Norwegian Wood is really good just takes a while to get going. Commendatore earned the rare distinction of being something I stopped reading in the middle, really did not hold my attention.
I’m currently reading
And re-reading this-
Something ultra melancholy and poignant in reading a book about the place in which you currently reside but can only experience in a very curtailed way 
Before We Was We (Madness memoir)
Metropolis - Ben Wilson (history of cities)
Why We Get Sick - Benjamin Bikmen (self explanatory)
What Fresh Lunacy Is This (Oliver Reed bio)
The Perfectionists - Simon Winchester (science/engineering/history)
Never Eat Alone - Keith Ferrazzi (not too cheesy self-help)
Highly recommend Bad Wisdom by Bill Drummond and Mark Manning (AKA Zodiac Mindwarp)
Also Head On/Re-posessed by Julian Cope. I almost see that as a companion piece to Bill Drummonds work
I’m reading the Jockey Slut tribute to AW currently
ha! that’s great, i was going to recommend Bad Wisdom. bit of a story, it was october 1996, my 27th birthday and Bill and Zed were doing the book launch at the Lift in Brighton, a gang of us all went along, sat around on the floor and listened to them read bits of the book and chat. i came away with a signed copy of Bad Wisdom but i’d also taken my copy of KLF ‘What the fuck is going on’ LP. i asked Bill to sign it for me, he seemed a bit annoyed and scribbled all over one side of the white cover, just about legible, lots of words except for his signature!
anyway heady days and that was the start of a very twisted evening. Not nearly as twisted as the book itself though. 
Ha! Amazing. I met him in Bedford probably twenty odd years ago when he was was selling off the Smell of Sulphur in the Wind squares for a dollar. He was with Gimpo. I asked him if he’d been around WH Smiths surreptitiously signing copies of 45 (mine was). He replied matter of factly that he hadn’t, they were probably left over signed copies that had been sent out randomly by the publishers…
I preferred my idea that he was going around just signing his own books… 
Bad Wisdom contains the single most offensive paragraph of literature I’ve ever read!
haha! brilliant! you’d have to remind me, though i did re-read it maybe a year or more ago, something about the SS secretary at the record label by any chance??!
I’ll have to try and find it again, I’ve blocked out!
to be fair half the book is bloody offensive!
It is indeed, I could never tell if it was too clever for me, or I was too clever for it!
i think ‘unsettling and perplexing’ fit the bill. certainly not an easy read…hang on…weren’t we supposed to be recommending this book!
I was with you that gig JC. Made me laugh how he wrote in ‘How to be an Artist’ and other books about ‘a bunch of KLF fans…’ reckon the royalties from reissuing the Originals are helping now though Bill eh.
Sorry digression. Got through People Funny Boy by David Katz, Scratch Perry Biog. It’s like a biography that never ends with Names right the way through, worth it though. He won’t be with us for ever!
If you liked Narcos on Netflix you’ve got to read the Don Winslow trilogy:
The Power of the Dog
The Cartel
The Border
Amazing story encompassing US war on drugs 1960s onwards. Absolutely brilliant, an author on top, top form.
This is very record dork of me, but a while back I bought a Japanese book called ‘Walearic Disc Guide’ and I’m slowly working through that with the help of some wacky translation app that seems to give a completely different answer each time I use it. It’s a record guide for “Japanese Balearic / Left-field Music” - goes right across the spectrum from new age to city pop to soundtracks, lots of YMO related things naturally, probably about 700 records listed and I’d heard of about 5% of them at best. Discovered some amazing things though and i swear if i had any money in the first place, I’d be skint all over again in no time flat
Great book. And a bit of shameless-plug, you will see my selection on Page 168.
Just re-read Colin Macinnes’s “Absolute Beginners” for a blast of teenage energy to start the year - and now draining that energy by starting “Dissipatio H.G.” by Guido Morselli (1977) Not a laugh-a-minute story, as it’s a book about a man who’s the only human survivor from an unknown global termination event. The book explores the knowing of the self in relation to nothingness, humanity’s relationship to Nature and the ceaseless drive of consumerism. Fascinating and all seems weirdly prescient at the moment.
Yeah I’ve got this too. ordered not sure whether there would be any English translations as the cover was a bit misleading. But had lots of fun going through a few pages here and there and searching everything on discogs and listening to what I could find. Want list is now a lot bigger and pricier haha. Still got loads to go through.
Yeah my wantlist is ridiculous! I also got ‘obscure sound’ by chee shimizu at the same time, similar deal but music selection leans a bit more towards the leftfield / avant garde end
