PositiveThe Star TribunePromised to offer Dylan\'s insights into the nature of popular music. Actually, the breezy book is more like a late-night, old-school, once-hipster DJ riffing on dozens of songs you may or may not know ... A 338-page, photo-heavy hodgepodge that is part criticism, part social commentary, part pulp fiction, part comedy, part rebaked Wikipedia, and, indeed, part philosophy ... It\'s informative, sometimes fascinating, occasionally insightful, generally entertaining and, of course, totally Dylanesque ... Dylan\'s short essays sometimes read like pulpy two-page movie treatments inspired by the lyrics. But that kind of imaginer is probably not what readers expect from this book ... The Hall of Famer riffing in prose is often as appealing — and enigmatic — as his riffing in music ... Occasionally Dylan gets distractingly off-key ... Randomly arranged, freewheeling ... Not likely to lead to any distinguished literature awards.
Prince
PositiveThe Star TribuneWith a mere 40 printed pages featuring Prince’s prose, it would be a stretch to call The Beautiful Ones a memoir ... has a scrapbook quality, offering a hodgepodge of photos and ephemera, including those 28 pages from Prince along with lyric sheets and a flier for his father’s band, the Prince Rogers Trio. But it’s not a coffee-table book either ... Leave it to Prince to give us something impossible to pigeonhole. At least, he provides a few peeks behind the veil, especially when it comes to his early family life and philosophy about life and music.
