Book roundup

Here's what's on my night-table now, in case you care:




Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History, by Devin McKinney

This book is very hard to describe; it's one part Beatle history, one part psychological appraisal of the group and its fandom, with plenty of song-by-song appreciation and Sixties history in there, too. The prose can be thick and dark, but if you've already read Philip Norman's Shout!, Hunter Davies, and absorbed the whole Anthology project, it's worth a look. I must admit to a pro-McKinney bias, as it appears that he and I came to The Beatles in the same way, as second-generation fans (I'm 35 tomorrow; I think McKinney's about the same age) nurtured by the dim, caterwauling vinyl bootlegs of the 80s and CD-perfect explosion of outtakes of the 90s. (Which, by the way, had the effect of forcing the Anthology project into being. Too much stuff was finding its way to the public; things like The John Barrett Tapes and Acetates were too authoritative, and too popular, for Apple to ignore.)



Here's McKinney's illuminating take on the dreadful "Let It Be...Naked" from The American Prospect. Those sessions--from January '69--were the source for most of the 1990 bootlegs. They tested one's fandom, let me tell you, all those beeps and bickering on a $35 piece of vinyl. ($35 was a lot, when you were making $6.00/hour at a drug store!) I have a boot, Vigotone's As Nature Intended, which I enjoy much more than either the original Let It Be, or "...Naked." Getting back to McKinney, I particularly liked this line: "The Beatles are simple enough for children, but as those children grow, the band becomes less and less simple." That's really true--for over twenty years, I've never found a more reliable source of pleasure than The Beatles.





Eccentrics, A Study of Sanity and Strangeness, by Dr. David Weeks and Jamie James.

Dr. Weeks undertook a psychological study of eccentrics, and came to some really interesting (and really encouraging, to eccentrics like me) conclusions. Here's what he says are the characteristics of eccentrics, in descending order of commonality:

1) noncomforming;

2) creative;

3) strongly motivated by curiosity;

4) idealistic: he wants to make the world a better place and the people in it happier;

5) happily obsessed with one or more hobbyhorses (usually five or six);

6) aware from early childhood that he is different;

7) intelligent;

8) opinionated and outspoken, convinced that he is right and that the rest of the world is out of step;

9) noncompetitive, not in need of reassurance or reinforcement from society;

10) unusual in his eating habits and living arrangements;

11) not particularly interested in the opinions or company of other people, except in order to persuade them to his—the correct—point of view;

12) possessed of a mischievous sense of humor;

13) single;

14) usually the eldest or an only child; and

15) a bad speller.



Just fascinating, don't you think? Other books I'm reading (mostly as research for this college novel I'm working on) are Stephen Fry's autobiography, "Moab Is My Washpot": David Skal's "Hollywood Gothic"; and "Secret Societies," by Anton Daraul. I'll spare you the Amazon links, but check 'em out. Skal's book The Monster Show is fantastic.