janepriceestrada's 2011 reading

Currently Reading:
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois
Flight of the Hawk by G. R. Grove
Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle by Matthew Klingle
National Green Building Standard and National Green Building Standard Commentary
Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books by Jo Steffens
Porius by John Cowper Powys

Ongoing reading (I pick at it here and there):
Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The City in History by Lewis Mumford
The Norton Book of Science Fiction
Selected Writings by Ruben Dario
Interior Design Reference Manual: A Guide to the NCIDQ Exam by David Kent Ballast
Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child
The Portable Greek Historians

Completed:
1. Haiku by Basho
2. She Came in Through the Kitchen Window by Stephen J. Spignesi
3. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky *
4. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
5. Blindness by Jose Saramago
6. Two Viking Romances
7. Playing Ball with the Boys: The Rise of Women in the World of Men's Sports by Betsy M. Ross
8. Troubled Waters by Sharon Shinn
9. Quatrain by Sharon Shinn
10. The Safe-Keeper's Secret by Sharon Shinn
11. The Truth-Teller's Tale by Sharon Shinn
12. The Dream-Maker's Magic by Sharon Shinn
13. Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? edited by David Rutledge
14. Shadowrise by Tad Williams
15. Seeing by Jose Saramago
16. Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
17. Gateway by Sharon Shinn
18. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte *
19. Building the Pauson House: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Rose Pauson by Allan Wright Green
20. Alaska Adventure Guide by Melissa DeVaughn
21. 2666 by Roberto Bolano *
22. The Hustle: One Team and Ten Lives in Black and White by Doug Merlino
23. The Southern Review (Autumn 2010)
24. The Rough Guide to Yellowstone and Grand Teton
25. Wildlife of Grand Teton National Park: Common Mammals, Birds, and Fish by Charles Craighead
26. Watching Yellowstone And Grand Teton Wildlife: The Best Places to Look From Roads and Trails by Todd Wilkinson
27. Interior Design Reference Manual: A Guide to the NCIDQ Exam by David Kent Ballast
28. New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans by John Swenson
29. Italy: The Beautiful Cookbook by Lorenza De'Medici

*Still to review.

My favorites from 2010 (so far I suppose):

Fiction:
Light in August by William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner – my favorite of the Faulkner’s
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen – wonderful Catholicism
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
My Antonia by Willa Cather – probably my favorite of the year, possibly all time
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (only halfway but I fell pretty confident putting it in anyway)

Short Fiction:
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo
The Lesson of the Master by Henry James
On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Junger
The Stranger by Albert Camus

Drama:
Equus by Peter Shaffer

Nonfiction:
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel
The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum
Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire by Robert Perkinson – highly, highly recommended
Where We Know: New Orleans As Home edited by David Rutledge

Fantasy:
Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson
Mistborn, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

My full 2010 thread

Janice, I'm also only halfway through Brothers Karamozov, but am pretty sure that it will top my "best of" list, too. I've bought Crime and Punishment and think I might read that next. I'm finally having my "Russian period" of reading. Thanks, 'Murr. (BTW, read My Antonia a year or two ago, and felt the same way about it.)

An experiment. I have an unreasonably large TBR pile at this point. I would like to try not to buy many books this year (I know I could not completely stop). So I’ve gone through the books I own and have made a list of all those that jump out at me right now. I’d like to see at the end of the year how many of these I get to.

My new Library of American books (thanks hubby): Carson McCullers: Complete Novels, Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works, and James Agee: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; A Death in the Family; and Shorter Fiction
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
She Came in Through the Kitchen Window – Beatles themed cookbook
David Macaulay’s Mill, Cathedral, Castle, Pyramid, and City
Playing Ball with the Boys by Betsy Ross
Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun and The Reivers
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! and Death Comes for the Archbishop
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
Coming Back Stronger by Drew Brees
Tad Williams’s Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series
R. Scott Bakker’s Prince of Nothing trilogy
Bright-sided by Barbara Ehrenreich
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
Radical Women in Latin America by Victoria Gonzalez
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Douglas Brinkley’s The Wilderness Warrior and The Great Deluge
2666 by Roberto Bolano
Journals of Lewis and Clark
The Map That Changed the World by Simon Winchester
Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet
Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama
The Ends of the Earth
Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
The Golden Bowl by Henry James
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Breach of Faith by Jed Horne
Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley and Villette
Louisiana Sojourns

Feel free to peruse my ‘To read’ collection and tell me all the wonderful things I left off.

