Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story – Bono
One of my sisters-in-law received this book from her employer awhile back and passed it along to me. I wasn’t super excited to read it, since I’m not much into U2 anymore. But when brother-in-music E$ told me he was reading and liking it, I pulled it from the shelf.
I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Bono is a very good writer. There are times when he gets a little over-ambitious with his words, something that has plagued his songwriting over the years, too. But in the end he tells a very compelling story about his life, the career of U2, and lots of stuff he has encountered along the way.
One weird thing about reading this book was that I had several uncanny coincidences while reading. For example, while reading the chapter where he writes about Band Aid, Live Aid, and Bob Geldof, I suddenly heard “I Don’t Like Mondays.” Not a song I hear very often. Same thing happened when he discussed his relationship with Michael Hutchence; I heard an INXS song. This one might be a stretch, but shortly after reading about his efforts to lobby politicians around the world, a friend stopped by and told us how she is now a registered lobbyist so she can promote the non-profit she runs at the state legislature.
Weird!
Too Bad to Die – Francine Mathews
This has been sitting in the spy section of my To Read list for awhile. It has a fascinating concept, but was met with very mixed reviews. I figured it was worth a shot.
Mathews mixes history with fiction here, following a youngish Ian Fleming during late 1943, as he serves in support for the meeting between Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin in Tehran. British intelligence has informed Fleming that there is a Nazi attack planned on the trio, and a member of their party is a double agent who will lead the attack. Fleming gets into some scrapes but eventually helps to save the day. Along the way he uses a pseudonym that to cover his tracks: James Bond. He also spends time jotting down ideas for a spy novel he has been thinking about. Foreshadowing!
Turns out the real Ian Fleming was actually part of that mission to Tehran. But he fell ill and was stranded in Cairo while the rest of the group traveled to the summit in Iran.
I think the general plot lines are fine, if a little overdone. We keep hearing about how the war will be lost if the assassin succeeds and some combination of the Big Three are killed. I doubt the allies would have stopped fighting the Nazis if their political leaders were all wiped out, although I get that all three were leaders of immense symbolic importance.
The big problem is that we know who the assassin is very early in the story, but it is still laid out like a mystery, as if we are discovering who it is at the same pace that Fleming is. I also felt like Mathews tried too hard to tie Fleming’s fictional actions to those of the Bond we know today.
In the end, it was a weird combination of styles. I like the idea of Fleming’s real life experiences serving as a base for his Bond novels. This failed to make all of Mathews’ ideas work.
The Lemon – S.E. Boyd
This was the book I read in one day, our snow day on January 25. Part of that was because it wasn’t super long, but also because it was extremely engaging.
It is build around the aftermath of the suicide of a famous TV chef. Yes, pretty much everything about this man, named John Doe in the story, is mirrored upon the life, career, and death of Anthony Bourdain. Which is a little weird, especially since the authors (more on that in a sec) casually mention that Doe and Bourdain were friends.
Anyway, Doe kills himself, perhaps accidentally, and several people’s lives are changed. His best friend, the world-famous chef who finds him (this character is pretty clearly based on Bourdain’s real-life friend Eric Ripert). A hotel employee who comes across Doe’s body just as his friend discovers it. Doe’s agent, who must manage the narrative of his death and figure out how to carry on his legacy. A down-on-her-luck blogger who fabricates a story of an encounter with Doe and suddenly becomes the hottest thing in media. A washed-up TV chef, who sees Doe’s passing as an opportunity to get his mojo back. And a few others.
The book is a delightful examination of modern celebrity. It is both deeply cynical and hilarious. And at times kind of gross. Much like fame itself.
I mentioned authors, plural, above. S.E. Boyd is a pen name for journalists Kevin Alexander and Joe Keohane and book editor Alessandra Lusardi. I’m not sure how they divided up the writing here, but you would never guess three different people were involved. It flows, it is well written, and it’s fun as hell.