Quality Instruction: David Byrne's "How Music Works"

I listened to this as an audiobook I downloaded. That means that there were points that I wanted to write something down, but may not have been able to fully capture. There are no notes to reference so rather I will have to speak in generalities.

The book is both autobiography and analysis. I have not been following Byrne’s career much or at all, but it is interesting to listen to because it is one example of the career path that a musician could take in the days that he started out and has still continued to make a living as a working musician. Any aspiring artist should be able to look at that for inspiration. He and other members of the Talking Heads lived in a run-down flat on the Bowery when the Bowery was more Warriors New York than the Disney version of a city at least the island is today (poor people could afford to live there!).

The stronger sections though are the ones where Byrne dives deep in the history of recorded sound and the playing of music in all its contexts. I will not be able to fully articulate it here, but he covered a lot of things about music that I hadn’t really thought of, like how the cultural context of how we listen to music shapes the music that artists create, and how dependent on technological developments the music that we listen to today is – even what is played on the oldies stations were novel at some point, and that’s important to remember. My favorite little piece of trivia is that the Theremin was invented in the 20’s, much earlier than I would have though.

Overall, this is a very successful book, and I was a bit disappointed when it ended, since I really wanted him to keep going. It will be worth it to wait around for the sequel.

Do You Like to Laugh? Jenny Lawson's "Furiously Happy"

Let me just drop some names: Sloan Crosley, David Raikoff, Augusten Burroughs, and David Sedaris.

I’m not sure if I spelled them right, but those are all people who have written at least one book that takes their life and examines it to mine the funny things that happen and then put them on the page. I’m not sure how true all the stories are, or if it really matters because they come across as if true. What does matter is that they have used their lives and they have made me laugh on page.

I had never read any of Lawson’s works prior to picking this up. I think it was a mixture of the reviews and the dead raccoon on the cover that made me buy it. I ended up reading it really quickly because it was fun to read. Let me tell you this too – I think in terms of laughter, I laughed more reading this book than I have in reading any of the dropped authors at the top. There’s a solid laugh on every page. And sure, it might not be the deep thinking sort of NPR laughing that you might want; it’s not totally cheap either.  The story about her visit to Australia is the high point for me, but just her everyday life is funny. I recommend this book solidly, and I have bought her previous work so that I can laugh some more.

Man Up and Read Sara Benincasa's "D. C. Trip"

I bought this because I follow the author on Twitter.

I have bought several books because of twitter people. It has been, let me tell you, hit or miss.

I thought I would try this one out though I had the idea it wasn’t really my demographic. I thought it was YA (The author was nice enough to talk to me a bit on twitter after I had read it and disabused me of the notion that the book was YA – just because it was about teenagers mostly, it wasn’t necessarily YA).

The thing is that genre classifications here don’t really matter. It’s a good book, full stop. The story is some kids from Jersey go to DC and find themselves. It could be the recipe for formulaic emptiness, but of the four main characters of the book, they are deep and interesting and you care about their growth and development. You end up rooting for them. It is well paced to the point it feels a bit cinematic with a larger arc with some smaller embedded arcs. If it is not on its way to being a movie yet, it should be.

My only worry is that some of the secondary characters are a little flat. The love interests are one-dimensional, and the rivals of the central group of girls are a bit stereotypical, but the central characters are so strong so this both erases that to me (even if the secondary flatness is only visible because of direct comparison to these central characters – it’s a paradox). This is a definite recommendation on my part, even if you may not think it is your demographic, it is. The last time I really felt this way was 12 year ago, reading the great Julianna Baggott’s “Girl Talk” in its bright pink cover.