New Book - Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

I finally finished KISS: Behind the Mask: The Official Authorized Biography by David Leaf and Ken Sharp. It was a cumbersome book, but a good one for any KISS fan. As I mentioned before, Leaf completed his portion of this back in 1980, after interviewing the band about their rise to glory the previous year. For one reason or another, the book didn't get published, then sat dormant for about fifteen years, until Leaf and Sharp (a KISS fanatic who had written articles about the band) met. Once Sharp found out that Leaf had written a book about KISS, he demanded to read it, did so, loved it, and convinced Leaf to publish it, with Sharp contributing to the band's post-1979 exploits. After that, there was an album-by-album, song-by-song analysis, complete with detailed commentary from the band, the producers, engineers, managers, etc. Leaf's portion was particularly interesting because the band was interviewed at a time when the original line-up was still together and when they were still the biggest band in the world. All in all, I would recommend it for fans of KISS, but not casual fans, unless you feel like reading about hundreds of songs you've never heard before.

My only beef with it was that, in the third section, the book glossed over Ace Frehley's solo album (which you know I like), discussing only two songs and providing very little commentary about it. I have no idea if that was simply due to a lack of interviews or discussions with Ace about the album or what, but I was disappointed nonetheless.

Aside from heights, forgetting your credit card at a bar, and rattlesnakes, there is nothing scarier than religious zealots. That's what attracted me to the book I just started reading, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer. It's about the extremist sects of Mormonism, focusing on a 1984 double murder of a mother and her 15-month-old daughter by two of the woman's brothers-in-law, whose only explanation for the murder was that God ordered one of them to do it.

Books read in 2009:
The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis
Oh The Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey
I Hate New Music: The Classic Rock Manifesto by Dave Thompson
Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal by Ian Christe
Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector by Mick Brown
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga by Ian Christe
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
KISS: Behind the Mask: The Official Authorized Biography by David Leaf and Ken Sharp