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My Back Pages - June



Six books in June raised my yearly total to 30 as I hit the mid-point of the year. I'd say I'm well on track to hit the 50 I estimated for myself for 2017.

As ever my reads were an eclectic bunch beginning with a change of pace called The Road to Jonestown about the charismatic Jim Jones and his followers known as the Peoples Temple. This book by Jeff Guinn was somewhat of a disturbing read. Interestingly the man responsible for the event that gave rise to the phrase "don't drink the kool-aid" didn't even use kool-aid as part of his poisonous mixture but some other fruit drink. Who knew?

My next two books were written by two of my favourite writers Jo Nesbo and Dennis Lehane. Nesbo's 11th instalment in his Harry Hole series The Thirst and Lehane's Since We Fell were both suspenseful reads.

A friend of mine loaned me 8 or 9 books in June and I started reading actual books as opposed to Kindle books on my iPad.

So, having had my fill of novels I switched genres and read William Goldman's follow-up to Adventures in the Screen Trade, Which Lie Did I Tell. The guy responsible for such screenplays as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess Bride provides some hilarious anecdotes about Hollywood at its worst.

I followed that up with Rebels on the Backlot, an interesting read about six so-called maverick film directors of the 1990s including Quentin Tarantino and his Hollywood hit Pulp Fiction.

I closed out the month by switching mediums and read Desperate Networks by Bill Carter about the  ups and downs of the television landscape and how some of the most popular TV shows got on the air.

So as I say it was an eclectic month. In terms of actual TV watching I viewed the re-boot of Twin Peaks and was completely baffled by David Lynch's series based on the original some years back. Otherwise I am currently enjoying the Handmaid's Tale and The Good Fight, the spin-off from The Good Wife.

And that's it for June. See you at the end of July.


Noname's Books
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