Friday, October 28, 2016

Faithful Place by Tana French

Another one from Tana French, whose Broken Harbor I also very much enjoyed.

A police procedural that moves into a family history, and the drama of a mystery in the past that slowly unravels and explains alot of the present.

Masterful.  Almost more literary fiction than detective genre.  Would like to see her write outside detective structure -- and maybe she already has?

Friday, October 07, 2016

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

Sailed through this, enjoying it all.   That said, the first 150 pages are best: something about his childhood and adolescence, and the Freehold/Jersey Shore years rings more true than his professional narrative.  Maybe he's more guarded, since he became very famous very quickly, and was plagued by fame (without riches) for the first ten years of his celebrity.

I liked his splendid summary about legendary rock stars and their early deaths - "Aging is scary but fascinating."  His summary?  "The exit in a blaze of glory is bullshit."(p. 214)  His analysis about learning the limitations of his own singing voice and transcending them was also great (p.  494)

His wise decision to seek analysis to help him through depression does not make the most interesting reading:  there is a lot of inner-child speak and other junk.

Later in the book, he assumes his more bloviated gospel-preacher voice, and tends to philosophize generally and use some of his more obvious song metaphors, rather than provide details. Still, for a notoriously private individual who perversely gives so much of himself publically in performance, the book showed me important stuff in his life.

the "Chapter and verse" spotify playlist is great - not as much for the Springsteen songs themselves (who hasn't heard them? and a million times?) as for the 100 or so songs by other artists that were crucial to him.

https://open.spotify.com/user/brucespringsteenmusic/playlist/2DipgwFGoYJghKkr2MK08S

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