Books

Below are all of the books I have read and logged, along with my ratings and reviews.

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	Score	Author	Title	Year	Genre	Review
	8	Joyce Carol Oates	*We Were the Mulvaneys*	1996	Fiction	I found this to be one of the more remarkable examples of building characters, describing their interior lives, and letting the reader live alongside them and their decisions, all in incredibly realistic and moving ways. Your heart breaks for (some of) these Mulvaneys, and those vivid renderings of their thoughts, as these events unfold, elicit even deeper empathy throughout. It's one of those works where, though I cannot personally imagine making some of the choices this family does, being guided through the story on their thoughts and subtle actions makes them seem all but destined to happen. "It's the way families are, sometimes. A thing goes wrong and no one knows how to fix it and years pass and--no one knows how to fix it." Reviewed on Saturday, November 4th, 2023, 6:08am.	Joyce Carol Oates - We Were the Mulvaneys - Fiction - 1996 - I found this to be one of the more remarkable examples of building characters, describing their interior lives, and letting the reader live alongside them and their decisions, all in incredibly realistic and moving ways. Your heart breaks for (some of) these Mulvaneys, and those vivid renderings of their thoughts, as these events unfold, elicit even deeper empathy throughout. It's one of those works where, though I cannot personally imagine making some of the choices this family does, being guided through the story on their thoughts and subtle actions makes them seem all but destined to happen. "It's the way families are, sometimes. A thing goes wrong and no one knows how to fix it and years pass and--no one knows how to fix it."
	7	Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain	*Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk*	1996	Music	Lots of "don't meet your heroes" material here, but many of the cast of characters are very humanized through this account. It's commendable that McNeil and McCain were able to weave a somewhat coherent narrative out of all of these disparate interviews, though there were naturally a few moments throughout that had jolting changes of subject. Considering the subject matter, that's okay. The interviews piece together a history of early punk in America, really told more from the lens of building the scene and culture, the people in the orbit, rather than the music itself. I think this is effective in that the listening is done as you go and after the fact, and now having many human moments to tie the music to can make these figures more sympathetic. Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, in particular, come off as very tragic figures. It's often shocking, often funny, probably most often sad. I thought the funniest parts were the blatant contradictions from one interview to the next, like even with the titular t-shirt Richard Hell made with "please kill me" written on it. Multiple people attributing him to wearing it, even coloring their perceptions of his look and personality on that fact, and in the next paragraph, he's just like, "Oh yeah I never wore that are you insane? Someone might have killed me!" Reviewed on Thursday, December 28th, 2023, 5:39am.	Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain - Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk - Music - 1996 - Lots of "don't meet your heroes" material here, but many of the cast of characters are very humanized through this account. It's commendable that McNeil and McCain were able to weave a somewhat coherent narrative out of all of these disparate interviews, though there were naturally a few moments throughout that had jolting changes of subject. Considering the subject matter, that's okay. The interviews piece together a history of early punk in America, really told more from the lens of building the scene and culture, the people in the orbit, rather than the music itself. I think this is effective in that the listening is done as you go and after the fact, and now having many human moments to tie the music to can make these figures more sympathetic. Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, in particular, come off as very tragic figures. It's often shocking, often funny, probably most often sad. I thought the funniest parts were the blatant contradictions from one interview to the next, like even with the titular t-shirt Richard Hell made with "please kill me" written on it. Multiple people attributing him to wearing it, even coloring their perceptions of his look and personality on that fact, and in the next paragraph, he's just like, "Oh yeah I never wore that are you insane? Someone might have killed me!"

Score

Author

Title

Year

Genre

Review

Joyce Carol Oates

We Were the Mulvaneys

1996

Fiction

I found this to be one of the more remarkable examples of building characters, describing their interior lives, and letting the reader live alongside them and their decisions, all in incredibly realistic and moving ways. Your heart breaks for (some of) these Mulvaneys, and those vivid renderings of their thoughts, as these events unfold, elicit even deeper empathy throughout. It's one of those works where, though I cannot personally imagine making some of the choices this family does, being guided through the story on their thoughts and subtle actions makes them seem all but destined to happen. "It's the way families are, sometimes. A thing goes wrong and no one knows how to fix it and years pass and--no one knows how to fix it."

Reviewed on Saturday, November 4th, 2023, 6:08am.

Joyce Carol Oates - We Were the Mulvaneys - Fiction - 1996 - I found this to be one of the more remarkable examples of building characters, describing their interior lives, and letting the reader live alongside them and their decisions, all in incredibly realistic and moving ways. Your heart breaks for (some of) these Mulvaneys, and those vivid renderings of their thoughts, as these events unfold, elicit even deeper empathy throughout. It's one of those works where, though I cannot personally imagine making some of the choices this family does, being guided through the story on their thoughts and subtle actions makes them seem all but destined to happen. "It's the way families are, sometimes. A thing goes wrong and no one knows how to fix it and years pass and--no one knows how to fix it."

Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

1996

Music

Lots of "don't meet your heroes" material here, but many of the cast of characters are very humanized through this account. It's commendable that McNeil and McCain were able to weave a somewhat coherent narrative out of all of these disparate interviews, though there were naturally a few moments throughout that had jolting changes of subject. Considering the subject matter, that's okay. The interviews piece together a history of early punk in America, really told more from the lens of building the scene and culture, the people in the orbit, rather than the music itself. I think this is effective in that the listening is done as you go and after the fact, and now having many human moments to tie the music to can make these figures more sympathetic. Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, in particular, come off as very tragic figures. It's often shocking, often funny, probably most often sad. I thought the funniest parts were the blatant contradictions from one interview to the next, like even with the titular t-shirt Richard Hell made with "please kill me" written on it. Multiple people attributing him to wearing it, even coloring their perceptions of his look and personality on that fact, and in the next paragraph, he's just like, "Oh yeah I never wore that are you insane? Someone might have killed me!"

Reviewed on Thursday, December 28th, 2023, 5:39am.

Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain - Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk - Music - 1996 - Lots of "don't meet your heroes" material here, but many of the cast of characters are very humanized through this account. It's commendable that McNeil and McCain were able to weave a somewhat coherent narrative out of all of these disparate interviews, though there were naturally a few moments throughout that had jolting changes of subject. Considering the subject matter, that's okay. The interviews piece together a history of early punk in America, really told more from the lens of building the scene and culture, the people in the orbit, rather than the music itself. I think this is effective in that the listening is done as you go and after the fact, and now having many human moments to tie the music to can make these figures more sympathetic. Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, in particular, come off as very tragic figures. It's often shocking, often funny, probably most often sad. I thought the funniest parts were the blatant contradictions from one interview to the next, like even with the titular t-shirt Richard Hell made with "please kill me" written on it. Multiple people attributing him to wearing it, even coloring their perceptions of his look and personality on that fact, and in the next paragraph, he's just like, "Oh yeah I never wore that are you insane? Someone might have killed me!"

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