It has become a year-end tradition of mine to post about books I read over the previous year. And as any reader of my blogsite this past year knows, 2022 has been a challenging year for me and for all of us (all 1.4 billion of us) living in China. The “Zero Covid” policy of the government has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it kept most of us Covid-free for the past three years. On the other hand, it meant dealing with a load of nuisances (such as daily testing), disruptions, restrictions, isolation, and lockdowns, as well as the possibility of being sent to a quarantine camp.
So, on to the point of this post: Which books kept me company during all those months of solitude on the lakeside? Not academic reading mind you, but reading for pure pleasure, as well as for personal enlightenment? Then again, as a humanist with a broad spectrum of academic interests, most of my reading relates to my work. This year, my favorite reads fell into three basic categories. First, there were books about music. Second, art. Third, epic fantasy/sci-fi novels. In other words, typical fare. Here are some of my top reads in 2022.
I started the year with a spate of books on music scenes and rock bands. This might have had something to do with my own rock band forming and starting to perform in clubs in Shanghai. I shouldn’t say “my own band”, since a band is a collaboration that doesn’t belong to any one person, unless you happen to David Bowie or Prince or somebody special like that. Our band didn’t last long—it fell apart during the spring lockdown when most of the band members left China (and still haven’t returned). Anyhow, I was inspired by this experience to read about some of the bands and scenes that left the deepest impression on me since I was a child.
I began the year with a deep dive into the So-Cal Canyon scene of the late 1960s and early ‘70s. I’ve been fascinated with that scene for many years now and have seen several documentaries about it. Reading Hotel California by Barney Hoskyns brought me deeper into that world. While the book recounts the rise of America’s greatest country rock band, the Eagles, it puts their story into the context of the scene that developed around the Troubador and the folks who inspired a whole generation of musicians to pick up their guitars and write their own songs. Those musicians and bands who flocked to the Canyon scene included Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, the Byrds, the Beach Boys, and many more. Even bands across the pond like Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and Eric Clapton and Cream were influenced by that scene.
Speaking of Led Zeppelin, early in the year I chose the massive biography of the band by Bob Spitz as my boon winter companion. I’d enjoyed his book on the Beatles, and next to them, Zep was probably the most influential band of my childhood (ok, maybe the Who, but close). I relished the opportunity to delve into this band’s history and learn more about their magical recipe for making epic rock music. I wasn’t disappointed, though I must say you need to be a hardcore fan of the band to slog through this humongous tome. As is typical with band stories, the early years are the most interesting, when the band is forming and going through the experimental stage of figuring out what it is about. Then you follow the band through the cycles of concert tours and record albums. Things get repetitive after a while, but you learn how each album was crafted and what the inspirations were and how the band worked together to make their magic. You also learn what it took to take this band on the road, and the special role played by their manager in the process. I’d say the highlight for me was reading about how their fourth album, the one with “Stairway to Heaven”, came together.
After I polished off that epic band biography, I moved on to the R.E.M. bio by Tony Fletcher, The Perfect Circle. It felt similar in some ways to the Zep bio, yet without the over-the-top antics of the band members, who are low key in comparison to the Zep lads. There’s the origin story, which takes place in Athens Georgia, followed by the crafting of a particular sound and style, the years of slogging away in small scenes, the rise to the top of the music scene, and then the efforts of an aging band to stay relevant in a music industry that favors the young. I came out of this read with a much greater appreciation for the rich and long-lasting musical legacy left by R.E.M. which was one of the more inspiring bands for me as a teenager in the 1980s.
Later in the summer, after participating in a mini-concert of Grateful Dead tunes for Jerry Garcia’s 80th birthday in Shanghai, I picked up the Dead bio So Many Roads by David Browne. This book takes an alternative approach, focusing on several key years in the history of the band. While it was an enlightening read, I confess that I didn’t get more than halfway through the book, mainly because I was interested more in the early years of the Dead and the crafting of their distinctive musical sound and style. As with many musician bio pics, the story of the rise of a band is more interesting than its slog through the middle years or the end of the band, though some endings are more spectacular than others (e.g. the Eagles).
Last spring, for the first time in my career, I taught a “mini-course” on songwriting to a group of talented students at DKU. In the process, I absorbed several books on songwriting. These included Jeff Tweedy’s How to Write One Song, which combines some humorous observations and anecdotes with some practical advice on crafting song lyrics. Then there was Mary Gauthier’s Saved by a Song, a more serious and semi-autobiographical book about songwriting that encourages us to dig deep into the traumas that make us want to write songs. While teaching the course on songwriting, I focused on some Burt Bacharach songs, and I ended up reading his autobiography, Anyone Who Had a Heart. I was surprised at how enjoyable this was and came out with a greater appreciation for the craft of the professional songwriter, who writes songs that others will perform. I also read Beeswing by the folk-rock artist Richard Thompson, more of an autobiography than a how-to book on songwriting, though the author provides many insights into his own creative process as well as the folk scene in which he was a part during and after his stint with Fairport Convention.
