2024 Reading List Monthly Update: August

Books read in August of 2024:

"Goodnight Tokyo" (Atsuhiro Yoshida) 8-3-24

"Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders" (Vincent Bugliosi + Curt Gentry) 8-5-24

"Spook" (Klabund) 8-7-24

"Dark Entries: Bauhaus and Beyond" (Ian Shirley) 8-9-24

"The Sun Also Rises" (Ernest Hemingway) 8-15-24

"Depeche Mode: A Biography" (Steve Malins) 8-20-24

"The Sirens of Titan" (Kurt Vonnegut) 8-25-24

"We" (Yevgeny Zamyatin) 8-26-24

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2024 Reading List Total:

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1. "The Explosion of a Chandelier" (Damian Murphy) 1-7-24

2. "Empire of the Sun" (J.G. Ballard) 1-11-24

3. "The Consolation of Philosophy" (Boethius) 1-14-24

4. "CAW: Colossal Abandoned World" (James Champagne) 1-17-24

5. "The Green Fly and Other Stories" (Robert Scheffer) 1-19-24

6. "Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again" (Shigeru Kayama) 1-22-24

7. "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" (Cho Nam-joo) 1-27-24

8. "The Planetary Omnibus" (Warren Ellis) 1-28-24

9. "A Song in the Night" (Daniel Mills) 1-31-24 

10. "The Princess of Darkness" (Rachilde) 2-13-24

11. "i'm still growing" (Josiah Morgan) 2-15-24

12. "Winona" (Robert Rich) 2-16-24

13. "Alexandria: The City That Changed The World" (Islam Issa) 2-21-24

14. "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)" (Mindy Kaling) 2-27-24

15. "Self-Portraits" (Osamu Dazai) 2-27-24

16. "The Siren's Lament: Essential Stories" (Jun'ichirō Tanizaki) 3-10-24

17. "The Secret History with Related Texts" (Prokopios) 3-13-24

18. "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" (Marie Kondo) 3-14-24

19. "Crampton" (Thomas Ligotti & Brandon Trenz) 3-16-24 +

20. "Stitches" (Hirokatsu Kihara + Junji Ito) 3-26-24

21. "Artists and Their Cats" (Alison Nastasi) 3-28-24

22. "Great Cities of the Ancient World" (L. Sprague de Camp) 4-3-24

23. "Terminal Boredom" (Izumi Suzuki) 4-12-24

24. "Dragon Palace" (Hiromi Kawakami) 4-16-24

25. "Alexander the Great: His Life and Mysterious Death" (Anthony Everitt) 4-21-24

26. "The Antichrist: A New Biography" (Philip C. Almond) 5-24-24

27. "The Old Capital" (Yasunari Kawabata) 5-16-24

28. "The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" (Bettany Hughes) 5-20-24

29. "The Cat Inside" (William S. Burroughs) 5-22-24 +

30. "A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes" (Anthony Bale) 5-29-24

31. "Diary of a Void" (Emi Yagi) 5-29-24

32. "The Book of Marvels and Travels" (Sir John Mandeville/Anthony Bale translation) 6-4-24

33. "The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are" (Michael Pye) 6-9-24

34. "The Three Cornered World" (Natsume Soseki) 6-15-24

35. "A Kingdom of Frozen Tears" (Tom Champagne) 6-21-24

36. "Michigan Basement" (Thomas Ligotti & Brandon Trenz) 6-22-24

37. "The Stronghold" (Dino Buzzati) 6-24-24 

38. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (Gawain-Poet/Keith Harrison translation) 7-1-24

39. "The Death of King Arthur" (Sir Thomas Malory/a retelling by Peter Ackroyd) 7-2-24

40. "Flunker" (Dennis Cooper) 7-4-24

41. "The Rule of St. Benedict" (St. Benedict of Nursia) 7-5-24

42. "Beowulf" (Unknown/John McNamara translation) 7-9-24

43. "Alley" (Junji Ito) 7-15-24

44. "Out of the Silent Planet" (C.S. Lewis) 

