by Mike Campbell

Great to spend some time with Mike, Tom, Benmont, Howie, and Stan, and all the stars they crossed paths with.

It always warms my heart to see rock stars married to the same person for decades.

I didn’t realize Campbell wrote “Boys of Summer”. He wrote the music and played most of the instruments on it. That made him richer than being in the Heartbreakers.

Particularly great Bob Dylan anecdotes.

Tragic how drugs took Howie’s life and then Tom’s. Glad that Benmont recovered from addiction.

by W. Somerset Maugham

Could this book have been a little bit shorter and been just as effective? At 684 pages, of course. Yet I am so glad I stayed with it.

I nearly did otherwise. Midway, it felt like nothing more than the story of a young man making one bad decision after another. And it was definitely that! Then came the philosophy.

“He could not be positive that reason was much help in the conduct of life. It seemed to him that life lived itself.”

“He did not act with a part of himself but altogether. The power that possessed him seemed to have nothing to do with reason: all that reason did was to point out the methods of obtaining what his whole soul was striving for.”

Philip Carey is orphaned young and lives a hard life. The story does not take some of the obvious turns that you think it might. Philip makes a brief stab at being a chartered accountant; tries to be an artist in Paris; then finds his groove as a medical student before falling into penury. He learns much along the way, finally (at page 590) finding a sense of meaning in the meaninglessness of life. “As the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but the pleasure of his aesthetic sense, so might a man live his life, or if one was forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing, so might a man look at his life, that it made a pattern.” It’s really a beautiful couple of pages that follow.

To drag out G. M. Hopkins once again: “What I do is me; for that I came.”

by Brian Eno and Bette A.

A nice little book! Lots of food for thought. Fantastic illustrations.

by Laurie Woolever

This was a very enjoyable read. The author worked for Mario Batali, who comes off like a total (expletive); and Tony Bourdain, who comes off like a total doll. In between she practices serious forms of substance abuse and self-sabotage. I was always happy to come back and spend time in her company and root for her. Keep kicking butt, Laurie.

by Prince Rogers Nelson & Dan Piepenbring

I am by no means a Prince “fan”. I do adore the one album I have on disc, which is the one with the symbol. And I’ve always thought him to be an interesting person. And phenomenally creative and talented. His appearance at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is a MUST see.

I saw the book used and cheap and picked it up. It’s written by a fanboy shortly after Prince’s death in 2016. The two of them were supposed to collaborate on his memoir. Instead, Piepenbring put together all the material he collected and published this. Most of it is still in Prince’s voice.

Disappointed it only covered the early part of his career. Nothing about the New Power Generation, the symbol, the album with the symbol, etc. Maybe that would have been covered had Prince lived to continue the collaboration. 

by Kate Chopin

This is an old favorite of mine that I’ve read over and over.

This time around… I guess what strikes me more than usual is the character Madamesoille Reisz. Maybe because she’s old and I’m old. “She was a disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who had quarreled with almost everyone, owing to a temper which was self-assertive and a disposition to trample upon the rights of everyone.” Disagreeable. But she’s an important character and her independent life is still an example for Edna.

by Ford Madox Ford

This was recommended to me because it involves all my old pals from Wolf Hall. Honestly it was pretty hard to follow. I think it’s a trilogy but I’m stopping at the first.

by Nathanial Ian Miller

Loved this story about interesting people on a farm in Iceland. Have never loved a depiction of farm life so much – whatever is the opposite of ‘romantic,’ that’s what this is. Even though the family raises Galloway beef cattle and not goats, the descriptions of dealing with livestock animals really hit home for me. Like when you take down an electric fence, lots of the dumb animals are still going to refuse to walk through, because there always WAS an electric fence there, how are they to know there isn’t one now? Like when you manage to get the majority of your herd into the place where you want them, but then a few stragglers ruin it for everyone, because the moms follow the calves and then everyone piles on. Like WHY do they insist on sh*tting in their water?? Because it feels nice to scratch their tushies against the water trough, yes, we know, but still, it is such a PAIN to change the water…

Most might say I’m missing the point of the story. But even if you don’t have beasts, I hope you can still glean from my examples the type of realistic and entertaining story this is.

Even while dealing with a very serious topic; the father of this family is slipping into a hopeless depression.

Back to the animals: maybe you’re a dog person. The dog of the book’s title is very entertaining too, and I’m not a dog person.

Again, I’m veering off “point.” This family of mother, father, and college-age son is at a turning point. Pappi is getting very depressed, as I said. Mom is drifting away. Son hasn’t found himself yet – but perhaps he’ll find love? The love story is adorable.

I loved everything about this book. Except maybe, just maybe… no, no spoilers.

by Meghan Daum

“I grieve the deaths of my parents. In some ways I grieve their lives, too. I grieve for what might have been had they not been damaged in the ways that they were damaged.”

Meghan Daum, has it really been so long since your last book? I just finished THE CATASTROPHE HOUR. You continue to parallel me.

I too grieve my parents, their lives as well as their deaths.

I too don’t know what’s going on in pop culture anymore; I still think the “alternative” I listened to circa 2000 is kind of edgy. When I pull out the Arts & Leisure section of the NYT, if there aren’t any headlines on the front page about dinosaur rock bands, I just toss it.

I too have infinitely many parallel lives that look at me off in the distance, some even including parenthood. Some of those lives are doing OK; I don’t know if the one I’m in is the “best” one – OK, I know very well it’s not the “best.” But it’s OK.

My own catastrophe hour is a little bit later at night when I get sleepy. Something primal in my cries out, “What are you going to do with your life?” The answer comes out: “You’ve done it.”

I don’t know how to feel about the end of your book. All I can say is I do hope you keep putting out more books.

by Prince Harry

I know I’m a little late to the party, but I saw this used and picked it up. It really wasn’t very compelling. There was much too detail about his army life (yes, I realize it was very important to him). There were disjointed anecdotes that went nowhere. There was TMI about frostbite in his royal nether regions.

I was interested when we finally got to the Meghan parts. Ultimately I am no more sympathetic to him than I was before. Which is to say, of course I’m sympathetic to being hounded by the press. Of course none of us would want that. Or to be lied about or to receive threats. Etc. But as I read in detail about Harry’s complaints, I kinda found myself on Team Charles – “don’t read the stuff, Darling Boy”. Don’t respond to it. You have to have dignity and rise above it. Do I know how I would behave in the same situation? Not for sure, but I know what my disposition suggests.

In the end, Harry and William strike me as very different people. It was probably inevitable they would rift in their older age.