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June 21
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Kevin
gave
 
to:
What's Eating Gilbert Grape (Paperback)
by Peter Hedges
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in April, 2000
Kevin said:
"Darker than the movie, and better. Honest portrait of small-town nothingness and how you end up slogging around in it when all you really want is to get out. It's hard to read it and not picture Leonardo DiCaprio as Arnie, though.
Then again, ev...more
Darker than the movie, and better. Honest portrait of small-town nothingness and how you end up slogging around in it when all you really want is to get out. It's hard to read it and not picture Leonardo DiCaprio as Arnie, though.
Then again, ever since I saw the movie it's impossible for me to see Leonardo DiCaprio and not think he's retarded. And I wish I was making that up....less
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June 07
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Kevin
gave
to:
The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts (Hardcover)
by Thomas Farley, Tanner Colby
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Kevin said:
"This is an oral biography, which means that whoever decided to put the thing together just interviewed a bunch of people for hours, then cut and pasted whatever they said that was vaguely interesting together to form some sort of narrative. I've rea...more
This is an oral biography, which means that whoever decided to put the thing together just interviewed a bunch of people for hours, then cut and pasted whatever they said that was vaguely interesting together to form some sort of narrative. I've read a few of them over the last couple of years, and although they're entertaining, I always walk away from them feeling that I've somehow been cheated. You're not actually gaining any information from an authoritative source that's done extensive research-- you're looking at snippets and quips through a smokey lens. There's a difference.
This book had Farley's older brother's name on it, so you know it's not going to make him look too bad, whether he deserved it or not. Basically it's a lot of the same, over and over again. He wanted to be loved. He wanted to make his dad laugh. He had substance abuse problems. He worshipped Belushi. Considering that these were the people who supposedly knew him best, there's a definite lack of mind-blowing revelations-- good, bad, or ugly.
Where are Adam Sandler or Rob Schneider? Everything you read about Farley talks about what great buddies the whole bunch of them were, but they're nowhere to be found in this book.
Somehow, I doubt there was much of the real Chris Farley in it, either....less
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June 01
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Kevin
gave
to:
Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix (Paperback)
by Charles R. Cross
bookshelves:
rock-n--roll
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Kevin said:
"The best part of this book, like all rock biographies, is the beginning. Where he came from, what shaped him. Once somebody becomes successful, they're less interesting by default. Especially rock stars. They played this show, they played that sh...more
The best part of this book, like all rock biographies, is the beginning. Where he came from, what shaped him. Once somebody becomes successful, they're less interesting by default. Especially rock stars. They played this show, they played that show, they were friends with this famous person and that one, they did these drugs, this person was ripping them off, they were on TV, they wasted their money on this stupid shit... It's all paint-by-numbers. It's all a Rolling Stone cover interview, where you swear they have some kind of mathematical formula they make all their writers stick to under threat of torture.
All rock stars are the same.
Hendrix was talented. There's no denying that. And it's an extremely lucky thing he could play the guitar, because apparently he couldn't do anything else right if he had to. Every quote attributed to him makes him sound like an idiot-- a stoned, hipster goofball who most likely couldn't function without an army of handlers.
I like Jimi Hendrix. Frankly, I've never understood people who LOVE him, who think he's the greatest thing to ever happen to music, the all-time king of guitar, etc. They always write articles for guitar magazines or bring him up in conversations with "Can you imagine what he might have done if he hadn't died?"
Nobody ever assumes that he might not have done anything else worth noting. I don't think that was the point of this book by any means, but it's the notion I walked away with.
What if Jimi Hendrix got lucky by dying before he pissed away his legacy? Early death is a gift in rock n' roll. What might have been is always going to be better than what IS. Just ask any has-been act that plays your nearest state or county fair this summer. I'm sure you won't have trouble getting in touch with them-- just knock on the bus door and tell them you've got free weed. They'll be your new best friends, and probably even entertain you with stories about the good old days when they used to know the legends.
You know, the people everybody loves. The people who died.
...less
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April 12
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New comment on Kevin's review of
The REDNECK MANIFESTO: HOW HILLBILLIES HICKS AND WHITE TRASH BECAME AMERICAS SCAPEGOATS
(see all 2 comments)
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April 11
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Kevin
gave
to:
The REDNECK MANIFESTO: HOW HILLBILLIES HICKS AND WHITE TRASH BECAME AMERICAS SCAPEGOATS (Paperback)
by Jim Goad
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in April, 2008
Kevin said:
"Goad makes a lot of accurate and interesting points about the place of the poor white in America, from its pre-Revolutionary War beginnings up to the present day. The title isn't misleading; a good portion of the book deals with how economically dis...more
Goad makes a lot of accurate and interesting points about the place of the poor white in America, from its pre-Revolutionary War beginnings up to the present day. The title isn't misleading; a good portion of the book deals with how economically disadvantaged white people are the last group in society that can be mocked, abused, and discriminated against by virtually all others. A lot of comparisons are made to the role of black Americans in history, and facts are presented to show that white trash has always had it worse-- and that includes the years of slavery that we're all still hearing about.
There's a lot to learn from this book-- complete with citations so you can go look it up yourself if you don't believe it-- and the tone is antagonistic enough to keep you coming back for more. The only reason I didn't rate it higher was because Goad would use whole pages driving the exact same point home with different creative phrases. A lot of them were gold, but after a while you just wanted him to get on with it.
