Recently read and heard

Before we go any further, here's a list of new-to-me stuff I've been reading and listening to lately. This list covers my music and book intake back to June. Funny, I thought there was more:

BOOKS:

* Paul Theroux -- Figures in a Landscape. Theroux's third collection of essays, covering everything from a profile of Robin Williams to slabs of family history and autobiography. Theroux claims he'll never write a full autobiography or memoir, but he's already written at least one -- the brilliant history of a friendship "Sir Vidia's Shadow."

* The Best of Rolling Stone. This 400-page collection of nonfiction pieces was originally published as a special issue of the magazine back in 1992. There's some great stuff here (all cut for space), but the writers' introductions are the best part. Daisann McLane's awesome "The Girl in the Tweed Jacket" is maybe the best, most personal peek behind the scenes, but I wish McLane's wonderful 1979 portrait of Fleetwood Mac, "Five Not-So-Easy Pieces," had been included.

* Gene Sculatti and others -- The 100 Best-Selling Albums of the '60s/'70s/'80s/90s. Dull, unsurprising and full of errors, this low-budget rush-job series was a big disappointment. The only surprises come from learning what kind of crap music most people buy. Gene Sculatti's a good rock critic, but the editors gave him no room to write, and the editing and proofreading are hideous. Avoid.

* Michael Lesy -- Wisconsin Death Trip, The Forbidden Zone. "Forbidden Zone" is about people who deal with death every day -- homicide detectives, undertakers, pathologists, etc. Some of them are such odd characters that they deserved to be in a book. "Wisconsin Death Trip" is about what happened in a small rural Wisconsin town between 1890 and 1910, when an agricultural failure and depression followed outbreaks of diphtheria, dysentery, smallpox and more. People went crazy. Eerie, odd, depressing, one of a kind.

* David Leigh and Luke Harding -- WikiLeaks. Covers the frantic early days of the WikiLeaks classified-information-leak site, but for the rest of the story you'll have to consult Wikipedia.

* Judy Pasternak -- Yellow Dirt. Follows what happens when Navajos start mining uranium on their reservation in Arizona, and the U.S. government stonewalls the tribe about the effects of uranium exposure and radiation for the next 60 years....

* Barbara Moran -- The Day We Lost the H-Bomb. Recounts how the U.S. Air Force accidentally dropped three unactivated atomic bombs on a small town in southern Spain back in 1966. A fourth bomb fell into the Mediterranean Sea and took two months to find.

* Nicholas A. Basbane -- A Gentle Madness. About *extreme* book-collectors. One great long chapter is about a man who stole more than 5,000 rare books from libraries and universities over a 20-year period. Most of the schools never realized the books were missing.

* Six science fiction writers -- Hell's Cartographers. Writers like Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, Brian Aldiss and Alfred Bester talk about what got them hooked on reading and writing science fiction.

* Nine more science fiction writers -- Fantastic Lives. This is more scattershot than "Hell's Cartographers" and much less interesting. Still, some good stuff by Barry Malzberg, Norman Spinrad, R.A. Lafferty.

* James Gunn -- The Listeners. This 1972 science-fiction novel has a great idea at its center, and the first chapter's pretty good. Then the absurd and insignificant "human drama" gets more and more in the way and the book gets sillier and sillier. Gave up halfway through.

MUSIC:

* Mott the Hoople -- first album, side 1. Brain Capers, side 1. Rock and Roll Queen early-best-of. "Rock and Roll Queen" sucked me in. Early Mott was great when they roared. Side 1 of their first album is mostly a great Bob Dylan impersonation. Side 1 of "Brain Capers" features more greatness. I'll be getting back to these guys soon.

* Funkadelic -- Maggot Brain. Loud and chaotic, with an awesome Hendrixy 10-minute guitar solo on the title track. Some throwback R&B-type cuts in the middle, leading to the crazed "Super Stupid" and the sound collage "Wars of Armageddon" -- which along with a steady beat includes protests, chanting, screaming, a mooing cow, and cosmic farts. "Revolution 9" should have sounded like this.

* Tim Buckley -- Happy Sad. Perfect music for lounging around all day in bed with your Significant Other.

* Amazing Blondel -- Evensong. Cute fake-15th-Century English folk music, but nowhere near as good as their later "Fantasia Lindum" and "England."

* The Kinks -- Arthur. Each song turns into real basic bash-it-out English rock'n'roll, and thank God. Includes the glorious "Shangri-La" and rockin' "Victoria," and nice bits like the hilarious "Yes Sir, No Sir" and "She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina."

* Three songs from Magazine's "Real Life." More listening required.

More soon!