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Entries Tagged as 'nonfiction'

Tom Standage: The Victorian Internet

24 Aug 2008 · No Comments

(Subtitle: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers)
Basically, I loved The Turk so much I’m going to read everything by Standage I can get my hands on. This book explores the meteoric rise (and precipitous decline) of the telegraph from the historical perspective. pretty much, of Web 1.0 (the copyright […]

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Tags: history · v-title · science · s-author

Roger Highfield: The Science of Harry Potter

17 Aug 2008 · No Comments

I read this book in a continual state of bemusement about the audience for which it was written, wondering if, in fact, it exists. Presumably, people in the “buy anything that says Harry Potter” camp are supposed to pick it up. I was mildly intrigued because my biggest gripe with Rowling’s series is that the […]

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Tags: s-title · science · h-author

Tom Standage: The Turk

15 Aug 2008 · 2 Comments

(Subtitle: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine)
The Turk recounts the amazing true story of a machine that purported to play chess, and which was seldom beaten except by the top players of its era. “The Turk” and its operators enjoyed a long and colorful career that intersected (and sometimes inspired) the […]

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Tags: history · science · s-author

Mark Kurlansky: Salt - A World History

27 Feb 2008 · 1 Comment

Several people asked me what I was reading while my answer included “a book about the history of salt.” To my bemusement, this answer was usually greeted with a drawn-out, “oh-kaaay” that seemed to ask, “Why would you want to read that?” if not “Why would anyone want to write that?”
The reaction puzzled me. Before […]

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Tags: history · s-title · food · k-author

Crystal Zevon: I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead

11 Oct 2007 · No Comments

Crystal Zevon’s biography of perennially misunderstood and mis-marketed songwriter Warren Zevon takes a holographic approach to the musician’s life (and death). Crystal Zevon (a former wife) provides chunks of bridging text, but the book consists mostly of brief chronologically-arranged snippets from an impressive array of Zevon’s family, friends, lovers, collaborators, and (most importantly) excerpts from […]

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Tags: rock · i-title · biography · z-author

Glen Matlock: I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol

11 Oct 2007 · No Comments

I’ve whined recently about how the London punk scene of ‘76-77 gets such a disproportionate share of media attention. So why’d I pick up Matlock’s book? Because his is one of the first-person perspectives I haven’t seen. Lydon’s and McLaren’s versions are amply documented. But Matlock’s part in the Pistols actually ends when Sid Vicious […]

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Tags: i-title · punk · autobiography · m-author

Jennifer Trynin: Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be

25 Aug 2007 · 3 Comments

If I were dictator of the world, everybody who wanted to form a band to play in front of people would be legally required to watch Standing in the Shadows of Motown first, and everyone who wanted to sign a record deal would be required to read Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be. In my […]

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Tags: e-title · rock · business · autobiography · t-author

Marcus Gray: The Last Gang in Town

30 Jul 2007 · No Comments

I found Gray’s enormous, dense history of The Clash mostly fascinating, but the obviousness of Gray’s authorial agendas bugged me. The book is subtitled “The Story and Myth of the Clash,” and Gray spends a lot of effort looking for the points of divergence between the (hi)story and the myth of the band. He provides […]

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Tags: punk · biography · g-author

Laurie Lindeen: Petal Pusher

29 Jul 2007 · 1 Comment

Laurie Lindeen’s rags-to-well,rags chronicle of her band Zuzu’s Petals reminded strongly of Tommy Womack’s excellent and thematically similar Cheese Chronicles, with the added fillip that Laurie hooks up with someone Much More Famous midway through the band’s career arc.
Almost all of the book is written in the present tense. Lindeen is sometimes deliberately cagey about […]

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Tags: p-title · punk · autobiography · l-author

Julie Powell: Julie & Julia

16 Dec 2006 · No Comments

I read this at least partly to challenge my own preconceptions about what kind of books I read. This is a non-cookbook about cooking — worse, French cooking, although I didn’t realize quite how meat-intensive it would actually be.
But it’s also a book about a crazy challenge — specifically, cooking every recipe in Julia […]

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Tags: j-title · food · autobiography · p-author