The Conical Glass: Running up that hill

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Running up that hill

I haven't done any book posts in a while because in both February and March, I read a couple truly crummy books, and I didn't feel like mentioning them. One of them was for my book group -- the reason it was on our reading list was because it had been nominated for a prestigious literary award. To say the book, which had been translated from the Italian, was extremely unpleasant would be an understatement; as an example, at one point, the protagonist (cough cough) anally rapes a stripper. At least everyone in our group was united in wondering what qualities the panel of judges had seen in it. The only good thing about the book was that it was only 150 pages long, which is how I was able to finish it.

Anyway, I did read one book in March that I'd like to recommend; I suspect a lot of folks who read this blog regularly will be intrigued by the title alone: Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield. If the first thing you do after meeting an intriguing guy/girl is start thinking which songs you'd put on a mix tape for them, this book is for you. (OK, so these days it's mix CDs, but we all look back fondly on that beloved old analog format, right?) I knew I was going to love this book because the favorite band of Rob and his wife, Renee, was none other than Pavement, who are my favorite band! Writes Rob:

Our friend Joe in New York sent us a tape, a third-generation dub of the Pavement album Slanted and Enchanted. Renee and I decided this was our favorite tape of all time. The guitars were all boyish ache and shiver. The vocals were funny bad poetry sung through a Burger World drive-through mike. The melodies were full of surfer-boy serenity, dreaming through a haze of tape hiss and mysterious amp noise. This was the greatest band ever, obviously. And they didn't live twenty years ago, or ten years ago, or five years ago. They were right now. They were ours.

Renee was a funny, free-spirited, charismatic girl who perfectly complemented the shyer and more introverted Rob. Unfortunately, she dropped dead of an aneurysm in her early 30s (I'm not giving anything away; Rob tells us about it in the first chapter), so much of the book is very, very sad. But it's not a depressing book. It celebrates Renee's life, which she obviously lived to the fullest. Joe and I both enjoyed the book a lot.

I'm currently about 3/4 of the way into No Shortcuts to the Top by Ed Viesturs, a renowned mountain climber who is perhaps best known for his work on the IMAX documentary "Everest." I have a fascination with mountain climbing and absolutely no desire to ever, ever do it; my idea of a good trek is going up 338-foot-high Albany Hill (just 28,697 feet shorter than Everest!). There's nothing like sprawling on the couch with a box of Girl Scout cookies while reading about a team of he-men trying to scale Annapurna.

posted by 125records @ 1:41 PM

2 Comments:

At 7:17 PM, yellojkt said…

The mix tape book sounds funny. I have got to pick up my reading pace.
At 3:13 PM, Joe said…

It's not so much funny as it is haunting. You'll hug your wife/husband/SO when you're done reading it.