Cleaning off the nightstand

For many readers, the nightstand becomes a 'bookshelf' of sorts, allowing them to store, stack, sort and keep track of books on the reading list. My bookshelf, since I read most everything on my kindle, is imaginary. This is both good and bad. It's good because I can read anytime, anywhere. But, it's bad because it doesn't allow for the same kind of satisfaction as seeing the stack of books next to the bed. Also, I've been thinking a lot lately about how reading books on the kindle is going to affect my future reputation. No longer will I be important because "I have many leather bound books, and my house smells of rich mahogany."

Anyhow, I've been cleaning off my proverbial nightstand before I begin my 1000 books. I read A Visit from the Goon Squad, which was the Pulitzer Prize winner this year. The book was really interesting. Told in a series of vignettes, it traces-sort of- the lives of the goon squad, a group of friends that grow up in LA together during the late 70s and early 80s. The book makes a sneaky, hidden, barely there statement about how the advent of technology that is supposed to make us better connected is actually breaking apart the connections of society. What draws the reader into the book is the multiple pop-culture references to punk bands of the late 70s, early 80s. For a music aficionado, the incorporation of bands, lyrics and events is icing on a rather strange shaped cake. The sprinkles on said cake is the fact that the novel ends with the rise of music bringing people back together. A live show that connects the people in the same way, I presume, that Woodstock did before we were divided by the closeness of electronic communication.  This novel tells not of "the day the music died," but, rather, "the day the music brought the people back to life."