Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir
Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA
Chronicles, Volume One
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Obviously, this is not the definitive Bob Dylan story. But it’s undeniably his best work of prose, full of sly humor, colorful language, and sharp observations that prove he was and is much more aware of the world at large than we might’ve expected. His musical analyses–of people like Bertolt Brecht, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, and Robert Johnson–cut to the heart of their work, and there’s a palpable thrill to reading Dylan recount his struggles to bring his musical vision to life. This volume–a second is planned–is a fascinating, entertaining ride. Just don’t expect resolution. –Peter Margasak
The Freedom isn’t a perfect book. Presumably written in a hurry and on the fly, it’s pocked with just enough redundancies and typos to give the reader pause, and Parenti’s politics–he writes for the Nation–are never far from the surface. But, vivid and charged, it’s nevertheless an urgent, ruthless indictment of a disastrous mess, the architect of which is never in doubt. Says a bit of scrawled graffiti on a wall in Sadr City, under a mural depicting the infamous Abu Ghraib photo of a hooded prisoner standing on a box, “THE FREEDOM FORM GEORGE BOSH.” –Martha Bayne
Thomas Fahy | Dark Alley | What in hell is Thomas Fahy thinking? Hasn’t he ever read a really good psychokiller thriller–like Shane Stevens’s By Reason of Insanity or James Ellroy’s Killer on the Road? If he has he should know that the fun of the thing is in the villain, as Victorian tinkerers like Bram Stoker figured out a long time ago so we wouldn’t have to. And if he hasn’t, what’s he doing trying to write one? The author’s bio says Fahy “grew up surrounded by music,” and Night Visions uses Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations–which 18th-century insomniac Count Keyserlingk supposedly had his harpsichordist Goldberg play to soothe him to sleep–as the source of an evil that haunts contemporary San Francisco attorney Samantha Ranvali, who can’t sleep either. It’s no use going into the convoluted mess Fahy makes of all this, except to say again that the genre’s cardinal rule is broken: there is no single villain of any interest. Heroine Ranvali is less intriguing than daytime TV, and I’m not even sure what happens at the end. But none of this would matter if this book had–oh, I don’t know, Dracula? –Patrick Daily
The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists
