John > Recent Status Updates

Here's the thing with just about everyone who is quoted (and the narration in general): I hear the book in my head told from each of these people's voices.

Everything was warm and great and I was enjoying some inside stories up until Cary started speaking about an on-set accident and breaking his toe.

Cary turned into the typical over-worried, overwhining, overdeprecitive Brit.

Billy Crystal was 39 when he shot this thing??? Well, that throws the entire synopsis of "City Slickers" right out the windwo....

Out of the Fireswamp and into the next location of the shoot.

If I'm right, and I'm never wrong, my Nexus 7 battery died just as Cary was speaking about his ordeal in the dreaded Fire Swamp...

"I did get a little tipsy"

--André the giant after consuming OMGWTF amount of liquor

Life is pain, and I delayed touching this long enough to create more.

Don't expect me to be finished any time soon, Nolan...

The main write up is over, the afterward is on! I got sort of disappointed that the chronology got screwed up in the telling but besides that, I'm left happy with this.

It bothers me that the last book on Wilson I read took so much from this report.

Nothing new learned at this point, it's just better storytelling though.

I read a piece of this in Rolling Stone (or online on their site) and that's why I read the last Wilson biography -- because I didn't buy this.

Oh, this book just took on Brian Wilson's mental illness! He accuses his publicist of being a plant of the Beatles on the west coast; suggests the Beatles heard "Smile" early, and Van Dyke Parks backs up this paranoia with quotes almost 40 years later.

It was bad writing before, this makes it worse unless it points out "Brian's not well" at some point soon. This is non-ficiton, folks

Another bad, jumbled chapter in the books. The story I was interested in reading about was largely omitted/parred down. Disappointing. Mike Love's war with Brian Wilson deserves more than a scant mention when it's played up at the chapter's beginning.

"Avant garde a clue"

Some of it's fluff, some of it's poorly edited, some of it has me transfixed.

This book is mistitled.

"SMILE!: A press release about Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks that brutally repeats everyone's name and won't go in depth about any of the figures it talks about."

I can't believe how much I paid for this; it's something you'd expect included with the 2004 album release.

Working against this book is how scattered the narrative is.

I substantially overpaid for this book :-p That being said, this reads like a biography and makes me curious about all the jazz names that are being dropped.

Because the Doc Holiday book sucks...

Disappointed enough in this book that I left a rating on Google Play (where I bought the book).

The more I read, the less I like this book. It's not the research - that's done extremely well. It'st eh narrative and the actual writing.

The author is long winded in describing the situations... He is thorough, yes, but some of that thoroughness is alla bout hypothetical possibilities, even when a repeated fact is on record. He over-elaborates the hypotheticals before going to the on-the-record facts.

While this is a well researched book, one of the big problems with it is that it almost seems like it's deliberately confusing; Robert keeps referencing people by their full name (first, middle, Maiden name, surname)

Seeign I have been reading history, might as well continue the trend of history in the American West...

Sometimes it reads like Twain was insecure about fact -- like the reader would not be interested in tat, only in tall tales. Such a shame.

Some autobiographical / historical stuff, some fiction/farces. And it's difficult reading all of Twain's usage of the "n" word.

I haven't really been reading this much as I've been distracted by other responsibilities. Also, when Twain's sojourn across America by statecoach ended, the story hit sort of a wall (Carson City, Nevada is not an exciting destination to this reader). I have picked the story up again and am trying to forge ahead.

Twain's descriptions can be fantastic, and sometimes he's just full of it.

He's still full of it, but it's entertaining. Just wish I could tell fact from fiction.