J's Pages

I have a mix of emotions about this book. As a former typesetter, I found the layout on this book to be atrocious. It's like somebody printed out a webpage. The font choice was nice, but upon opening the cover and seeing the title, table of contents, and opening paragraph all on the same page just put me in a negative frame of mind.

The next thing that struck me was the style.
Mr. Janssen recounts this tale as a chain of thoughts. 
Most of the paragraphs are one sentence. 
That was weird.
But it gave the book a unique tone that I kind of liked.
(Not enough to forgive the typesetting, though.)

Finally, the story. It's the tale of a musician, Johnny Golden, whose life gets shaken up by the death of Elvis Presley. Johnny writes a tribute song, but isn't able to market it quickly enough to be the song that mourning fans latch onto. He then starts an odyssey of writing tribute songs to celebrities who might go any day now, in preparation for that inevitable moment. As the months pass, and his formula garners success for him, ambition starts to turn him down a dark path. 

The character's journey and the peek into the music business of the late 70s was interesting. It was a book I could put down... but eventually had to pick up again.

 Check it out.
LibraryThing link

Labels: CheckItOut

// posted by John @ 7:44 PM