>4 janemarieprice:, Jane, I have read a few of these.

The Magicians was an interesting experience. If you read it, I recommend reading these articles, but perhaps only after reading the book itself: Why There is No Jewish Narnia, which discusses it in depth. Its a fascinating article that discusses how this book's characters' skeptical reactions to fantasy and their inability to approach it with wonder is a product of a Jewish cultural aversion to the tropes of high fantasy. While I don't know if I completely buy the argument, it is an intriguing one. The author also did a follow-up article in response to criticism of the original article: No Jewish Narnias: A Reply

I love that you've got the David Macaulay's books on there. I'd also recommend his Mosque. It's wonderful!

I am still struggling with Vanity Fair, so maybe we can provide each other some moral support. I'd also love to succeed in reading Villette this year. It's been on my shelves for too long. :)

The 75 books group is doing a year-long read of Jane Austen's books and I think Pride and Prejudice is up in March, if reading with others is your thing. You don't have to be a member of that group to join in. I've read all of Austen's major works previously, but have been looking for an excuse to re-read them.

3 - I have Crime and Punishment as well and plan to get to it this year, but I'm not sure I want to read it immediately after. I'll be interested to see your thoughts on it.

5 - I read the Jewish Narnia article last year and found it very interesting, though I didn't agree with a lot of it either.

We are trying to aquire all the Macaulay books - these are the ones we have now.

Vanity Fair may be a good one to pick up soon. Not sure I want to hit that right after Brothers Karamazov, but maybe one after that. I'll let you know when I'm getting to Villette, maybe we can read together.

I'll definitely check out the group read. I've never read any Austen which seems like a terrible failing on my part. P&P seemed like a good place to start.

Another Macaulay book I would recommend is his Motel of the Mysteries - a big chuckle fest that I've always loved.

A reposting of some of my reading statistics from 2010 (here The Brothers Karamazov is excluded since I didn't finish it):

70 books total

49 fiction, 22 nonfiction

19 fantasy/sci-fi
2 graphic novels
3 cookbooks
8 novellas
9 anthologies
1 poetry collection
1 play

40 male authors, 22 female
11 non-American

A bit about where I aquired them:

14 from Housing Works thrift store
14 online
13 from LT Early Reviewers or Member Giveaway
9 from Westsider Used Books
6 were gifts or ones I bought for my husband
3 were from my father and grandmother for my graduation (they scoured every used bookstore in LA and bought me the Modern Library 100)
3 from Barnes and Noble
2 bought for or on vacation
2 my husband bought
1 from a table
1 from my sister
1 from my sister-in-law

Why I picked them up now/bought them:
16 because I read something else by the author and liked it
12 read for Club Read challenges
6 because of LT recommendations
4 read in Le Salons

Great list TBR list Jane. Many of the same books sit in my TBR. I'm going to read Crime and Punishment this year, too, but maybe not right after Brothers Karamazov. I second Fourpawz2 recommendation of Motel of Mysteries. Much fun!

I'm looking forward to following your thread again. I'm glad you're looking into Austen. She's quite a thing.

fannyprice, I followed your links to the fascinating discussion of Jewish writers and fantasy fiction. Those were points of view I'd never considered.

7 - Thanks for stopping by. I'll look for that one too.

10 - Yeah, I got my mom to ship my copy of Sense and Sensibility as well. Just in case. :)

Haiku by Basho
translated by Lucien Stryk

Bashō was a Japanese poet from the late 1600s. This is a Penguin 60s edition (about 3 ½” wide by 4 ½” high and 60 pages long). The poems are all quite and precise, lyrical, melancholy, and sometimes sexy. Many of the themes are about nature or travel and small observations. The translation seems to favor expressing the precision of the language and mood over maintaining the haiku format perfectly. A few which were particularly nice:

Wake, butterfly –
it's late, we’ve miles
to go together.

Violets –
how precious on
a mountain path.

Girl cat, so
thin on love
and barley.

Such fragrance –
from where,
which tree?

From the heart
of the sweet peony,
a drunken bee.

I have five more of these Penguin 60s which I will probably burn through for the translation challenge.

Hi Jane! Just make sure you read Sea of Poppies before the fall. Amazon's reporting that River of Smoke, the second of the Ibis Trilogy, might be out in September. I'm currently doing a (reread) on audio to reacquaint myself with the amazing cast of characters.

