Breakfast Of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1973) - Well, sure, I pulled this off the shelf because he died. And I already re-read Cat’s Cradle a couple of years ago. This is a very strange book, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I like Cat’s Cradle better, really — it supplies more inventive ways to think about the world, more hope, somehow, though in a very bleak way. Breakfast is unrelentingly bleak and hopeless (with the exception of one or two small points), and delivered in simple, children’s book-like prose. And then there are his own childish illustrations. A very strange package indeed. Essential for a look back at that era, though.

This month marks the ten year anniversary of the OOK website, beginning as an ISP customer ‘homepage,’ then graduating to its own domain. That’s a whole lot of wasted time and webspace. Thanks for reading along and wasting your time too.

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of by various artists (Yazoo/2006) - Two more discs of blues, hillbilly and folk music from the 1920s and 30s. The theme for this one is rarity, with several songs just recently discovered. The booklet waxes poetic on the collector mentality, but lacks a bit in detailed information on the specific tracks. Still, the tunes are great — my favorites would include the newly unearthed Son House sides and Dock Boggs’ Old Rub Alcohol Blues. Cover art and confessional comic strip by noted shellac enthusiast, R.Crumb.

Which Side Are You On? An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America by Dick Weissman (2006) - An expansive (yet inevitably incomplete) survey of the 20th century commodification of US folk music, from the early ’song collectors’ to present-day blog-folkies, with an emphasis on the emergent 1940s to 1960s. Weissman was a participant in the 60s wave with The Journeymen, and fills in with many personal observations — he’s not afraid to throw in his own opinions, even when contrary. Yeah, there’s some dirty laundry here. It’s a very outlined book, and moves along smoothly, but really needed better proofreading. There are a lot of miswordings, flubbed numbers and minor errors. This seems to be a problem with more and more books, these days. Run it through a spellchecker and throw it out the door…