In addition to forming a rock band, this past year I rediscovered my childhood love for making art. While spending my “hundred days of solitude” in the lake house during the spring lockdown event, I got into watercolor painting and drawing. I found myself diving into countless youtube how-to videos and reading books about painting and drawing techniques. Most of these books I was able to download and read for free through Kindle Unlimited. In addition, I rekindled my love for art through reading books about great artists. One was Matisse & The Joy of Drawing by Christopher Lloyd. I found this book in the Foreign Languages Bookstore in Shanghai. It’s partly a biography of the artist, but also a tribute to his skills as a draftsman, not just a painter. And it shows how drawing was so essential to his art throughout his career, even though he was largely self-trained. I found this inspiring as I threw myself into painting and drawing for the first time in decades.
Another art-related book that proved inspiring was Tom and Jack by Henry Adams. This is the story of the complex relationship that unfolded between two great artists of the twentieth century, Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock. The author argues that Benton was critical to the development of Pollock’s art, even though he forsook his mentor in later years. I’d taken an interest in Benton’s mural work while teaching a Media Arts course last spring on depictions of urban life. My dad recommended the book, which indeed turned out to be a great read on how visual artists draw from great traditions and add their own experiences and creative powers to push the boundaries of modern art, much as musicians do in the world of modern music. It gave me a much deeper appreciation of Pollock’s work as well.
While much of my fall reading was taken up preparing to teach a course I hadn’t taught before on Medieval China, I continued to indulge in reading pleasures with novels consumed late at night (I often wake up in the middle of the night and read for an hour or two before falling asleep again). One book on my reading list was Neal Stephenson’s latest novel Terminal Shock. I’ve read most of Stephenson’s novels and this one promised to face the future and current problem of global warming/climate change and propose a possible solution. As usual it was filled with technical details and very minute blow-by-blow action scenes, and the characters were compelling and wide-ranging. As for the proposed solution and whether it succeeds, I’ll leave it to the reader to learn about it on their own, but Stephenson regards it from every possible angle from the perspective of global politics as the world confronts rising ocean levels. Let’s just say that the Dutch figure into the story in a big way, as does a Texan billionaire, and a Canadian Indian martial artist.
In preparation for my course on Medieval China, I attempted to read China’s greatest novel, The Romance of Three Kingdoms, in a relatively unabridged version in English. The story takes place after the fall of the mighty Han Dynasty circa 200 AD, when my course begins. It is an epic novel about wars and battles fought among the rivals as they play a Chinese version of “game of thrones”. Speaking of which, reading that novel inspired me to pick up the Game of Thrones series by George R. R. Martin, whose actual title is A Song of Fire and Ice. I finished the first book A Game of Thrones during the spring of 2020 when we first started sheltering from Covid. I’d started the second novel A Clash of Kings but got distracted by other things, and so this past November I decided to dive back into it. Not only did I rush through that novel, I went onto book 3, A Storm of Swords, and read it as if possessed.
Those of us who have watched the GoT series before reading the books probably can’t help but see the faces of the actors and recall the visual scenes of the series as we read about them. Yet after reading the books a while, I find that the characters achieve a richness, nuance, and complexity far beyond the TV series and that they take up their own life in my mind. As any fan can tell you, the books are so much richer and deeper than the TV show, especially when you consider all the historical tales that the characters tell each other. I also appreciate the important role that music and songs play in the books, as they did in the medieval era and in our modern age as well.
As for how the Game of Thrones series compares to the Chinese story of the Three Kingdoms, I’d say that there are enormous parallels yet also some key differences of course. The Game of Thrones was inspired by British and French history, yet there are some fundamental features of the medieval age of feudalism, whether in China or in Europe, and something in that age that inevitably appeals to readers in the modern age.
Two weeks ago, the government finally let go of the “Zero Covid” policy. Now, it seems all of China is testing positive for Covid, and there’s a lack of medications and hospitals are overrun with feverish patients. Go figure. Not that I know any of this except from hearsay. I’ve been sheltering in my lake house on Dianshan Lake in Kunshan for the past two weeks ever since news of the rapid spread of Covid began to reach my eyes and ears. I’m used to the solitude by now. I’d estimate that I’ve spent nearly six months alone in and around my lake house this past year, mostly because of the Zero Covid policy, but now because it has finally ended. One key thing missing from Game of Thrones, at least the books I’ve read so far, is the plague. At least that’s one feature of medieval life that we can still enjoy in our contemporary world.