In my hands are new books by Patti Smith and Zygmunt Bauman

Just back from my favourite Perth bookshop Planet Books with two new books- Just Kids by Patti Smith and Living on Borrowed Time by Zygmunt Bauman.

I love the feel and look of new books and tonight I will start reading them both.

Patti Smith's book Just Kids is about her life in New York in the 1960's and 1970's and her relationship with photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe. An earlier piece on the book and some reviews can be read here along with other blog pieces on Patti Smith. There is also an earlier piece I wrote on Patti Smith's last album of covers.

Zygmunt Bauman's new book is organized around a series of conversations with Citali Rovirosa-Madrazo in which Bauman explores the causes and implication of the global financial crises and discusses some of the big contemporary moral and political issues.

Bauman, who is now aged 85, remains one of the most challenging and interesting social and political thinkers and writers around. He always challenges contemporary wisdom. I have been a big fan since the late 1980's after reading his masterly book Modernity and the Holocaust.

Commentary on both books will appear in later blogs.