Tag / Taylor Jenkins Reid

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2022: The Year In Books

As we wrap up 2022, my second full year of remote working, I managed to surpass my previous records by completing a whopping 55 books, an increase of one book over last year and my second consecutive year completing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.  I surpassed last year’s total with a mere three days remaining in 2022.  I read (or listened) to 19,328 pages, by far my highest total of all time and only the third time I’ve passed 10,000.

Of those books, fifteen were non-fiction and, of the remaining 40 novels, only two were tied to a TV show, either as the source material or as a tie-in.  None of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, with 44 e-books and three audiobooks.  I continued to take advantage of my library card, which helped me procure 37 of the books I consumed throughout the year.

A little more than half of the books I read this year were by authors I had read before. The 31 authors that I read for the first this year were:

Adam Nedeff Kelsey McKinney Simone St. James Laura Dave
Jeff Warren Carlye Adler Matt Paxton Jordan Michael Smith
Alyssa Milano Alex Finlay Taylor Jenkins Reid Emily Ratajkowski
Samantha Downing Dave Grohl Mary Lynn Rajskub Stephanie Perkins
Michael Schur Joseph Henrich V.E. Schwab Brianna Madia
Jimmy Piersall Richard Whittingham Richard Osman Colleen Hoover
Jenette McCurdy Sally Rooney Josh Malerman Alice Sebold
Katie Mack Penn Jillette Elin Hilderbrand Nita Prose

Alex Finlay, Simone St. James, Karin Slaughter, Megan Goldin, Jeffery Deaver, and Richard Osman were the only authors that I read multiple titles from during 2022.

16 of the books I read were released this year, while only two of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1953.

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Book 20 (of 52) – Daisy Jones & The Six

Daisy Jones & The Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid

Told as an oral history of the band responsible for one of the biggest albums of the 1970s, Daisy Jones & The Six covers the rise and spectacular fall of the collaboration known as Daisy Jones & The Six.  The Six were a traditional rock band, working their way towards success, with one album under their belt and another one on the way.  Daisy Jones was a precocious groupie-turned-singer, looking to make it on her own terms and nobody else’s.  When their shared label suggested they join forces for one song on the second album from The Six, it became the groups biggest hit and a successful tour, with Jones as the opening act.  The suggestion that she join the band leads to a commercial and critical smash hit, but at what cost?

It’s a tale as old as time, or at least as old as rock and roll.  A band rises to the top, egos get bigger and tensions flare, love affairs begin and end, and then *POOF*, just as quickly as it all began, it all comes crashing down.  Choosing to tell this tale as an oral history was a genius move by Taylor Jenkins Reid.  Instead of trying to create life on the road for a 70s rock band, something that would be difficult to do authentically for anyone who wasn’t part of that scene, she instead creates the book equivalent of the group’s Behind The Music episode, something we are all familiar with, and lets the reader fill in the details and the missing pieces in-between the memories of each band member.