Lately I’ve been on a steady diet of technical books and management/leadership books, but my required reading for an upcoming meeting at Bryn Mawr has gotten me back in the swing of reading other subject matter. This is a good thing, since I’ve got some very interesting reads coming up…
First up is a book by my friend, Chris Connelly. He’s written Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible and Fried: My Life As a Revolting Cock, about his life in the music industry. His career has spanned nearly three decades and has included stints with industrial groups such as Fini Tribe, Ministry, Pigface, and the Revolting Cocks (duh!), just to name a few (seriously). I’m hoping that some of the stories that I’ve heard over the years — like the time he disassembled every piece of furniture in a Four Seasons hotel room with William Tucker — appear in this book… and I’m sure there will be plenty of other crazy anecdotes, too. Chris is still making music, though of a much calmer, more esoteric variety. He has a new album titled Forgiveness and Exile coming out this spring that I’m also looking forward to.
Today I pre-ordered Hubert’s Freaks: The Rare-Book Dealer, the Times Square Talker, and the Lost Photos of Diane Arbus by Gregory Gibson. The book tells the true story of Bob Langmuir, a rare books dealer in Philadelphia who discovered a treasure trove of never-before-seen prints by the legendary Diane Arbus. The photographs were taken in the 1950’s at Hubert’s Dime Museum and Flea Circus, a Times Square basement phantasmagoria — an odd piece of Americana deserving of such documentation. The New York Times has an interesting article which piqued my interest… though I’ll be honest and disclose that my mom went to high school with Bob, which is how I learned about all of this in the first place.
The next thing I need to work on re-integrating to my reading queue is some fiction… any suggestions?
