What are you reading New Year/Winter 2025

MC5 oral history
Very readable set of excerpts from interviews begun by Ben Edmonds and completed and edited by a couple of other Detroit residents.
It fills out a picture I already had some familiarity with. I'm finding it pretty fascinating.
One thing I did notice earlier is that it appears to be 2/3s over without leaving 1968 and therefore doesn't cover the next 3 years in as much depth. Seems a bit of a shame cos I'd like the detail.
But very recommended if you're remotely interested in the band.

David Toop Two Headed Doctor
An investigation into the lore that Dr John's Gris Gris ties into and the history of the musicians invoĺved.
I'm finding it pretty fascinating. I love the l.p. and have enjoyed the previous books by the author that I've read. Reminds me to try to read a load more of him.
Nice surprise gift from my brother. Something I wanted to read but hadn't told him. So that's great.

Sara Blaffer Hrrdy Mother Nature
Interesting but pretty thick tome. Have wanted to read the author for a while.

my friend just loaned me The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk and I'm digging it... set in 1913 at a TB sanitorium in the mountains of Silesia, it definitely draws on The Magic Mountain but it's a horror novel and it's starting to get really creepy. The perspective and tense are shifting all the time... I'm about eighty pages in

Khirbet Khizeh S Yizhar
1948 novel based around a first hand account of an Israeli soldier ethnically cleansing the Arab population of Palestine. I think I came across it in the Bibliography of the Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein. That is itself a book I'd seriously recommend.
This is odd in its non judgmental nature of its reporting of what seem to be continual war crimes. It reminds me of a few things, Steve Albini's journalistic lyricism which seemed to have a similar non-judgmental somewhat voyeuristic stance on controversial subject matter. Also the book Soldaten by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer . That has conversation candidly recorded between German P.O.Ws during WWII. The participants were not aware they were being recorded and subsequently did not censor themselves. I think that is a book that should be read if thinking about the individual's perspective in the process of war crimes. So is this I think.
Short novel at 120something pages.

Was skeptical that James by Percival Everett would live up to the praise but I'm about halfway through and it's totally engaging.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey. I'm always open to largely plotless fiction so we'll see how this turns out.

Been picking away at All Gates Open: The Story of Can for some time. Informative but not something I've been motivated to plow through.

Edmund Wilson's Apologies to the Iroquois and for the first time Gogol's Dead Souls.

2025: The Premier Grand Unified WAYR thread

Bible & Sword Barbara Tuchman
this book is seriously in need of decolonisation. But comes from 1956 so wonder if that is simply predictable.
It's a book on the connection between Britain and Palestine over the centuries. It starts in the Roman era and traces pilgrimage and influence over the time to the author's current day.
Author has some nice turn of phrase which means I might read some of her later work. She lists a bibliography so did at least some research. But what is conspicuously absent is an arab or other indigenous population perspective. She refers to the enemy during the crusades as Turk.
She views Palestine mainly as the ideal home place of the Jews and the indigenous population as movable to fit the Jews return.
I thought this might be a good way of seeing the historic perspective of the British over time. I think it does that to some degree but I'm never sure to what extent the perspective belongs to the author.
So would love to find a similar overview from a perspective that was less positive about colonialism and more aware of indigenous and non-Western perspectives. I think this book is relatively well known so it has presumably occurred to somebody to provide a similar work.
So I've read it and can see some rather deep flaws while having enjoyed it to some extent.

We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families : stories from Rwanda Philip Gourevitch,
book telling the story of the Rwanda genocide through anecdotal means concerning a cast of characters.
Quite great, I'm halfway through it.and think its pretty good.

Neu Klang Christoph Dallach
Oral history of Krautrock. Starting with the childhood context of several of the players and the Second World War and its wake.
It follows them through the next couple of decades and cultural innovations.
So I'm still in the era before the Krautrock scene itself has begun, and the Beat era hasn't been looked at in depth yet.
Looking forward to reading through this and hopefully being turned onto more sounds I'm not familiar with from a genre I've been somewhat aware of for decades.

Two Headed Doctor David Toop
an exploration into Dr John's Gris Gris lp . Looks into biography and prior of the lp itself and the various players on it. Also looks into the history of New Orleans and the lore tied into voudun and other beliefs that are referenced in the songs.
Also serves as something of a memoir of the time Toop was first connecting to the music. He only really connected with the first couple of lps and found later work far lesser. More referrant and copyist of the first 2 lps and the sounds they themselves referred to and far less innovative.
Very very interesting book on one of my fav lps. Has me wanting to read the rest of Toop's work.

New Ugly Things turned up at the start of the week and I have read part of the review sections and not really got into the articles.

Isaac Deutscher - The Prophet Armed
Carrie Courogen - Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius
Mavis Gallant - The Uncollected Stories

I'm reading M John Harrison's Viriconium, a medieval sci-fi with a bit of a Dune vibe. Some lovely prose in here and the worldbuilding is super imaginative and clearly laid out. I'm feeling it

most people are over here now: 2025: The Premier Grand Unified WAYR thread