75 Reads

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark is our latest read, and our last read before we take a few weeks off for spring break. One of us loved this book, and one of us really and truly did not, and that’s what makes for a fun book club chat!

Miss Brody is a progressive teacher at a rather formal and traditional girls’ school, who’s girls (the Brodie set) are being groomed to be the “crème de la crème. “ She’s in her prime, she’s got two lovers on the faculty, she’s influencing young minds. It’s a story of love, hate, manipulation, and betrayal on several levels. It’s dark, witty, funny…or just plain awful. Depending on who you ask.

If you read this book, we’d love to know which side you come down on! Find us on IG and let us know! We’re @75reads .

One day in the early 1940s Douglas Harding, an English architect, was hiking in the Himalayas when he had a shocking realization…he had no head. He realized that we can’t see what he called the eight inch ball on the top of our body, except by looking at a photo or a reflection in a mirror. If we cannot see ourselves the way other people see us, how do we know who we are?

At the moment he realized this, all sense of time past and future fell away. He forgot his name, gender, even what type of animal he was. All the traditional markers of identity ceased to exist. In Buddhist terms, Harding is describing nondualism, a mature state of consciousness in which the self is transcended.

 Harding says the eight inch “ball” on the top of his body doesn’t contain, but is all that is on offer. Chew on that, if you will. With us. As you listen to episode 28.

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Silence by John Cage is a collection of lectures and stories. Some are written in vertical columns. Some have, let’s call it interesting, spacing. And some, as Cage will tell you, have piano accompaniments, street noises, and the like. There was a lecture where he gave himself one minute to tell each story. So if the story had three lines, he had to stretch it. If a story was long, he’d have to talk fast to fit it into a minute. There’s a lecture called What Are We Doing? It’s actually three lectures sharing the same space on the page, written in vertical columns, one part in regular print, one part in bold print, and one part in italics. Mind blowing.

Even more mind blowing, thinking about what silence actually is. And does it even exist? Is sound a constant? Is it different for each individual based on surroundings, personal history, location of the individual to the sound, etc?

And mushrooms. John Cage had a thing for mushrooms.

There were short stories and anecdotes peppered throughout the book, and they were all delightful.

This is a book that any type of artist can appreciate. Also, do yourself a favor and go online and find a video of John Cage’s 4’33. Trust us.

A “monkey girl”, sleepless people (one named David Jones - not our David Jones), water diviners, an author who was a channeled spirit, psychic detectives, and so many more “Strange People”. This collection of stories relayed by Frank Edwards will entertain, will make you wonder, and will sometimes tug at your heart. 

Perhaps the most heart wrenching story, and the story with the biggest Bowie connection, is that of Joseph Merrick, the so-called Elephant Boy. Bowie played this character beautifully on Broadway in 1980.

In subsequent books, Frank Edwards tackled the subject of UFOs. In the 1960s, Bowie went UFO-spotting quite often. With a fondness for “freaks” and the paranormal, Frank Edwards seems a logical author to have made Bowie’s list.

On the pod, we're sharing some of the stand out stories from this fun, and strange, read. 

To start with, Laing states that the basic purpose of this book is to make madness, and the process of going mad, comprehensible.

The full title is The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. Okay, what’s the definition of existentialism? It’s a philosophical movement that stresses the individual’s unique position as a self-determining agent responsible for making meaningful, authentic choices in a universe seen as purposeless or irrational.

What did this all mean to Bowie? We do know that his brother was schizophrenic. And, we go into that in more detail in this episode.

Laing’s approach to understanding the schizophrenic is one of understanding a human being, who’s world is his reality, a reality just as valid as yours or ours. We agreed that if we were trying to understand a friend or family member who was schizophrenic, this would be the book to read.

That said, it is a lot to take in. So, if you’re reading along with the book club but haven’t completed the book yet, dive into the podcast anyway. It won’t spoil the book, and it just might give you another angle from which to view it. Maybe even one close to Bowie’s.

If you follow us on Twitter you know that we’re reviewing All The Emperor’s Horses in one episode. And you know that this read is also found under the title Peking Story, which is the newer version with a chapter added at the end, which was written years after the original story was told. Intrigued? You should be!