...less
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March 25
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Kevin
gave
to:
Dark Harvest (Paperback)
by Norman Partridge
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in March, 2008
Kevin said:
"All the boys between 16 and 18 are locked in their rooms without food for the five days before Halloween. When they're unleashed, they're given weapons and set loose on the streets with one goal-- to kill the October Boy, a supernatural creature wit...more
All the boys between 16 and 18 are locked in their rooms without food for the five days before Halloween. When they're unleashed, they're given weapons and set loose on the streets with one goal-- to kill the October Boy, a supernatural creature with a jack-o-lantern head, a scarecrow body, and guts made of candy. The town's survival depends on it, and the boy who kills him gets anything he wants.
One of the blurbs on the book cover said it was "a drive-in movie of a book," and I can't do much better than that. Really good stuff here....less
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Kevin
gave
to:
Lisey's Story: A Novel (Paperback)
by Stephen King
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in March, 2008
Kevin said:
"A famous writer's widow can't get over his death. A seedy professor is trying to weasel her husband's papers out of her. When she puts him off, he ends up sicking a violent "persuader" on her. Meanwhile, one of her sisters is a mental ca...more
A famous writer's widow can't get over his death. A seedy professor is trying to weasel her husband's papers out of her. When she puts him off, he ends up sicking a violent "persuader" on her. Meanwhile, one of her sisters is a mental case, prone to cutting and catatonic fits. Throw in another world you can only get to through imagination, where the water will heal you and everything else will kill you after dark, and the whole thing gets messy.
The problem here is that the story, towards the late middle, is told in so many flashbacks within flasbacks within flashbacks that you're never quite sure which part of the timeline you're on. But if you've reached that point of the book, you're not really reading for the plot anymore anyway... which is a good thing, because this book has a lot of great stuff in it, and very little has anything to do with the story.
King can still throw down some good words with the best of them. The parts of the book dealing with the writer and his childhood and marriage were outstanding. Really well done. The problem is that the most interesting character in the book is dead from page one. It's supposed to be his wife's story, but by her own admission she's not very smart, not very funny, not very creative or clever. And it doesn't take you long to take her word for it, either.
If this book would have been around 300 or 400 pages long, it would have been a killer. Instead you get a half-assed thumbnail sketch of a mystical imagination land, some lame subplot about the trials and tribulations of sisterhood between middle aged women, and a lot of sappy "I will survive" feminism. And you know that she WILL survive, because it doesn't take many pages for you to realize that King's in love with his own character, to the point where he'd never let anything too bad happen to her for very long.
(I say bring back Bachman. Those books all have great characters in them, and he doesn't seem to worry about saving anybody, whether they desrve it or not.)
The most irritating thing of all? Apparently King has developed a fascination with people making a clicking noise when they swallow, because he brings it up about 25 times in the course of the book.
Overall, you could do much worse, but this isn't one of King's best....less
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March 20
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Kevin
gave
to:
Zeroville (Paperback)
by Steve Erickson
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in March, 2008
Kevin said:
"Outstanding story of cinematic obsession set on Hollywood in the 70's. A man named Vikar-- with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor from "A Place In the Sun" tattooed on his shaved head-- rides into L.A. on a bus. He has no plan, all he...more
Outstanding story of cinematic obsession set on Hollywood in the 70's. A man named Vikar-- with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor from "A Place In the Sun" tattooed on his shaved head-- rides into L.A. on a bus. He has no plan, all he knows is that he loves movies.
He starts out doing odd jobs, becomes a set-builder for movies, and becomes an editor-- all the while drifting in and out of the orbit of some of the biggest names in 70's film-making. Most of these people are not referred to by name but by a brief description of the films they've done, which makes it sort of a puzzle to figure out but adds to the story nonetheless.
Vikar's obsession leads him to find out that there's one specific thing that all the great films have in common, and he sets out on a quest to find copies of them to prove it.
The only thing that kept me from giving this book five stars were the last two chapters. They didn't fit the tone of the book as I read it, and they were a disappointing end to a great story....less
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March 17
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Kevin
gave
to:
Infinite Crisis: The Novel (Paperback)
by Greg Cox
bookshelves:
heroes
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in March, 2008
Kevin said:
"Hard-charging tale of what happens when almost every hero in the DC universe bands together to stop a Luthor from destroying the Earth. Not being that well-read in the comic genre, I'd never heard of half of the characters, and probably another 25% ...more
Hard-charging tale of what happens when almost every hero in the DC universe bands together to stop a Luthor from destroying the Earth. Not being that well-read in the comic genre, I'd never heard of half of the characters, and probably another 25% only in passing. It was still a good read-- everything that's not plot is chucked over the side. Nothing here but twists, turns, and epic fights....less
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March 10
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Kevin
gave
to:
The Kitchen Readings: Untold Stories of Hunter S. Thompson (Paperback)
by Michael Cleverly
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in March, 2008
Kevin said:
"Decent set of we-were-there stories about what it was like to be friends with Hunter S. Thompson. If you're looking for more material to flesh out your fantasies of HST as the non-stop king of gonzo you'll probably be disappointed-- a lot of the sto...more
Decent set of we-were-there stories about what it was like to be friends with Hunter S. Thompson. If you're looking for more material to flesh out your fantasies of HST as the non-stop king of gonzo you'll probably be disappointed-- a lot of the stories seemed to revolve around how Raoul Duke's alter ego was more or less a crochety old man who liked to party, watch sports, and argue politics. In that order.
Worth a read for HST enthusiasts, but like all insider accounts it's reader-beware... Larger-than-life figures are always more exciting when you don't actually know anything about them....less
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Perfectshun
— 14 members
— last activity 06/03/2008 09:04AM