Jane: You have a great TBR list there. Death Comes for the Archbishop is not only my favorite Cather but also one of my favorite books of all time (my 2009 review: http://www.librarything.com/work/11813/reviews/8227892). I also really enjoyed Oryx and Crake. And as you noted on my thread, we have quite a few TBR's in common. And if you like Austen, then Pride and Prejudice is a must-read.

When and where is the Sense and Sensibility group read? It's an Austen I haven't read yet.

UMMM -- I definitely recommend from your TBR list -- the Austen, Atwood, Chopin, Cather, Hardy and Obama. Sea of Poppies is on my list for this year.

14 - DCFTA is on my definitely reading this year list. Oryx and Crake I think I will read shortly. The 75 Books group is doing an Austenathon this year. Links to the S&S threads (and the other group read they are doing - Beowulf, Cloud Atlas, A Glastonbury Romance, Future Women, and ISOLT #3) is here.

13 - I think I'm going to hit it for the Reading Globally theme read on 'The Sea' in July-Sep.

15 - Crossposted, but thanks for the recs!

Lots of great books to choose from--or from which to choose, if you're picky! ;-)

I read in Origins of the Specious that there's no basis in the English language for banning sentences that end in prepositions. Changed my life.

Or, as Winston Churchill is alleged to have said, "This is something up with which I will not put."

Ha! Ha! I knew that, but I think I will still feel self-conscious until I know that everyone else knows that--sounds like serious self-esteem issues, huh? ;-)

We should start a campaign: Free Your Prepositions!

According to Amazon UK River of Smoke will be published there on June 6. I loved Sea of Poppies, the first book in Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy, so I'll definitely read River of Smoke once it is released. Thanks for the info!

Ohh - what a wonderful reading list and you are reading my all time fav. author - Fyodor Dostoevsky, such a tortured genius of a writer.

I am not going to read the River of Smoke as I found the Sea of Poppies rather a labour. I think my attention span is too short or something. I might treat myself to a reread of Crime and Punishment instead!

I'm curious on your thoughts on Flight of the Hawk. That's a nice list in post #4. I was mixed on The Map that Changed the World. Heavy on biography, and too short on geology, IMHO.

I had this slow-in-coming realization on the title Sea of Poppies - which is heavily themed on slave labor - that the "Sea of Poppies" is, of course, a reference disregarded masses of Indian coolies. I was mixed on this book when I first read it because of the difficult to swallow the coincidences. But, I'm glad a read it. It opened the Indian Ocean up for me.

I was very disappointed in The Hungry Tide by Ghosh, so I was not motivated to read Sea of Poppies. I loved the sense of place, but I found it much too didactic for me. Can anyone tell me if this is an issue with Sea of Poppies?

"Didactic" in no way describes how I saw Sea of Poppies. Sure Ghosh had (and still has) some serious points to make, but he was also having fun. It's an entertaining novel.

18-22: There will be plenty of dangling prepositions here I'm sure. My grammer gets worse every year - it's all these architects I think.

23,24,26-28: Good to know. I saw a couple great reviews of it last year and then found it at the all-books-$1-sale so picked it up.

25: I'm having a tough time with the ebook format. I don't have an ereader so it's all on my laptop and I go through long periods of not reading them. In fact, most things on my tbr have been sitting lonely on the side of the bed for some time. Ashame about The Map that Changed the World. I got it mainly for the geographical aspects. Bought at the same time as this 1823 map of the world's rivers and mountains (link goes to the Flickr page for larger sizes).

#27 - Rebecca, it's a bit of a relief to see someone else who has mixed feelings about Ghosh. I have been slapped down elsewhere on LT for saying this, but while I always find his books very interesting, I don't think he's very good at writing people - especially women. Perhaps because of this, my favourite book of his is the memoir, In An Antique Land.

That said, I haven't read Sea Of Poppies yet so can't answer your specific question. I do generally get round to reading all his books though because of the interesting settings/backgrounds to the stories.

Jane, I love your map!

Yes, it's a wonderful map!!

31/32 - It's pretty fascinating (though inaccurate I'm sure).

Jane, lovely map! ....regarding The Map that Changed the World - If you have a hard cover copy with dustcover, be sure to take off the dustcover and open it up. It's a copy of William Smith's geologic map of the England/Scotland/Wales. (or, go here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Geological_map_Britain_Willia... )

That map is so pretty, I'm now a bit jealous. I have the dust cover for The Map that Changed the World posted up on my wall.

