Over on my Off The Tracks site I’m always trying to think up a new recurring blog topic; a series. The latest one I’ve recently started is called Books That Blew My Mind. I’ve got another ongoing one for book-lovers called Authors I Admire – but this one is about individual books.
I’m trying to think back to books that had a massive impact – but across the spectrum too. Fiction and non-fiction and in some cases it’s not just about the words on those pages but about how that was the book to introduce me to a format (for instance graphic novels) or an author or style.
I’ve only written about seven so far – so thought I’d share them here to see what you think. And maybe you can tell me about a book or two that totally blew your mind. A book or two that you’d recommend to me and to anyone else reading. That way we all get to share in the knowledge. A bunch of new recommendations – books old and new.
Okay, so here’s the seven I’ve written about so far:
Is That It by Bob Geldof
Like any good music bio it did make me check out more of his music. I loved that Loudmouth compilation that covers essential Boomtown moments and key solo tracks. And I’ve tuned in for albums since, even if I don’t really care about them. The book did that for me I guess. But the best thing it did for me was open my mind to a person owning their terrible traits, neither being proud nor embarrassed of their faults, simply aware of them. The documentation in this book is like a pure form of journalism at times. It’s his record, skewed to his bias, naturally. That’s unavoidable. But there’s no real finessing of the story. It’s raw. Presumably real. And it reads so well – just pulls you along.
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Run With The Hunted by Charles Bukowski
It is close to 500 pages and I took it home to my tiny flat and sat on my bed listening to Neil Young and Tom Waits and whatever else and turning page after page. I read it cover to cover as if a novel or autobiography (it was both or offered glimpses of both anyway). And then I started reading it again straight away the next day, this time picking out favourite bits, returning to poems that made me laugh and some that made me cry. Bukowski was so often so cruel but he could make you crumble too. There’s huge heart in his best work and though you have to squint to see it sometimes that’s what kept me there for the longest haul.
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Can’t and Won’t by Lydia Davis
She really plays with the form – to the point that there are translations, dreams, shopping lists, poems, prose poems, flash fiction and what might even just be brain dumps – but never does it feel like this was just dropped down quickly because: that’ll do. Quite the opposite. You get the impression that days, weeks, months are spent on nearly every piece – the hours between full stops, the decision-time around placing punctuation. You can just imagine it. Davis has been a huge influence on me. On both my reading and my writing. And I say that with the full knowledge that I could never hold a candle.
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Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull
Faithfull’s at-first charmed life sees her born into royalty and a life of literature, she ditches her first husband to hook up with Jagger and to play her role in the debauchery of the Stones at their worst (1966-1970). The Brian Jones years. The drugs in overflow. The mars bar story. The arrests. And the voodoo magic of music like We Love You, Midnight Rambler, Gimme Shelter, Sister Morphine… The cute “Angel Doll” persona crafted for her – arriving on the back of a Jagger/Richards song they were ordered to write and give to Marianne (As Tears Go By) was something she shrugged off by plunging into drugs and booze. She never shook the sixties off – instead losing time and cells in Berlin, befriending heroin and giving up on nearly everything. But then Broken English. The comeback. A bizarre and beguiling record, still. With one of the world’s greatest revenge songs.
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The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock by Nick Kent
The first collection of rock writing to really blow my mind was Nick Kent’s classic – The Dark Stuff. What a cast. Brian Wilson and Iggy Pop and Lou Reed and Miles Davis and Roy Orbison, Neil Young, Jerry Lee Lewis, Syd Barrett, The Stones, The New York Dolls, Guns ‘n’ Roses… These are the greats. These are tricky customers. Fragile and maniacal, ego-driven and eccentric, angry and mythical. And maybe the weirdest, most out there cast member of all is Kent himself. A junkie through many of these pages. An amazing writer but one that so readily embodies the cliché of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll without actually being the performer. His accounts had him sparring with the greats, had him jealous of them, but also he was a shred documentarian.
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Wilson by Daniel Clowes
I loved the brutal misanthropy – this is no lovable grump. This is a guy that lives deep inside his own resentments and he’s annoying to spend time around, comically so. Flawed characters are the best. Unlikeable characters are often wonderful. Wilson is hilarious. He’s awful, insensitive, a jerk – but he can be funny. And finding the funny in this is a dark, beautiful joy. Also as you turn the pages the narrative starts to form, a momentum builds – suddenly those standalone frames don’t seem so standalone after all. Making the curation of this, the planning, the detailing, utterly meticulous. I read this book through twice, cover to cover without swapping in any other books in between. Turned to the end page and then just re-opened the front cover and started again. That’s never happened before. Or since.
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You’re A Good Sport, Charlie Brown by Charles M. Schulz
An incredible thing to read at 8 or 9 and an even more incredible thing to read in my mid-40s. I have taken this book out several times in the last few months, the timing of it, the pacing the placement of very few words. The reminder of the existential grind of being human. It’s a heartbreaker. And beautifully so. It’s also the book – and later the TV movie (since I saw that down the track) – that got me hooked on the Peanuts gang. I’m hooked again all over. Masterful storytelling, subtle humour, bleak and grim and crushing. Schulz understood the human condition, the grind and the frustration and the meandering greyness of the world. But he packed it with just enough jokes and such beautiful characters that even when that wasn’t the obvious lesson there was something else to learn as well.
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So, there you go. That’s seven books that blew my mind. There are many more of course. And I’ll write about them as I remember them and when the time seems right. I catalogue everything I read at Goodreads so you can check in there too for mini-reviews and lists.
But right now I’m keen to know about a book – or a few books – that blew your mind. Leave your example/s below and we can all share in a growing list of recommendations for revisitations.
Great Apes by Will Self