Literary Glance: Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid is an okay book so far.  Daisy Jones is a fictional rock singer from the 1970s.  The Six is the band she joined up with.  The book is a collection of fictional interviews about the singer and the band from various points of view.

From what I’ve read so far, there was nothing to really complain about the writing or the book except… it’s fiction.

A few pages in, I asked myself, “Why am I reading this?”

By that, I meant, why was I reading fake interviews about a fictional rock singer?  There are hundreds of real rock singers with compelling, (maybe) true stories that I could read.  I couldn’t even listen to any of Daisy Jones’s songs to judge her voice for myself.  Nowadays I keep hearing about how talented a bunch of current singers are, but when I listen they sound mediocre at best.

Maybe Daisy Jones was over-hyped.  If the media is going to tell me that Daisy Jones has a great voice, then I want to hear her songs for myself, and the book doesn’t provide that.  Even The Monkees and the Partridge Family gave us songs, and that was in the 1960s and 1970s.

Supposedly, the book is being turned into a mini-series for a streaming service.  Maybe then, we’ll see what kind of a voice Daisy Jones has.  If her voice isn’t up to my high standards, then I won’t believe all the hype in this book.  And I can’t stand undeserved hype.

Anyway, since there’s no way for me to judge the quality of Daisy Jones’s voice and music, I don’t trust the hype.

So I put the book down.

At least I got a few pages into Daisy Jones & the Six.  When George RR Martin came out with Fire and Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones, his fake history of Westeros, a few months ago, I barely started it.  Why should I read fake history when there’s a ton of real history that I could learn about?  I know that a lot of real history is probably fake, but you have to start somewhere.

If I had to choose between Daisy Jones & the Six and Fire and Blood, I’d read Daisy Jones & the Six.  It’s not bad.  It’s just not real.