February 2008 book thread

[RayKingsForemanGrill]

Hey guys:

 

Just reviving the book thread.

 

I've got one that I'd recommend highly to people: Truck: A Love Story by Michael Perry.

 

I've lived in L.A. for three years now, but all 25.5 years before that I lived in Wisconsin and will ultimately move back there to set up "home". I picked up this book a few weeks ago while feeling a little homesick: a book by a Wisconsin author about a year-in-the-life of a Wisconsin small town - it's technically written like a memoir but he says he has changed some of the names, timelines etc. to protect some identities and surely to add color.

 

It's told largely through three different angles: his attempts to fix his old beat-up IH truck, his attempts to grow a bountiful garden and cook the results, and his experience courting a woman as a person who is no longer a kid and already set in his ways...

 

This book is hands down the best book about small town life I've ever read. The characters and situations he introduces the reader to could be in any small town in Wisconsin and really captures the Wisconsin way of life perfectly. I highly suggest it to anyone looking to pick something up from the bookstore. It made me more than a little homesick.

 

I've also recently read the book Silk, a book about a silk trader who travels to Japan and finds himself drawn to a mysterious woman there despite a happy life back at home. There is a movie coming out based on this and it actually looks bad. But the book is good and a quick read...

 

Currently reading Murakami's Kafka on the Shore...not blown away by it, but it works...

 

Re: new music.

 

The Drive By Truckers album is deep and rich and everyone should get it. Right now I'm in love with Shonna Tucker's backing vocals on Patterson's songs Two Daughters, Opening Act, and Monument Valley - simply haunting... and Cooley's songs are all pure gold...

 

Also - at the risk of dashing any credibility - the new Seven Mary Three album is available on ITunes. I have remained a staunch supporter of this band through the years even after most people dropped them (shortly after Cumbersome and Waters Edge stopped getting regular airplay)... They've got a new album out and it's actually quite good. If you want to give it a taste but really aren't sure, go spend three dollars and download these three tunes:

 

Break the Spell

Hammer & Stone

Inside Out

 

The new album is Day & Night Driving... it's really quite good... (and their "Rock Crown" album is an overlooked classic)...

 

Enough from me today...

 

Bill