34 - Bah! I've got the paperback.

>29 janemarieprice: jane, fabulous map! Where do you shop for prints like that?

37 - It was at Metsker Maps in Seattle.

Happy Three Kings Day, y'all! The official start of the Mardi Gras season.

So go watch this most awesome thing on YouTube. (Professor Longhair, Dr. John, Earl King, & The Meters doing Big Chief)

And have a slice of king cake:

Thanks for sharing that video, Jane! And thanks for the King Cake.

I introduced New Orleans pralines to my best friends in Wisconsin yesterday. I placed an order with Aunt Sally's Pralines that arrived there just before I left.

Well, Jane, yum. Makes me wish I was going to back to NO this year.

So I am reading but trying desperatly to finish up The Brothers Karamazov before moving on to other things (also failing miserably at this).

In the meantime, a cool thing happened today I'd like to share. My cousin sent me a picture of my grandfather's grave marker which I had never seen. Other than the standard army stuff, his epitaph reads:

"Peace
I like it that way"

Pretty awesome.

Jane,

Thanks for sharing the the epitaph. It gives one hope.

Love it.

Lovely, Jane.

#41 me too. Thanks for sharing that.

Jane: it is good to see that most of us suffer from the buy now, read whenever disease! I'm so guilty of that. Your mentions of Dostoyevsky makes me yearn for his books again. It's been so long since he and I met. . .

I'll keep an eye on your thread for all these literary delights, but specially for your thoughts on Julia Child's cooking, Flannery O'Connor, and more classics such as Wilkie Collins, Austen, and the Brontes.

Saro

Jane: I like your 2010 favourites, and you have some luscious TBRs - #4.

#27 Rebecca, I don't think Sea of Poppies is your cup of tea.

I want to track some of my cooking here this year as well (particularly if I cook recipes from my cookbooks).

Last night: baked triggerfish with peach and sage gravy (gravy from Emeril at the Grill), grilled veggies, and cornbread.

Today: chili or tacos for lunch; dinner pork chops, green beans and saffron risotto (Molto Italiano).

#48: Mmm!

*checking last minute flights from Atlanta to JFK*

Can you describe triggerfish?

#47, Thanks, Amanda!

Peach and sage gravy? I'm trying to imagine that... Was it fresh sage? I would try it, but I don't cook that much anymore. But I do love gravy!

New York Magazine; December 20-27, 2010

Everything But the Oink - A guide to all things pig including the 35 best pork dishes in the city, a guide to heritage breeds, and account of one man’s true farm-to-table dining experience, and a guide to pork cuts.

Reasons to Love New York - literary hits: #16. Because We’re Home to Not Only the Publishing Industry But Also to a Woman Who Spends Her Days Smelling Books (see more on her website) and #28. Because Writers Who Can Write, Teach.

50 - Triggerfish is a larger white fish similar to a snapper.

52 - It was pretty easy - made with peach preserves and fresh sage which was mainly cooked down in about a half cup of chicken broth.

Seriously going to get some reviews done soon, hopefully a couple tonight.

She Came in Through the Kitchen Window by Stephen J. Spignesi

I got this for my husband to go along with his Beatles box set. I probably won’t ever make any of these recipes, but I had a great time reading through it – aside from the recipes there are little fun facts. All of the recipe titles are some riff on a song title or lyric. Some of my favorites: Happiness is a Warm Bun; Baby You’re a Peach Jam; We Can Wok It Out; You’ve Got to Fry Your Love Away; Can’t Buy Me Fudge; and Sundae’s on the Phone to Monday.

The Southern Review (Autumn 2010)

I’m going to post my thoughts on each of the items in the review, but since there are so many, I’m going to do them a few at a time.

The theme appears to be liquidity from what I can tell so far.

Where Has He Gone? by Kevin Prufer – Poetry – A young boy is lost when he gets in a life raft and loses the ship. Shifting perspectives were nice.

The Woman at the Pond by Ron Rash – Short Fiction – A beautiful story of middle-aged man - who dropped out of college to move back to his small hometown and marry his pregnant high school girlfriend – watching a local pond being drained which he regularly fished at in school. Most of the story is his reminiscence of meeting a girl one night after her boyfriend leaves her at the pond. Suspense builds as the reader realizes he is watching the draining because of what he fears may be at the bottom. The first line: “Water has its own archaeology, not a layering but a leveling, and thus truer to our sense of the past, because what is memory but near and far events spread and smoothed beneath the present’s surface.” I added his collection of short stories, Burning Bright, to the wishlist based on the strength of this story.

