Friday Finds

 Friday Finds is hosted by MizB at You Should Be Reading.

More non-fiction from me this week.

First up is a book I have picked up twice at the library and have almost checked out, but then put down.  The first time because I had the Lewis Carroll biography (that I hated) and this latest time because I have the Thelonious Monk biography along with the Hilary Mantel novel on the French Revolution and I think that's plenty of tomes for one library trip.  I'm getting it next time, though, because from what I can see of the reviews it looks fabulous.  I'm also familiar with this author's 2-volume biography of Lytton Strachey that I remember my mother loving during her reading-everything-to-do-with-Bloomsbury phase.  Also, I have a background in theatre, love theatre history, and was once told by a director that I looked like Ellen Terry (he was probably hitting on me, but hey, it was a great line).

A Strange Eventful History by Michael Holroyd.  An epic yet intimate portrait of two theatrical dynasties, which takes us from the Victorian stage to the modern age.

Ellen Terry was a natural actress who filled the theatre with a magical radiance. The Times called her the “uncrowned queen of England,” but behind her public success lay a darker story. The child bride of G.F. Watts, she eloped with a friend of Oscar Wilde’s at the age of twenty-one and gave birth to two illegitimate children.

But her greatest partnership was on stage with Henry Irving. At the Lyceum Theatre in London, the two of them created a grand Cathedral of the Arts. Their intimately involved lives exceeded in plot the Shakespearean dramas they performed on stage — and indeed were curiously affected by them. They also influenced the life and work of their remarkable children, Ellen’s children in particular. Edy Craig founded a feminist theatre group, The Pioneer Players. Her brother, Edward Gordon Craig, the revolutionary stage designer who collaborated with Stanislavski is revealed by this book to be the forgotten man of modernism. He had thirteen children by eight women. He is, perhaps, the most extraordinary man Michael Holroyd has ever written about.

Next is a social history of disco by Alice Echols whose Janis Joplin biography I really liked.  Saw this one at the New York Times.  I just finished a social history of Studio 54 so this would be a good follow-up.  This just came out and my library doesn't have it yet, but I'm hoping it'll turn up there.

Hot Stuff:  Disco and the Remaking of American Culture by Alice Echols.  As American studies professor and Janis Joplin biographer (Scars of Sweet Paradise) Echols succinctly states, Nothing seems to conjure up the seventies quite so effectively as disco. But while the decade's weltanschauung is often dismissed as merely polyester and platform heels, Echols aims for—and thoroughly achieves—a range of higher cultural insights. Using an encyclopedic knowledge of the eras' biggest stars, she shows how all sorts of musical disco styles played a central role in broadening the contours of blackness, femininity, and male homosexuality in America. She brilliantly explores the many ways that early disco clubs created new spaces where gay men could safely come together in a large crowd, at the same time often masking an early strain of the racial and class exclusion that dominated disco's later years. She brings to light the influence of underground legends such as club deejay Tom Moulton, who first remixed popular records to make them longer for dancing and created the model for the 12-inch, extended play disco single. Best of all is Echols's revelatory look at how the critique of racism and sexism in the film Saturday Night Fever offers a richer portrait of the disco seventies than its critics have granted.

Got another one.  I heard the author interviewed on NPR and with all the violence happening in the country lately I wanted to know more so the book is well timed.

Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead by Frank Meeink.  Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead is Frank Meeink’s raw telling of his descent into America’s Nazi underground and his ultimate triumph over drugs and hatred. Frank’s violent childhood in South Philadelphia primed him to hate, while addiction made him easy prey for a small group of skinhead gang recruiters. By 16 he had become one of the most notorious skinhead gang leaders on the East Coast and by 18 he was doing hard time. Teamed up with African-American players in a prison football league, Frank learned to question his hatred, and after being paroled he defected from the white supremacy movement and began speaking on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League. A story of fighting the demons of hatred and addiction, Frank's downfall and ultimate redemption has the power to open hearts and change lives.


I seem to fall for the non-fiction, but I think that's because those are the reviews I'm drawn to read for some reason.  Maybe because I have all of you to tell me about all the fabulous fiction out there ...

What'd you find?