45. "Soviet Asia" (Roberto Conte + Stefano Perego) 7-17-24

46. "The Adventure Zone Vol. 6: The Suffering Game" (The McElroys + Carey Pietsch) 7-19-24

47. "The Tokyo Zodiac Murders" (Soji Shimada) 7-27-24

48. "The Singularity" (Dino Buzzati) 7-31-24

49. "Goodnight Tokyo" (Atsuhiro Yoshida) 8-3-24

50. "Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders" (Vincent Bugliosi + Curt Gentry) 8-5-24

51. "Spook" (Klabund) 8-7-24

52. "Dark Entries: Bauhaus and Beyond" (Ian Shirley) 8-9-24

53. "The Sun Also Rises" (Ernest Hemingway) 8-15-24

54. "Depeche Mode: A Biography" (Steve Malins) 8-20-24

55. "The Sirens of Titan" (Kurt Vonnegut) 8-25-24

56. "We" (Yevgeny Zamyatin) 8-26-24

*= book I have read at least once in the past
+= book I have read before, but not this reprint/edition/translation

Currently Reading: 

"Shakespeare and the Medieval World" (Helen Cooper) 
"Vita Nuova" (Dante Alighieri) 

Bathroom Reads #12: DEPECHE MODE: A BIOGRAPHY by Steve Malins

I can't remember exactly when it was that I began to get into Depeche Mode, but I want to say it was probably around 2001 or thereabouts . . . I know it was while I was still in college. At the time I had been listening to a lot of aggressive electronic music of the Industrial/Power Electronics variety (Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, Skinny Puppy, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Suicide and so on), along with bands that often fall into the Goth category (Bauhaus, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Switchblade Symphony, The Cure, and so on and so forth). But I was also starting to explore electronic music in general, in all its varieties, from experimental avant-garde stuff to synth-pop. Given my interest in electronic music and Gothic leanings, I suppose it was only natural that I would eventually investigate Depeche Mode. I do remember that the first album I ever got by them was BLACK CELEBRATION, which to this day still remains one of my all-time favorite albums. I also remain a big fan of the band, to the extent I place them right up there with my Top Ten Favorite Musical Groups/Acts. I think they just have that total package: a great sound, catchy songs, iconic visuals and striking album covers. Certainly they've been a big inspiration for me, both as a music fan and as a creator of electronic music myself. 

I think I got this book as a birthday gift from my parents in 2002. Unlike most of the other books I've covered in this series, this one I almost always take with me as a bathroom book to read when I'm on vacation. Why, I have no idea... maybe I see it as a good luck charm (incidentally, this year I also read it in an official context, from the first page to the last). Just glancing at the generic cover and the terse page count (under 250 pages) one might dismiss this book as just another cheap cash-in, but in fact Steve Malins interviewed quite a few people involved with DM, not only the essential trio of Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher themselves but also Mute Records founder Daniel Miller, ex-band members Vince Clarke and Alan Wilder, and other people associated with the band or the scene in general: Flood, Chris Carr, Anton Corbijn, Daryl Balmonte, John Foxx, Juan Atkins, Gareth Jones, Gary Numan, Andy McCluskey, Genesis P-Orridge, DJ Shadow, Stevo, and so on. And he does a pretty good job of covering the first 20 or so years of the band's existence: this book came out in 1998, and covers all of the albums from SPEAK & SPELL to the then-recently-released ULTRA. Through this book, I discovered other early Mute acts like Fad Gadget, DAF, The Normal, The Silicon Teens, and others, so it was an educational experience. A lot of attention is also paid to how Depeche Mode was received by the music press in their home country, be it via album/single reviews or live concert reviews. It would seem that, like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Bauhaus, and others, that Depeche Mode was another one of those British bands I liked that were pretty much mocked by the musical journalist establishment in their home country, which makes me think that in turn the music journalists of that era (1970s-1990s) were pretty clueless.  

In any event, I would recommend this book to fans of Depeche Mode and also lovers of electronic music in general. 
 

