by Jess Walter

A book club pick which I didn’t like. It was violent and ugly. One of a genre that I call the “Isn’t Everything Terrible” genre.

by Robert Polito

This was a truly good book about the less-discussed second half of Dylan’s career, each chapter focusing on a different album, show, or event. The book manages to be dense without being boring or unreadable. It reveals enough about the author to avoid feeling cryptic and impersonal; but it is not SO much about the author that you feel he’s lost the thread of what the real topic is supposed to be.

by Elizabeth Winder

Four women are mentioned in the subtitle of this book — Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Marsha Hunt, & Bianca Jagger.

But it’s mostly Marianna & Anita. And I knew most of the stuff about them already. A lot of this was covered in Keith’s memoir.

I was looking forward to learning about Marsha Hunt, whose name was not familiar to me. She was a girlfriend of Mick’s during this era and had his first child. And was treated abominably by him.

And I was looking forward to learning about Bianca, whose name I certainly knew. There’s very little about her here. But it seems she is a fighter for righteous causes, heavily feminist, and worth saluting.

Marianne had a good revival and left us only recently. Bianca and Marsha still walk the earth. Anita lived long (to 2017) but did not defeat her drug problems and did not end well.