein

 

Pairs of twins on earth are trained as telepathic modes of communication: one will embark on space travel and the other will stay earthside, and together they will transmit news and updates instantaneously across a trillion miles. Time, however, will pass more slowly for the twin travelling through space at a speed just below the speed of light, making for uneasy relationships between twins who started out the same age but end up vastly separated by time AND space. Interesting although not much happens.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years Vol. 1 by Mark Lewisohn

 

Riveting, deeply detailed group biography of the Beatles, from their Liverpool origins and childhood, right up until the beginning of 1963, when the release of "Please Please Me" is about to launch them into a stratosphere of pop celebrity which had never been seen before.

Their intertwined lives - how they grew up just minutes and miles from each other - are richly described.

Cannot wait for Vol. 2.

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Orphans of the Sky by Robert Heinlein

 

Continuing my sci-fi jaunt through the mesmerizing imagination and intelligence of Robert Heinlein. A marooned "generational spaceship" is a complicated mini-world where the diverse population has forgotten the reason for the original journey from Earth to a distant star system, and reverted to a primitive (if still high-technology) culture and belief system.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

 

Okay but seemed to take forever to finish. A wife and mother relaxes on her cherry orchard in Michigan and recounts, half to her three daughters and half to herself, the story of her young life and career as an aspiring actress.  The play OUR TOWN is the palimpsest behind it all, which she starred in, although she also has a brief fling as a rising Hollywood actress too.

The tone is rather smug and self-satisfied and wearing, although the on- and off-state drama and the characters of a summer stock theatre are richly drawn.

Beyond the Bedroom Wall by Larry Woiwode

 

Astonishing and I'm only two chapters (100 pages in). A stunning opening where a son makes his father's coffin out of scratch.

Sunday, January 28, 2024

Who I Am by Pete Townshend

 

A complex character. Rushed to read this after reading the infamous DEAR BOY autobiography of Keith Moon, who was certainly the heart and blood of The Who. But the astonishing songs, the soul of the band, are almost all Townshend's - and cover such a range from 1963 to 1978 as to almost beggar belief.


All these guys also grew up - and were navigating the end of the 1960s and early 1970s in their early 30s at best, barely matured in one sense, and having seen it all (and more) in another.

And what a band! The Who have been accurately described as a band with four lead soloists - and Moon's idiosyncratic wild and powerful drumming leads the way, along with Townshend's amazing melodic and rhythmic guitar, Entwhistle's foundational (and extremely melodic) bass playing ("Thunderfingers"), and Daltrey's central, powerful roaring voice.

Townshend's voice is strange - defensive, arrogant, slightly delusional (he invented the Internet, power chords, rock opera, among other things) - and his spiritual pursuits are foregrounded while his sexual mishaps are glossed over.

Still, an extraordinary musician and mind - the Beatles had three great songwriters, the Stones had two, but The Who had one, and they still stand in the same ring as those other greats of the pantheon. Dylan is different - he stands apart from any one band. The 1960s singles, The Who Sell Out, Tommy, Who's Next, and Quadrophenia are all five star albums. The Who played and stayed live in a way the Beatles never did.

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray

 

Meh, couldn't finish it. Big fan of Murray's but here it seemingly goes nowhere (at least after a hundred pages).

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

 

Vivid memories of reading this as a teenager, I'm remembering complete sentences (at least in the first 50 pages, did I read the whole thing?).

It's got a bit of a cheesy late fifties-early sixties vibe, some of the slang and the general misogyny.

But Heinlein deftly imagines an interplanetary and advanced  future and how a human born and raised on Mars (by Martians) might be welcomed on earth. The concept of "grokking" (i.e., knowing fully, but also sexual consummating and cannibalism) was unleashed upon an unknowing America, and one must still only wonder at how many people have actually read the book as opposed to how many use the term "grok" fluently.

Too long and too polemical, the action really dries up in the (lengthy) middle of the book. Still, a fascinating novel of ideas.

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