by Lauren Oyler

This book was nearly insufferable. It starts out with a strong plot, and I was drawn into the documentary-level detail, but I didn’t foresee how off the rails it would go. After part 1, where heroine discovered her boyfriend is a secret conspiracy theorist, and part 2, which flashes back to their meet-cute, super plot twist comes along and twists the plot so severely there is no longer any plot. Then we get an absolutely interminable section where heroine just wanders around. At one point she decides to go on a series of 12 fake dates, during each of which she pretends to be a different stereotyped sign of the zodiac. I felt like I was reading some Japanese fiction where any random thing might happen next, and when things get like that, I just get like WHY!?!?!

And yes, you can totally convince me that I’m reading it on entirely the wrong level, and that all my complaints are “the point.” Nevertheless, complaints they are.

by Darrin Bell

I really enjoyed this book and did not expect to. I did not expect to because I’m a bad person who’s really tired of reading about racism. I also tend to think graphic novels are gimmicky. But this was wonderful, and I wished there was more of it.

by Carys Davies

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I can’t review this short little novel without giving it all away. I was just so thrilled she pulled off a happy ending! Because I saw tragedy on every other page, until things started to escalate; then I saw tragedy in every paragraph. Thank you, thank you Carys Davies.

by Ray Padgett

Interviews with scads of people who played live with Dylan from the 60s to today. Could have been edited down a bit. The highlight was Stan Lynch, drummer for the Heartbreakers, who sounds blissed out with every word he utters about playing with Bob, and gives the funniest story. Three songs into a concert, Bob turns and says, “Hey, Stan, what do you want to play tonight?” Stan is like, uh, “Lay Lady Lay”? Bob says, “What key.” Note: Lynch is the drummer. He’s asking the drummer what key. “I see Mike [Campbell] in the corner going, ‘A! A! A!’ I go, ‘How about A?’ Everybody has a big sigh of relief.”

Guitarist Billy Cross offers some of the best insight. “I wasn’t crazy about the sounds that the engineers got. I remember at one point, I was on his case, saying ‘Bob, it could sound better, man.’ He said, ‘Billy, my records are my music played by me and the people with whom I’m playing in that room on that day. That’s what my music is.’ I thought that was a pretty cool way to look at it.” And, “He writes. That’s what he does.” And regarding all the touring, “Once I asked him… ‘All this, how can you do it?’ He said, ‘Billy, that’s what I do.'”

Tour manager Richard Fernandez: “Bob was, if not the most, at least the top two most interesting people I’ve ever worked with.” That sums it up.

The author is incidentally a Burlington resident, and I’ve been trying to find a copy of his book “Cover Me” for some time. I keep checking Crow.

by Edith Holden

I just couldn’t get into the drawings of birds and the poems about nature and the naturalist observations. I would have liked more glimpses into what life was like for a lady in England in 1906. The most interesting parts were the explanations of the names of each of the months, which she got out of the encyclopedia; and the side-leaf that described the author’s brief life (she dies at 49 by falling into the Thames).