Isn’t it somewhat romantic and A picture is worth eight hundred and seventy-four words by Bob Hicok** – Poetry – Two very funny poems about relationships. ‘A picture…’ in particular was amusing – telling the tale of a young couple who decide to send each other nude photos before doing the deed. The boy deciding to tuck it after he

“brought the camera to eye and aimed it at the mirror,
I laughed, laughed and thought, Johnson, wang, schlong,
puddle rudder, meatcycle, and noticed once more
that the penis, especially the flaccid penis, appears
to be what God was working on when the phone rang.”

The Litter Bearers and Portraits of the Artist with Montale by Mark Wagenaar – Poetry – Very atmospheric, lyrical poems.

My Two Weeks as a Fellini Extra by Jessica Levine – Essay – As indicated by the title, a tour through Levine’s two weeks as a rollerskating ‘Tall One’ in the Fellini film City of Women and her Italian relationships. It cuts through any ideas of glamour, but ultimately it didn’t gel for me.

The Voice in the Other Room and Why I Don’t Drink Before Readings by David Kirby – Poetry - Two darkly humorous poems – the first about the moans and ‘Oh God’ coming from next door; the second about the important people attending said reading.

The Former Pirate on His Way Back to Lisbon by Weston Cutter – Poetry – An overboard pirate, lovely language.

**I really enjoyed his work. You can read several of his poems at The Poetry Foundation. Particularly good were A private public space, After working sixty hours again for what reason, O my pa-pa, Spirit ditty of no fax-line dial tone, and Unmediated experience (reposted below because it’s the shortest).

Unmediated experience

She does this thing. Our seventeen-
year-old dog. Our mostly deaf dog.
Our mostly dead dog, statistically
speaking. When I crouch.
When I put my mouth to her ear
and shout her name. She walks away.
Walks toward the nothing of speech.
She even trots down the drive, ears up,
as if my voice is coming home.
It’s like watching a child
believe in Christmas, right
before you burn the tree down.
Every time I do it, I think, this time
she’ll turn to me. This time
she’ll put voice to face. This time,
I’ll be absolved of decay.
Which is like being a child
who believes in Christmas
as the tree burns, as the drapes catch,
as Santa lights a smoke
with his blowtorch and asks, want one?

Did some gallery hopping this weekend. A short roundup:

Callum Innes | Colm Tóibín : Water | Colour at Sean Kelly Gallery - Watercolors and short story – Excellent exhibit. Tóibín wrote the short story Water | Colour based on Innes’s watercolors. After reading the story, Innes painted a new series of 101 watercolors to accompany it. The paintings are two-tone colors and are displayed alongside quotes from the story. Particularly nice was that as you read the quotes around the room they sort of flow back into one another. An image of the show and one of the paintings:





There is also a beautiful exhibition catalog with the full story and all of the paintings reproduced at full scale for sale by the gallery.

Tony Feher : Next On Line at The Pace Gallery - Sculpture – Clear tubes filled with colored water curled across the floor.



Alois Kronschlaeger : Allotropisms at Cristin Tierney Gallery - Sculpture – Wood and mesh framework with dripped paint.



Nathan Harger at Hasted Kraeutler - Photography – Ultra high contrast photographs that seem to fade into line drawings.



R. Luke DuBois : A More Perfect Union at Bitforms Gallery - Graphic Design / Visual Information – An interesting project mapping the vocabulary of dating websites.



Robert Jack : Anatomy of the Eye at Joseé Bienvenu Gallery - Painting – Extremely detailed (almost pointillist) works. Definitely the kind of neurotic stuff I get jazzed about and would do myself.



Detail shot of same painting:

Nice! Love the art!

ooh, very soothing lines, dots, and pale colors in the last few. And DuBois should collect those maps into a book.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

This was my first Austen, and I enjoyed it a good bit. The three sisters being eerily similar to my sisters and I being a contributing factor. I can see why Austen is so popular. Despite several things which didn’t work for me – the dramatics of how poor the family is (you have servants, you’re not poor!) and the inexplicable attraction Marianne and Colonel Brandon have for one another – I was sucked into the story. The real beauty of the work lies in the pitch-perfect characters – who among us has not had a Lucy Steele in their lives, that wretched cow. I will definitely be searching out more Austen.

