It won't be news to any Mountain Goats fans that lead singer John Darnielle is super smart, a great writer, and has terrific taste in all things literary. JD has decided to share some of this knowledge with us, in his new series "John Darnielle Tells You About a Book." So far there are only three (very short) episodes, but they're witty and informative, and now I have a few more books to put on my to-read list.
In the first episode, he discusses Bachtyar Ali's The Last Pomegranate Tree. In the second, the focus is on Mihail Sebastian's Fragments from a Found Notebook. And in the latest, he doesn't talk about a book he's reading, but, instead, describes two things he found on his bookshelf while looking for books to take out tour. First, he shows us his bound copy of The Watchtower from 1985 (yes, the Jehovah's Witnesses magazines), which was a plot point in Darnielle's (2015) novel Wolf in White Van. Next, he discusses Mel Bay's Guitar Chord Chart, which he bought when he first created The Mountain Goats way back in the early 1990s. He explains that at the time, he already knew how to play piano but used the book to teach himself guitar.
I can't wait to see what he shares next!