In my quests to become more educated about music (I know what I like, but I don't listen to music everyday and it's not my lifeblood, let alone that I would know albums by heart or be able to talk about music in detail and with conviction) and to find some good books about L.A. or other tropical palm tree-ish places for this incredible period of unusual heatwave, I thought Hotel California would combine these two in perfect union.

Turns out I might have made a poor choice, because I'm none the wiser about the Laurel Canyon era. Strings of names, dates, record company hijinks. Many people are only mentioned once or twice after which they never return and the endless short quotes aren't always insightful or bring anything interesting to the mix. Instead of writing a coherent and engaging narrative that would examine the connections and, above all, the influence of Laurel Canyon's singer-songwriters on music, Hoskyns reduces his superficial story to a 200-page-long magazine article (makes sense considering his background in the business but doesn't make one any less annoyed).

In general, too many players splashed around is a bad idea, but when you add all the other padding such as irrelevant details and the general disjointed way of juggling with all the incredible amount of information, trying to keep up with all the connections and the fragmented timeline just made my head swirl. Now I'm wondering whether I should even try Hoskyns' Waiting for the Sun.