My Summer Book Report

a work in progress...

















i've loved reading ever since i first learned how and i still do. if you ever saw wim wenders 'king of the road", i'm that character who reads anything that passes in front of my eyes.
don't ask me why.
one of things i've wanted to do for a while is keep a record of my reading. here's the summer so far, and some photographs...

The Counter Culture
Through the Ages-from Abraham to Acid House

Ken Goffman and Dan Joy

Some of us will remember Mr. Goffman better by his alias R.U. Sirius, the nom de plume under which he co-founded a magazine called Mondo 2000.

A breezy scoot through several millennia that could prove edifying and reassuring to anyone in these post-conservative times who wonders if freaks are an endangered species.

Brionne

The Lonesome Gods

by Louis L’Amour

Louis wrote more than 400 stories and 80 books, set on the frontier in what we call the American West. As of 1982, more than 130,000,000 copies had been printed. You don’t get that kind of time on printing presses unless people want to read what you write, if you know what I mean…

Snowbird – The Story of Anne Murray

by Barry Grills

This is not a great book, and that’s too bad because it is a great story. It’s not a great book because:

a) you get feeling early on that he did not get significant face time with our Annie.

b) I think ol’ Barry’s writing chops were honed hacking up music PR industry furballs.

It is a great story – about a young girl from a small town in Nova Scotia who grows up to be one of the most popular singers on the planet. Along the way, she has children and creates a career that accommodates the needs of a mother and the demands of a singular demanding industry.

In Annie’s absence, Mr. Grills has done the kind of hard core research I would never do in my life, and I thank him for that. The quotations from the newspaper articles, old interviews, press releases and seemingly just about everything ever written, taped or broadcast. carry the sound of their times, and set a pace for a fast walk with good company.

I learned a lot, and I closed the book with a big respect for Ms. Murray as an artist and a human being.

Is Paris Burning?

Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre

Redemption Song

- Muhammad Ali & the Spirit of the Sixties

Mike Marqusee

Streets of Laredo

Larry McMurtry

The Border

- Canada, the U.S. and Dispatches from the 49^th Parallel

James Laxer

Knight’s Cross

- A Life of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel

David Fraser

Rumours Exposed

- The Unauthorized Biography of Fleetwood Mac

Leah Furman

Villains of All Nations

- Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age

Marcus Rediker

To Live’s To Fly

- The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes van Zandt

John Kruth

Touched With Fire

- Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament

Kay Redfield Jamison

Elizabeth 1

Anne Somerset

City Unique

- Montreal Days and Nights in the 1940s and ‘50s

William Weintraub

On The Firing Line

- My 500 Days at Apple

Gil Amelio and William Simon

A Life In Our Times

- Memoirs

John Kenneth Galbraith

vayas con dios,
d



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