Just finished reading two more books picked up at the library. The first is Among the Thugs, by Bill Buford. I heard about this book around the time the world cup was going on, and it sounded interesting. Alas, it was wasn't. It does give insight into how mob mentality functions, and it's mostly due to alcohol and racism. It does show a perverse national drive that soccer hooligans operate under. When a bunch of drunk England fans riot in Italy get away without being arrested, they actually consider it as taking over Italy in the name of England. Very strange book. I'd give it a C.
And the second book I just finished was called Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal by David Konow. I'm not really a heavy metal fan, but the genre has always intrigued me, probably because it was considered so off limits to me when I was a kid. So I read it hoping to find interesting stories concerning the people behind the music. It offers an overview of heavy metal that includes profiles of bands such as Black Sabbath, Metallica and Poison. (Which one of these is not like the other?) And really, the VH1 show Behind the Music did a better job telling these stories. Ironically, the author even cites this show quite a bit in the book. The book doesn't really focus on any one band, or time frame for that matter, going off in all directions without ever making a coherent point about what caused heavy metal to actually rise or fall. The book comes off as a mish mash of various interviews and first person accounts. And looking at the footnotes at the back of the book, it seems all the author did was summarize tons of other books and articles. It was still a pretty quick read, but not very insightful. Worthy of a C+.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
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