Non-fiction book reviews part 27

 Welcome to part 27 in a series of non-fiction book reviews, originally based on the idea that the books I request tell you everything you need to know about me. I have, after so many chapters of this series, realised that all these posts say about me is that this was just a place to put these reviews, but now I can see how broad my non-fiction reading is, and how many interesting, good (and sometimes not-so-good) books and topics I've had a chance to explore. Today we have three takes on popular culture:  disability representation in the movies, an audiobook about the Golden Girls and a book about number one songs on the Billboard charts.

Popcorn Disabilities: The Highs and Lows of Disabled Representation in the Movies by Kristen Lopez Publishes 27 November

Popcorn Disabilities is an impassioned but nonetheless fun and engaging survey of how Hollywood has dealt with disability over the last century, covering not only the many ways that cinema has distorted the lived reality of disabled people, but also where films have gotten it right, and how the power of the medium can continue to be used to enlighten and educate in the future. From little-remembered gems like Tod Browning's Freaks—one of the earliest well-intentioned attempts to show disabled characters as complex, three-dimensional human beings—to contemporary films like Coda, My Left Foot, The Little Mermaid, Unbreakable, and many others, it challenges popular assumptions about disability while never losing sight of movies' unique power, influence, and potential as a tool for social good.

This dragged for me. Each chapter focusses on one movie or theme in a detailed way, but spending a chapter reading about representation in a movie I haven't (and probably will never) see was quite tedious. Maybe I should have made a reading list and watched the movies before trying to read about them. Lopez brings a measured viewpoint to her analysis of disabled representation, sharing her personal reactions and placing both the movies and her experiences in the wider cultural context. Her conclusions seem or feel correct, but to me expanding from the individual from the genre didn't quite work. this may be as much a reflection on my lack of knowledge than any flaw in the book.

The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai by Taylor Cole Miller Publishes 30 September 

 The Golden Tales from the Lanai is an accessible collection that explores the cultural, industrial, and historical impact of that beloved American sitcom. Edited by Taylor Cole Miller and Alfred L. Martin, Jr., this anthology brings together a diverse range of voices that model different media studies approaches to researching and critically analyzing television texts. Tales from the Lanai reclaims the production history and development of the show, opens new conversations about audiences–especially Black, queer, and female audiences–and provides new insight into the meteoric rise in popularity of The Golden Girls as a 2020s cultural phenomenon. With twelve original chapters and extensive original interviews offering readers rare insights behind the scenes, Tales from the Lanai is a long day’s journey into the marinara of The Golden Girls–an immersive, engaging opportunity for readers to learn more about the show. It truly is the golden age of The Golden Girls.

The structure of this book is interesting - 12 academic style articles complete with introductions and conclusions, interspersed with interviews from people involved with the Golden Girls - producers, writers, the person who put together the credits. I listened to the audio book, so it seemed weird that these were all read by the narrator, it would have felt fine in the printed book.

The strength of this book is that it reflects the Golden Girls and the show's relationship to various things - cable TV, feminism, celebrity culture, AIDS, homosexuality and so on. It doesn't spend a lot of time going frame by frame through individual episodes. This is proper textual analysis. 

I listened to the audiobook, which I think made it more digestible, and also it's weird when the interviews between chapters are read by one narrator. There were two narrators - a man and a woman who did a good job of narrating the text. I think it was a good idea to have different voices, since chapters were written by different people.

Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us About the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves by Chris Dalla Riva

Popular music history collides with data analytics, charts, and numbers in this insightful and surprising look at the greatest hits and musicians, fads, forgotten artists, and much more. Data analyst and musician Chris Dalla Riva reframes everything you thought you knew about music.

Coupling hard data with engaging anecdotes, Uncharted Territory is both a takedown and celebration of popular music and provides new ways to think about your favorite songs, genres, and artists from the last 6 decades using unexpected statistics and playful visualizations. This entertaining history is filled with the most popular musicians of all time from The Beatles and The Bee Gees to Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, and beyond. Whether you danced the twist or the dougie at your senior prom, you're sure to never listen to music again in the same way.

This book is written in an engaging and approachable style. The author notes that he writes a newsletter, and it has that tone. It focusses not just on the individual songs, but uses them to examine wider trends in American popular music. Things that are really interesting, fashions and fads in music, how they relate to various other cultural phenomena. Uncharted Territory is not just a book about music, it's a book about people, change and the times we live in. Mainly I would recommend this because it's very accessible. It's well laid out, has a friendly writing style and charts and illustrations that are both useful and attractive.