Third Estate Sunday Review: KINDLE UNLIMITED (Kat, Ava and C.I.)

1summerread

In 2018, community sites took turns covering a book every week. You can see "In 2018, we read books" to review that coverage. We didn't want to repeat ourselves in 2019 or 2020. So when Marcia came up with a way to cover books but with a twist, we were all for it. Marcia's idea was for us to digital books -- we're largely a printed text crowd -- and to use AMAZON's KINDLE UNLIMITED. So for 2021, we'll be trying to do a book a week and trying to just use KINDLE UNLIMITED. This week, after many weeks with nothing, we're returning to the feature to speak with Kat about her "I'm With The Bland."

Kat, you're covering John Simon's TRUTH, LIES & HEARSAY: A MEMOIR OF A MUSICAL LIFE IN AND OUT OF ROCK AND ROLL, a book you did not enjoy.

Kat: Not all. It's dull and his scope is dull. If you've been around Joni Mitchell, you don't devote a paragraph to her. Cass Elliot is worth more than two to three pages. Janis Joplin deserves better than you calling her ugly looking and providing two cruel drawings suggesting she's ugly and that she smells. There are over five chapters on The Band -- an uninteresting group that, all this time later, has only one album that sold over a million copies. The Band is not pivotal, it is not groundbreaking. Joni, Cass, Janis, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon are pivotal but they get a brief, in passing nod and that's it. It's as though it's 1990 and he can cast a film with Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft, Denzel Washington, Jessica Lange, Cher and Richard Pryor and he says no to all of them but casts Jerry Van Dyke. And I don't blame or fault him for the fact that all his stories about The Band are dull and boring -- that's The Band. I do blame him for choosing to write about them over and over and over when they are of no interest at all.

Along with who he chooses to emphasize, you also question his other judgments including his declaration that Robbie Robertson is a better songwriter than Bob Dylan.

Kat: I am not a Dylan groupie but I am always willing to give him his due. The notion that Robbie Roberston is a better songwriter than Bob Dylan? That's laughable. Robbie didn't write "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," "Like A Rolling Stone," "Blowing In The Wind," "Masters of War," "Don't Think Twice It's Alright," "It Ain't Me Babe," "I Shall Be Released," "All I Really Want To Do," "Maggie's Farm," "A Hard Rain's A Gonna' Fall," "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Shelter From The Storm," etc. That's Dylan. Robbie Robertson has nothing. Zilch. He's written some workman like ditties. Nothing of lasting value.

You really disliked the book.

Kat: I loathed it on every level. It was poorly written. It was poorly thought out. And it was boring as hell.

What are you thinking about KINDLE UNLIMITED?

Kat: Probably done with it at the end of the year. Not impressed.

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