The Emperor’s Horses is the story of a young American teaching and studying in China. He marries into the aristocratic Yu family, and into the family mansion and gardens, which are characters in this book just as much as any of the people written about here. The year is 1949, and Peking has just surrendered to the Communist army. Our author, David Kidd, marries Aimee Yu in a rushed ceremony, which is charmingly and humorously written, and we follow along as the Yu family fortune, and ancient China’s culture and civilization are dismantled. This book is funny and heartbreaking, and will give you an understanding of how devastating it was to watch a 4,000 year old empire and all its tradition and beauty crumble.

David Kidd had a certain Bowie-like flair for style, both in his appearance and in his art. His observations and descriptions of people (and what they wore) and places are wonderful! This was, on multiple levels, a beautiful read.

We typically split our reads in half and record two episodes per book here on the pod, but Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse was such a quick read that we felt one episode would do the job.

The story is in the title, Billy is a liar. He’s a 19 year old who is living at home with his parents and grandmother, working at a job he hates, dreaming of being a comedy writer. Even though this book was published in 1959, it sounds like your typical kid of today. But, the thing that sets Billy apart is that he just can’t tell the truth. To anyone. About anything. And eventually, he gets found out. He finds his own life so mundane and so miserable that he escapes to a world he’s created in his mind, and he does so quite often. He even has two types of thinking, once that’s factual and one that’s pure fantasy.

Will Billy finally be true to his family? Will he finally be true to either of his fiancés? Will he finally be true to the girl he loves (not a fiancé, by the way)? Will he finally be true to himself? Listen to the pod, and find out!

Oh! And April found a brilliant Bowie song to pair with this book! It’s perfect! And we are almost certain that Bowie had this book in mind when he wrote it. What song, you ask? Have a listen, and let us know what you think!

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P.S. As Halloween approaches, suddenly Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve all come in rapid succession. This is our last episode of the year! Thank you so much for listening and being a part of our book club. We are having so much fun making our way through Bowie’s reading list, and we hope you are too! We’ll be back with a new episode featuring All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd on January 7th! Until then, we hope you have a wonderful holiday season!

We’re wrapping up The Leopard, so you may wonder, “What the heck is that animal in the photo? It doesn’t look like a leopard.” You would be correct! It is, in fact, not a leopard. It is a serval. A much smaller feline, it is the symbol on the Tomasi di Lampedusa coat of arms. One of the serval’s few North African ranges is near Lampedusa. And, servals were (not very commonly) owned by some Sicillians as exotic pets. But, we suppose that in English, “The Serval” might not have sold as many books as “The Leopard”. So, there you have it!

At any rate, the second half of this novel is quite interesting in that it kills off the main character, The Prince, with a chapter left to go. It is one of the most beautiful descriptions of dying we have ever read. Really.

We both felt a bit of whiplash with how quickly things that were introduced in such painstaking detail in the first three quarters of the book were wrapped up in the last two or three chapters, but wrapped up they were. Neat and tidy. And the ending. Well, it was magical and sad and everything you’d want it to be. So, without further ado, join us as we journey to the final days, and beyond, of The Serval.

What are your thoughts on The Leopard? Love it or hate it? Tweet at us and find us on IG: @75reads.

The Leopard, by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, is an historical fiction novel centered around Prince Fabrizio (the leopard) and a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy in 1860 that is threatened by the forces of democracy and revolution. One of us swooned over The Leopard, and one of us chuckled, but by the end of the first half we were both looking forward to the rest of the book. Listen to find out why!

(Oh, and here’s a fun tid bit: The title of the book in Italian did not actually translate to “The Leopard” in english. We’ll tell you what cat originally had the title role in the next episode!)

Did this book make you swoon? Tweet at us and find us on IG: @75reads.

We’re wrapping up our journey with Sal and the gang with the second half of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. And we are a house divided. One of us liked it, one of us not so much. There were some beautiful life lessons, mostly learned by watching the supporting characters, the jazz musicians and the people encountered on the Mexico trip. Did we continue to see Bowie in the book? Mmmm, not really. Does the book hold up today? Well, geographically yes. But, if you are in a different phase in life than you were when you first read this book, probably in your early twenties, you may have a different emotional experience with it now. We did! And if you are currently a young 20something, how is On The Road grabbing you? Is it inspiring you to get on the road, or making you want to hunker down in front of your screen of choice?

Listen and let us know which camp you’re in! Do you dig this book, or do you not? Tweet at us and find us on IG: @75reads.