What I'm reading right now is Andrew Beaujon's Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock
.
Made to Break was full of detailed, interesting historical nuggets on obsolescence, but irritatingly short on insight. The book is good but undercooked; if anything, it seems to suggest that obsolescence serves a couple of really important functions, and that it's not the overconsumption nightmare that conventional wisdom makes it out to be. If that's the case, however, then Slade should develop the idea. And if that's not the case (as Slade seems to hint now and then, particularly toward the end), then he should explain why. As it stands, the book feels like a compilation of data with no clear point and little development. Even if it is meant to be read as simply a kind of history, the book feels lacking.
Less undercooked, but also unsatisfactory, was The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read
. While there is terrific material in nearly every page--an odd anecdote, way witty turns of phrase--the problem is with the form, and so maybe the book is not to blame so much as my own irritability with compendiums, where you get a page or two of an author's life, learn a thing or two, and then you're off to the next. (I had the same problem with Farquhar's A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History's Greatest Hoaxes, Fakes and Frauds
, which I abandoned near the end. Nothing wrong, exactly--after a while, however, you've had enough story-lets. If that's all you're getting, and you're getting too much of it, you eventually get a little sea-sick.)
High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Cultures of Excess
, on the other hand, is thoroughly meaty and satisfactory. Part E! True Hollywood Story, part meditation on aesthetic and moral failures and successes, this is as good a Hollywood story as one can get. The book is fair to Simpson, compassionate without shying away from the awfulness of the man. This is a book worth devouring.
.Made to Break was full of detailed, interesting historical nuggets on obsolescence, but irritatingly short on insight. The book is good but undercooked; if anything, it seems to suggest that obsolescence serves a couple of really important functions, and that it's not the overconsumption nightmare that conventional wisdom makes it out to be. If that's the case, however, then Slade should develop the idea. And if that's not the case (as Slade seems to hint now and then, particularly toward the end), then he should explain why. As it stands, the book feels like a compilation of data with no clear point and little development. Even if it is meant to be read as simply a kind of history, the book feels lacking.
Less undercooked, but also unsatisfactory, was The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read
. While there is terrific material in nearly every page--an odd anecdote, way witty turns of phrase--the problem is with the form, and so maybe the book is not to blame so much as my own irritability with compendiums, where you get a page or two of an author's life, learn a thing or two, and then you're off to the next. (I had the same problem with Farquhar's A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History's Greatest Hoaxes, Fakes and Frauds, which I abandoned near the end. Nothing wrong, exactly--after a while, however, you've had enough story-lets. If that's all you're getting, and you're getting too much of it, you eventually get a little sea-sick.)High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Cultures of Excess
, on the other hand, is thoroughly meaty and satisfactory. Part E! True Hollywood Story, part meditation on aesthetic and moral failures and successes, this is as good a Hollywood story as one can get. The book is fair to Simpson, compassionate without shying away from the awfulness of the man. This is a book worth devouring.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home