"Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk and Post-Punk Graphic Design" by Andrew Krivine

Quick Book Review: “Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die: Punk and Post-Punk Graphic Design” by Andrew Krivine

This is a big, heavy coffee-table book about the graphic design of the punk music scene.  The author, an American, became obsessed with UK punk in 1977. (I did, too, so I can relate.) He found the graphic design of punk records, posters, buttons, and fliers fascinating, and he began collecting them.  His collection grew to massive proportions.  This book…

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"Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix" by Charles R. Cross

Quick Book Review: “Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix” by Charles R. Cross

This book tells the story of Hendrix’s rise to fame as the best and most creative guitarist in rock, taking us through his childhood of poverty, hunger, and severe neglect, his enlisting in the army, his fascination with music, and his ultimate mastery of the instrument.  The book goes into his troubled family life, the girlfriends and other women in…

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"The Haight: Love, Rock, and Revolution – The Photography of Jim Marshall" by Joel Selvin

Quick Book Review: “The Haight: Love, Rock, and Revolution – The Photography of Jim Marshall” by Joel Selvin

Not surprisingly, I loved this book.  I love photography, and I’ve been enthralled by the Haight-Ashbury era and the music coming out of that scene for years.  Jim Marshall was a spectacular photographer who not only took iconic photos of musicians (he’s the guy responsible for the photo of Hendrix setting his guitar ablaze at Monterey Pop, Johnny Cash famously…

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"New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography" by Grant Scott

Quick Book Review: “New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography” by Grant Scott

The role of photography in the world today has gotten tougher to assess, given that everybody has a camera with them at all times.  The author argues that photography should be reassessed, and be thought of as a visual “language”.  To do this, we need to discard the pre-conceived notion that successful photography is defined by a single successful image…

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"Listen Up! Recording Music with Bob Dylan, Neil Young, U2, REM, The Tragically Hip, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Waits" by Mark Howard

Quick Book Review: “Listen Up! Recording Music with Bob Dylan, Neil Young, U2, REM, The Tragically Hip, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Waits” by Mark Howard

Mark Howard is a Canadian record producer who has worked with a lot of bands over the years.  I was hoping for some cool stories about the artists he’s worked with, and the book has them, but not nearly enough pages are devoted to this.  Instead, you get a lot of detailed jargon about recording equipment, as well as endless…

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"Good Morning, Monster: Five Heroic Journeys to Emotional Recovery" by Catherine Gildiner

Quick Book Review: “Good Morning, Monster: Five Heroic Journeys to Emotional Recovery” by Catherine Gildiner

This is a pretty intense book.  Catherine Gildiner is a (now retired) psychotherapist from Canada.  She has treated thousands of patients over the years, but five of them stand out in particular.  These are patients who have suffered terrible, horrific childhood trauma, both psychological and physical, and manage to survive and overcome it through the use of varying coping mechanisms. …

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"Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth" by Avi Loeb

Quick Book Review: “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” by Avi Loeb

In the fall of 2017, an object was discovered zipping through our solar system at an unusual speed. It was studied extensively, but no one could figure out exactly what it was. One thing was for certain, however: the object came from outside our solar system.  Named “Oumuamua”, (a Hawaiian word for “a messenger from afar arriving first”), this was…

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"Feest" by Ed van der Elsken

Quick Book Review: “Feest” by Ed van der Elsken

Ed Van der Elsken is one of the Netherlands’ most famous photographers.  In late 2019, the Rijksmuseum and the Netherlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam acquired Van der Elsken’s entire photographic legacy.  Among the many obscure and forgotten photographs was the design for a photobook called feest (feast). It was compiled by Van der Elsken himself. He created a ‘dummy’ book around 1960, but…

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