Chris M

Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life by Steve Almond

“Styx has become the mullet of bands.” For those of us who grew up in the seventies and eighties, convinced we had both musical talent and taste, this statement crystallizes our secret shame. We loved Styx and Toto–until we were told we weren’t supposed to by an older sibling- and have spent the rest of our lives coming to terms with it. From extended 7th grade listening sessions of AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” to hanging out with Dave Grohl at his estate, Almond’s wonderfully satisfying book chronicles his evolution as a “Drooling Fanatic” of popular (and not-so-popular) contemporary music. If you have ever fancied yourself a music critic– especially if you have recently hit middle age–this book provides a necessary antidote to the problem of taking life and art too seriously.


LUCKY JIM by Kinsley Amis

The hopelessly self-destructive James Dixon, on probation at a university in postwar England, has a shot at a modestly successful career as a history professor–provided he doesn’t blow it. It doesn’t help matters that he has no interest in history, loathes his colleagues, and spends far to much time at the pub.

As he careens from one blunder to another, it becomes obvious that Jim’s singular talent is for proving that the cover-up is always worse than the crime.

Widely revered as one of the finest campus satires ever written, Lucky Jim was British writer Kingsley Amis’ first and possibly best-known novel. Those familiar with the arbitrary politics of academia will find some of the characters queasily familiar. You don’t have to be English to appreciate Lucky Jim; you don’t even have to have been to college. But it probably helps.

luc

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

I’ve never been able to get into Michael Chabon, although admittedly I haven’t tried very hard (I gave up on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay after two pages, but several friends of mine love the book, so maybe I haven’t given it enough of a chance). Some critic once served Chabon a bit of a backhanded compliment, saying that he wrote “like a 7th grade prodigy.”

Recently I picked up Chabon’s second novel, Wonder Boys after noticing that the movie of the same name, starring Michael Douglas and Toby Maguire, was being shown on TV. I really, really enjoyed it.

An adventure involving adultery, copious amounts of high-grade marijuana, a stolen piece of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, and the third degree homicides of at least two household pets, Wonder Boys is a tremendously engaging piece of metafiction–in this case, a novel about writing a novel named, of course, Wonder Boys. The narrator, college professor Grady Tripp, is a lovable loser who suffers from the occasional blackout– possibly as result of smoking pot more or less continuously during his waking hours–and manages, throughout the book, to wreck almost every aspect of his personal and professional life. It’s a nice satire of academia and the publishing industry, and simply great comedy. If only more current authors could write like 7th grade prodigies.

The movie’s pretty good, too.

wo

Gomorrah

goGomorrah by Roberto Saviano

Fans of investigative reporting will love Gomorrah, undercover journalist Roberto Saviano’s harrowing, eloquent examination of organized crime in Naples, Italy. Saviano’s reporting does an impressive job of explaining why, under the pernicious influence of the brutal local mob known as the Camorra, Neopolitans suffer the highest murder rate in Europe and the continual degradation of their living standards. A best seller in Italy and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2007, Gomorrah is a modern classic of crime literature.

bp-buynow