Tag: Book

Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run (2025)

This book is credited to Paul McCartney, but as an oral history the credit really goes to historian/editor Ted Widmer and the crew at Paul’s company MPL that had all the archives.  The book is seen as a companion to the documentary Man on the Run coming out in wide release in 2026 on Amazon Prime.  Many new interviews were done for the documentary and transcribed for the book.  It’s the first time we really hear from the McCartney children, particularly Mary and Stella.

I was expecting a coffee-table book, but this is standard hardcover size, which means that most of the pictures are black & white and smaller-size, although there is an insert with nice color photos.  The text is organized chronologically, and includes the time of McCartney and McCartney II which is strange for a Wings book.

As with anything blessed by Macca, there is nothing that speaks ill of him (or Linda). In particular, his spectacular hubris leading to his Japanese arrest gets off lightly.  That arrest killed the last incarnation of Wings, which was the first one I can remember experiencing as it happened.

As I was reading the book I was surprised how familiar the events seemed.  Then it hit me that earlier this year I read the well-researched McCartney Legacy II by Allan Kozinn.  If you’re only going to read one book about Wings, read Kozinn’s.

The book contains a “timeline” of contemporary events and popular music hits of each album’s era, and ends with superfluous capsule biographies of each member of Wings. The useful appendices are a detailed discography and a “gigography” with all the dates of Wings’ performances.

I am looking forward to the film documentary but I suspect I’m going to wonder about ten minutes in why it seems so familiar….

Lunar Logic by Adeena Mignogna (2024)

I met Adeena two years ago at Balticon. She gave an interesting talk on “Space Junk”.  At the end she quickly promoted her books and I took note.  I first read her “Crazy Robots” series, which had some interesting concepts in it.  Lunar Logic is a standalone story, and I just got around to reading it.

I felt that the story started slowly, and the robots all being named “Ai-something” was cumbersome to the reader, but it makes sense within the world she’s created.  The book really took off after the initial world-setting and groundwork laid, becoming more readable and with a bit more action.

It’s a very timely book with ‘AI this’ and ‘AI that’ all in our news and science speculation.  This book is the best kind of “speculative fiction”.

I recommend Adeena’s work.  I have been getting her newsletter this year and she’s been writing some ‘flash fiction’ that I hope gets developed into full stories.

War Year (1972) and 1968 (1994) by Joe Haldeman

I don’t normally post dual reviews, but I think this one lends well to a comparison.

War Year was Joe Haldeman’s first published novel.  It is not in the science fiction genre he is a Grand Master of.  I believe it is a thinly-veiled account of much of his Viet Nam service as a combat engineer.  1968, however, takes his experience and allows him to paint a broader picture of the time, with a main character who is at home.

War Year is not a long work; easy-to-read and in the vernacular of soldiers in the thick of it, but with enough explanation for those who haven’t served.  1968 uses an omniscient narrator at times with a 1990s perspective and multiple points-of-view that no one character could know.

For War Year, I  read the Kindle version keeping the paperback version in print. Doing a little research the original hardcover had a different (apparently longer) ending.  What I read was powerful.  Since I’m an acquaintance of Mr. Haldeman, I wrote and asked him why it was changed.  He said that the paperback (preferred ending) was “deemed too sad [by the editor]…too grim….too authentic.” (Haldeman’s emphasis.)  I’m probably not going to be able to read the hardcover version, but I recommend War Year.

I have always been fascinated by the Viet Nam War.  I was too young to really understand, but grew up in the time after it ended when America had to grapple with its place in history.

Haldeman covers this well in 1968.  The characters that stay at home (with Beverly being the lead one) deal with civil rights, free love, and violent demonstrations.  The main character, “Spider” Spiedel is a draftee who serves as a combat engineer (as Haldeman did). Where the book diverges from his own experience (I assume) is that Spider suffers from intense PTSD in making his way stateside after his discharge.  There are some intense sections of both the combat experience and life back in the states.  My biggest complaint is that the book glosses over Spider’s adjustment time, not giving it the same depth as the combat experience.  Maybe that’s because of the constraint of titling the book as one year’s experience, but the book just….ends.  I am curious what happened to Spider and to his ex-girlfriend Beverly.