Elinor and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility are probably the closest reflection of Jane and her sister Cassandra -- and amazingly, Marianne is the one Jane identified with. It's a lovely Austen -- and so is the film with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet if you haven't seen it.

>60 janemarieprice: - I think 'poverty' is relative: if the characters didn't have servants in the early 1800s they would have effectively stopped being 'ladies' and become 'peasants'. It's one thing for heroes falling in love with an impoverished lady but a peasant!

>61 janeajones: - it is a good film but has one problem - Emma Thompson. She's a good decade too old for the role. The recent BBC adaptation was not bad as well.

61 - Interesting that she would identify with Marianne. I found it odd that I have two younger sisters and we mirrored the personalities in a way. I'm not nearly so severe that I won't speak my mind, nor is my middle sister silly, and obviously my youngest sister has some personality; but the general pattern was an interesting parallel.

62 - Yes, I also know that partly it's a product of it's time. It was just so much about money right at the beginning that is totally foreign to me, it took me a little while to get through that part.

61/62 - I've seen the Thompson/Winslet movie which I enjoyed a great deal. Thompson is much too old, but she's such a good actress I could forgive it.

Two Viking Romances

Two delightfully ribald tales of Viking heroes and their various quests and captured maidens. Very enjoyable and something I would like to search out more of – especially if I could find a good volume with copious notes for some of the mythology.

Jane, have you read The Long Ships? I found it loads of fun and almost impossible to put down. Nothing on the mythology, but great on story and character. It was one of my favorite reads of last year.

Blindness by Jose Saramago

“It was my fault, she sobbed, and it was true, no one could deny it, but it is also true, if this brings her any consolation, that if, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probably, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much-talked-of immortality, Possibly, but this man is dead and must be buried.”

The above passage is representative of the entire book – both the style, large chunks with no quotation marks with commas usually separating the dialog, and themes, philosophical discussions from an oft-present though unidentified narrator mixed with stark realities of a world in which a contagious white blindness strikes a country. In the dystopian society which develops, a large group is quarantined in an abandoned mental hospital. The characters remain unnamed as does the location. We follow them through gruesome trials and menial tasks. Saramago is a beautiful writer, though I don’t think for everyone. The pace is slow; the narrator frequently interjects pieces of plot information, past or future events, or simply musings. Another example:

“In fact, however reluctant we might be to admit it, these distasteful realities of life also have to be considered, when the bowels function normally, anyone can have ideas, debate, for example, whether there exists a direct relationship between the eyes and feelings, or whether the sense of responsibility is the natural consequence of clear vision, but when we are in great distress and plagued by pain and anguish that is when the animal side of our nature becomes most apparent.”

I enjoyed this very much, and I think it will stay with me for quite some time. Not a comfortable read but a very good one.

>63 janemarieprice: - everybody remembers the romance aspect of Austen but they seem to forget how much of it is about money and class.

>66 janemarieprice: -my reaction to Blindness was mixed. Some of it was very well done and powerful but some of it was just stupid why does the only sighted person allow herself, and others, to be placed in that situation - hasn't she read In the Country of the Blind. I didn't accept Saramago's reasoning re this. Other parts of it, after the escape from the asylum managed to be well-done but still quite cliched (Although I'm not sure you can do anything new with that scenario though). The ending felt a bit of a cop-out.
However none of this may matter if you read it as an allegory of Portugal under the 'Estado Novo' dictatorship (it fell in 1974).

#66
I liked the extracts Jane and so this is probably a book for me. Its interesting also what jargoneer says about it being an allegory of Portugal under a dictatorship. Is this obvious to the reader I wonder?

67 - I agree with many of your comments, particularly regarding the strangeness of the plot. What made it for me was the language. And I agree, you have to read it as allegory.

68 - I think if you know a small amount about the author it's easy to see it that way - surreal plot contributing to this.

65 - No I haven't read The Long Ships but added it my wishlist. Nice review by the way.

Cooking update: This weekend was a big Cajun feast with Gumbo, White Beans, Stuffed Bell Peppers, and Cornbread.

I enjoyed your comments about and excerpts from Blindness, Jane. It remains my favorite novel by Saramago.

Your Cajun feast sounds wonderful. Did you have king cake with it? Can you get a king cake in NYC?

The mother of one of my partners visited from Bogalusa, and brought us a king cake. To our great surprise there wasn't a baby Jesus inside!

