Dave's Book List for 2021

1.  A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

2. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes To a Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib

3. Mooncop by Tom Gaul

4. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

5. Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker

6. Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

7. Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park by Andy Mulvihill (with Jake Rosen)

8. Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

9. Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

10. A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet

11) Who Gets in and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions by Jeffrey Selingo

12) Dead Land by Sara Paretsky

13) Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America by Kurt Andersen

14) Coyote America by Dan Flores

15) Waste Tide by Qiufan Chen

16) One by One by Ruth Ware

17) The Searcher by Tana French

18) No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

19) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

20) In the Woods by Tana French

21) Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, A 500 Year History by Kurt Andersen

22) We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker

23) Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

24) We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix

25) My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

26) The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

27) The Guest List by Lucy Foley

28) The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova

29) The Auctioneer

30) Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix

31) Phil Gordon's Little Gold Book by Phil Gordon

32) Maynard's House by Herman Raucher

33) When Darkness Loves Us by Elizabeth Engstrom

34) CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill

35) The Humans by Matt Haig

36) Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

37) Susan Wise Bauer's The History of the Medieval World 

38) The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

39) Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About His Past and Future by James Shapiro

40)  Killing Floor by Lee Child

41) Mallory's Oracle by Carol O'Connell

42) Soccer IQ vol 1 and 2 by Dan Blank

43) The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais

44) The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell

45) The Man Who Cast Two Shadows by Carol O'Connor

46) The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

47) The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

48) Countdown City by Ben H. Winters

49) World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters

50) The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-centered Planet by John Green

51) The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

52) The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michale Lewis

53) Fall or Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson

54) Lazarus vol 1 by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark

Almost (but not quite)  . . . War and Peace and War by Peter Turchin and The Crusades by Thomas Asbridge

Go Ahead, Listen to Some Old School Hippie Hip Hop (in the rain?)

Hanif Abdurraqib's rambling and perceptive "love letter to a group, a sound, and an era" inspired me to listen to a number of old school hip-hop albums-- most of which I am familiar-- but a few of which I never heard; his book, which Zman recommended to me and I recommend to you, is called Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest and it astutely points out the difference between the gangsta rap of NWA and the mellower musings of A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and the other Native Tongues rappers is that the members of NWA were “absolutely rooted in some idea of what would make young white people most excited and old white people most afraid”, while the Native Tongues rappers were “absolutely rooted in some idea of what would make young black people most curious and old black people most welcoming”;

Abdurraqib explains that the jazz samples of The Low End Theory was the first hip-hop that he could really play around his parents without fear of criticism; I also learned that the hip hop magazine The Source only gave their coveted five mic rating to a select group of albums:

• People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm – A Tribe Called Quest
• Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em – Eric B. & Rakim
• AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted – Ice Cube
• One for All – Brand Nubian
• De La Soul Is Dead – De La Soul
• The Low End Theory – A Tribe Called Quest
• Illmatic – Nas
• Life After Death – The Notorious B.I.G.
• Aquemini – Outkast
• The Blueprint – Jay-Z
• Stillmatic – Nas
• The Fix – Scarface
• The Naked Truth – Lil' Kim
• Trill OG – Bun B
• My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – Kanye West

and while I've listened to most of these, I missed "One for All" from The Brand Nubians-- it's a clever, allusion laden rhymefest-- and I never listened to "De La Soul is Dead" much either because it's not on any streaming service-- but my son pirated that album and 3 Feet High and Rising and he somehow got them both onto my Spotify as local files, so now I can stream them . . . I also noticed that The Chronic is also available now on Spotify, so they must have cleared the samples for that one.

Excursions of Dave

I'm reading Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib so today I'll let Q-tip do the talking:

Beats that are hard, beats that are funky
It could get you hooked like a crackhead junkie.