My indie-rock book title: "All Downhill from Here"

Problem: I am not reading many books lately.
Cause: Recent magazine obsession (Real Simple! Interweave! Rowan! Vogue Knitting! Back issues of the Believer! Gourmet! Good Mag!); incessant, crazed knitting; loss of book weight that allowed me to read while knitting; desire to walk around while weather is nice.
Solution: Read more books, I suppose.

Problem: Those books that I am reading are all about rock music.
Cause: Rock is awesome. Books about rock music are quite frequently also awesome.
Solution: Back to reading C.V. Wedgewood’s The Thirty Years War, which is awesome in its own way.

Problem: C. V. Wedgewood’s The Thirty Years War is wonderful, well-researched, well-written, and interesting, but is not optimal travel reading. I was on an airplane or in an airport for massive amounts of time this weekend.
Cause: It’s dense! It’s heavy! I doesn’t stay open on my lap! Half the people are named the same thing, and there are a bazillion people in the book!
Solution: Back to reading about rock music.

I saw John Sellers’ Perfect From Now On (woo, Built to Spill reference!) in the window of a bookstore in Harvard Square early Saturday afternoon, and I finished it as our plane landed in Chicago on Sunday. It is quite entertaining if you’re the sort that listened to crappy music in early adolescence and eventually moved up to indie. It is also especially entertaining if you like GBV, as it covers the last few months of that band’s existence. Summary review: think Chuck Klosterman, only with even better taste in music (these days, at least) and less bitterness about past girlfriends.