Nate Chinen’s 14 Best Music Books of the 21st Century

[ghost of miles]

Not all of them jazz, but this still felt like the right sub-forum for a thread. Intended as a sort of sidebar to the NY Times’ larger and more general list:

14 best music books of the 21st century

[HutchFan]

Interesting.  Thanks for sharing, @ghost of miles.   

 

[felser]

Thanks.  I own the Monk, Rollins, and Baez/Dylan books, but have not read any of them yet, as  my retirement years are not proving to yield nearly as much discretionary time as I had anticipated (but life is good, filled with meaningful endeavors including raising our grandson, helping my 90 year old mother, working in domestic violence ministry, and more).  The Berry and Mitchell are certainly of interest to me, but so many books, so little time...

[jlhoots]

A Visit From The Goon Squad & Just Kids are excellent books.

[Big Beat Steve]

Yes, interesting as a list of fairly recent music books. The Berry book might be interesting. Will keep it in mind.
I was puzzled a bit about that "In Search of Billie Hioliday" title. How many "In search of" approaches are there (and are there needed) to write a biographies? 😁 (Cf. "In Search of Robert Johnson", and it seems there are many other cases like this). Is the life of Billie Holiday as elusive to subsequent generations as that of Robert Johnson, for example, I wonder?

Excepting "Saxophone Colossus" which by all accounts is a monumental opus (in the truest sense of the word ) but at the contents of which I've only glimpsed so far (but its time will come ), I hope none of the other books "suffer" from a tendency I've noticed in other relatively recent music books (as if this was a trend that has become more frequent in the most recent decades), i.e. the contents reading as much about the actual subject as about the self-perceived greatness of the author (i.e. "see how great I am at writing about my subject"). Which can get tiring ...

 

 

[AllenLowe]

I like Nate but he has ignored my work for years; Turn Me Loose White Man should have been on that list.

[Big Beat Steve]

On 7/22/2024 at 3:41 PM, AllenLowe said:

I like Nate but he has ignored my work for years; Turn Me Loose White Man should have been on that list.

Seconded. Honestly.