Bathroom Reads #11: HELTER SKELTER: THE TRUE STORY OF THE MANSON MURDERS by Vincent Bugliosi + Curt Gentry

In my first entry in this series I mentioned how, during my student days at Rhode Island College, I would often spend my breaks between classes at the campus library, browsing various books & subjects that caught my interest (such as Donald Spoto's Hitchcock study THE DARK SIDE OF GENIUS). Some subjects at that time interested me more than others, serial killers being a good example, and I liked to investigate various books related to the Manson Family and their crimes, such as Ed Sander's THE FAMILY and also HELTER SKELTER, by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry. I'm not sure where this particular interest in the Manson Family began, but it might have had something to do with the influence Manson had on the Industrial music subculture (and alternative music in general) in the 1970s and 80s. Throbbing Gristle often evoked his name (see in particular their song "After Cease to Exist"), Whitehouse and the Come Organisation made a few references to him, he was the subject of the Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel song "DI-19026," Nine Inch Nails famously recorded their THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL album in the living room where Sharon Tate and her friends were murdered, Sonic Youth had "Death Valley '69," and so on and so forth. I actually have two copies of HELTER SKELTER: a mass market paperback version from the 70s that used to belong to my mother (and which she gave to me many years ago), and this more modern updated one that I got at work awhile back: unlike many of the other books I've covered in this series, this one I actually read all the way through in linear order this year, over a month of bathroom visits (well, it IS almost 700 pages long). 

Although I was very interested in the subject back in my late teens and twenties, serial killers don't really interest me all that much anymore, save for a chosen few: Jack the Ripper (perhaps the GOAT of the group), Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Peter Sutcliffe, the Zodiac Killer (maybe), and Jeffrey Dahmer are still of interest (along with, of course, Manson and his Family), and certainly I can think of many great fictional books on the subject (Alan Moore's FROM HELL, Colin Wilson's THE GLASS CAGE, Thomas Harris' RED DRAGON, Robert Bloch's PSYCHO, Poppy Z. Brite's EXQUISITE CORPSE, David Peace's RED RIDING QUARTET, Bret Easton Ellis' AMERICAN PSYCHO, to cite a few) along with movies and TV shows (SE7EN, ZODIAC, TRUE DETECTIVE Season 1) that revolve around the subject of serial murder. Hell, I've even written a few novels on the subject myself (the most recent one being 2019's HARLEM SMOKE). Oddly enough, given my general interest in the macabre, I've actually owned/read very few True Crime books: the only ones that spring to mind are John Douglas' MINDHUNTER, Ian Brady's THE GATES OF JANUS, Dave Cullen's COLUMBINE, and, of course, the subject of today's post, HELTER SKELTER. 

If True Crime books had a Holy Bible, that book would probably be HELTER SKELTER, which is, after all, the #1 True Crime bestseller of all-time (as the cover not so humbly proclaims). The most compelling murder cases are the ones where almost everything involved, even the smallest details,  take on mythic dimensions, and certainly one could say that about the Tate-LaBianca murders: the American flag draped over the couch in Sharon Tate's living room (this was referenced in Bret Easton Ellis' first novel LESS THAN ZERO), the whole weird Helter Skelter race-war philosophy and the links to the "White Album" of The Beatles, the high profile nature of some of the murder victims, Spahn Ranch, and so on and so forth. Bugliosi was the prosecutor of the Tate-LaBianca trials, and thus was privy to a lot of the juicy behind-the-scenes details that must have been a subject of great fascination to the reading public of that era (the book was published in 1974, four years after the Manson trial). The book is well-structured, starting with the discovery of the bodies, the search for the killers and their eventual arrest (and if Bugliosi's book is anything to go by, the police work was often slipshod and at times reached Keystone Cops dimensions of ineptness), the investigation into the killers' motives, the trial, and the aftermath. It's also very well-written; certainly the opening sentence is iconic ("It was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon"). And the selection of photographs is very good as well. Reading this book has kind of got me interested in the whole subject again: perhaps I should give the Ed Sanders book another glance one day.