i'm always looking for behind the scenes and research-y stuff. like what was going on in the artists' lives, what they intended to create, who were their influences, what they were consuming at the time (drugs, art, etc), the critical and audience response upon release, etc.

and more techy things like who were in the sessions, what gear was used, who played what, etc.

a lot of the 33 1/3 books are about the author's personal relationship to the album. i can take some of that, if it's placed in the context of initial audience/critical response. but some of the books spend waaay too long on that. e.g. the sign o the times one talked about the author's personal childhood journey to target where he begged his single mom to buy him the cassette, and the struggles of being a biracial child from a impoverished one-parent household. that's really compelling stuff, no doubt. but no one wants to read about that shit in a book dedicated to sign o the times, b.

off the top, endtroducing was basically an un-edited magazine interview of dj shadow that didn't talk about gear. YAAAWN.

grace was just plain lame. the dream brother book was far superior.

the middle 20 pages of the the there's a riot goin on book was good. the rest...blah.

and i didn't even finish the others.