The Book Tower

As I get deeper into Dominic Sandbrook’s White Heat I’m inspired to do various sixties-related things:

Watch episodes of The Avengers.
Listen to various classic albums of the decade – The Kinks are The Village Green Preservation Society is on in the background as I type.

I’m still only about a third of the way through this book. There’s a lot more on The Beatles as I plough on, although it’s clear that Sandbrook is a McCartney fan. And he doesn’t like Lennon. Commenting on The Fabs’ LSD intake:

Although McCartney and Starr, the more down-to-earth members of the band, were always rather suspicious, Lennon became a great fan. LSD suited his self-pitying, self-indulgent and pretentious personality…

At least he does try to redress the McCartney/Lennon balance, tipped more and more unfairly towards the latter since 1980, and I’m all for a straight 50/50 in this redress. They were equally gifted. Yes?

I’m racing to get through White Heat because I want to get on with Brave New World. I’ve read the first couple of chapters and it’s surprising how fresh the writing is. It reads to me like the sort of dystopian vision that Margaret Atwood would be producing now.

Brave New World is number one in my From the Stacks reading challenge. I’m also aware of my pledge to read a percentage of the 1001 Books in the next year. Managed to find a second hand copy of Lord of the Flies only this afternoon…