Jeff Chang, Can't Stop Won't Stop ****

Can't Stop Won't Stop is an excellent "History of the Hip-Hop Generation," even if it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for.

I knew this book by its reputation as the definitive book about the birth and global takeover of hip-hop. I knew, too, that it addresses the social and cultural context from which hip-hop sprang. What I didn't know was that it covers the sociology of hip-hop without much focus on its artistic development. Chang talks about changes in the music — such as the shift from the early focus on the DJ to the ascendance of the MC — only when the development supports his point about cultural changes.

So I learned less about the artistic evolution of hip-hop than I wanted. On the other hand, I got a very strong portrait of the social milieu of young people of color in the 1980s and 1990s. Chang is clearly not unbiased; he writes from the young people's point of view in a style that borders on self-congratulatory. For example, he describes the attitudes of young gang members about the police without exploring the other side. This approach makes the book practically a manifesto for the hip-hop generation, not just a history of it.

Kenneth J. Harvey, The Town that Forgot How to Breathe *** 1/2

This horror novel has literary pretensions, as evidenced by the blurbs from J.M. Coetzee and Joseph O'Conner instead of Stephen King and Peter Straub. Strange things are afoot in the Newfoundland fishing village of Bareneed. Residents are dying from an illness that makes them just stop breathing, and the bodies of former residents lost at sea are washing ashore. A man who has rented a house in Bareneed for the summer is inexplicably drawn to the widow across the street. People are mermaids, albino sharks, and other legendary sea creatures.

I was drawn to this book by the promise of Newfoundlander atmosphere and creeping dread. It mostly delivered on these counts, and Harvey creates intriguing metaphysics for the supernatural events. Two problems undermined the drama, though.

First, the town featured too many people with supernatural powers before the illness struck: three or four people who could see auras, two who made drawings that predicted the future, and one who communed with her dead family. The prevalence of such powers made the strange events seem like less of a break from normality, and provided overly convenient ways to figure out the mystery.

Second, the haunting of summer-visitor Joseph and his daughter was only tangentially related to the events striking the rest of the town, both in theme and mechanics. Rather than reinforcing each other, I felt like the two stories distracted from each other.

Eric Hansen, Motoring with Mohammed ***

The first few chapters of this travel book are awesome. They describe the author's unintentional visit to Yemen in 1978, as a crew member on a shipwrecked yacht. The story of the accident, their time on a desert island, and eventual rescue is told with a perfect voice, both insouciantly adventurous and funny. (Hansen's style seems somehow like the British adventurers of old, even though he is an American.)

Hansen returns to Yemen over a decade later on a quixotic quest to retrieve the travel journals that he buried in the island sand before his rescue. These chapters are more typical of the travel genre. Like the author himself, I found my attention adrift during the middle section of the book as he wanders the capital of San'a. The final few chapters show some of the strength of the first few as he visits the mountains of the north and resumes his attempts to retrieve the journals.

So: By all means, read and enjoy the first four chapters. The rest is optional.