Clouds now and then
Bringing men relief
From moon viewing.
Is that Basho?

“Water has its own archaeology, not a layering but a leveling, and thus truer to our sense of the past, because what is memory but near and far events spread and smoothed beneath the present’s surface.”

Catching up. I love that line, it needed repeating (from post #56).

I liked Blindness but didn't love it, because I'm not fond of dystopian novels, but I loved Saramago's use of punctuation to pull us into the story as one of the blind.

71 - We ordered a king cake for the Superbowl though there is a bakery by our house that makes them (never had it so can't say how authentic). It is one of the things I miss most. There was a king cake in the office every day from King's Day till Mardi Gras.

72 - I'm not sure about that one. It wasn't in the volume I had at any rate.

73 - Thanks. I thought it was really lovely.

74 - It was one of the more successful alternative punctuations I've seen.

Really busy of late so I've been wallowing in fantasy as I always do when life gets crazy. I will catch up on my reviews this week/weekend.

In the meantime, here's a little Mardi Gras playlist:

Professor Longhair & The Meters; Tipitina
Danny Barker & Baby Dodds Trio; My Indian Red
Professor Longhair; Go To The Mardi Gras
The Meters; Hey Pocky A-Way
Professor Longhair, Dr. John, Earl King, & The Meters; Big Chief

Happy Mardi Gras, Jane! And thanks for sharing those videos.

Ditto -- fun music.

Just catching up after a long absence. I loved Blindness as well, despite it not exactly being a comfortable read.

Coming very late to your party, Jane. Enjoyed reading through your thread. Just spent about 20 minutes with that fascinating map at #29 (the enlargement). Too much to comment on at this late date, but will be at least lurking hereafter.

I posted this in response to your request on my thread, too, but here is the link to the Jane Eyre group read.

>75 janemarieprice: - where's Irma Thomas? Isn't she the Soul Queen of New Orleans?

A little Dirty Dozen Brass Band as well???

80 - Thanks, I'll definitely join in that one.

81 - Irma's definitely the queen, but nobody beats Prof Longhair IMO. Those are the big Mardi Gras songs, or at least my favorite ones. Couple weeks ago we got to catch Dr. John and the High and Mighty Brass Band - excellent show. Dirty Dozen is one of my favorites though - heads up to those in NYC, they are playing the Brooklyn Bowl on April 7th.

Oxford American
Issue 72

Colors That Bleed: The Civil War on its 150th Birthday - a nice reminder that history is not simply divided.

There’s Your Story: Eavesdropping on the Set of Treme - love the show, article was unfortunately more of a recording of what the writer experienced, too fanboy.

The Secret Was in the Sauce: An Argument Against the Creationist School of Southern Cooking – particularly traces the popularity of friend green tomatoes following the 1992 movie and the mythmaking surrounding southern dishes.

Judy Bonds (1952-2011): American Patriot – memorial to the WV native who fought big coal.

The Red and the Black: Are African-American Republicans the Most Minority Group of All? - the author’s experiences with her African-American Republican mother, interesting but I didn’t feel like it came to any conclusions.

Growing Up on a Tandem Bicycle: Flashes from the Eudora Welty / William Maxwell Correspondence – excerpts from the new book What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell.

Finger-Lickin’ Rap: Derided in the Recent Past by Critics on Both Coasts, Southern Rap is Surging – way more interesting than I would have expected, talks about the claims of east and west coast rappers that southern rap is minstrelesque.

Ivory Towers: A White Woman’s Journey in a Black University – loose recollections of the author’s time as a professor at Fisk.

Added to my wishlist from the Books section: Richard Misrach: Destroy this Memory (photographs of New Orleans), Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World by John Szwed (biography of the noted folklorist and ethnomusicologist), Bloodline: Five Stories by Ernest J. Gaines (review of the story The Sky is Gray.

Web Only: Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe, illustrated by J.B. Bonivert - one of my favorite Poe poems.

Still to read – the fiction and poetry sections. This is my first issue of this magazine and I’m pleasantly surprised by how dense it is in terms of content.

Columbia Magazine
Fall 2010

The Ballad of Kitt & Yorkey - details the development of the duo’s Broadway smash Next to Normal which has one the Pulitzer Prize and a handful of Tonys.

Oil + Water - great interview with Roger N. Anderson of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory regarding the Deepwater Horizon well explosion.

You and Whose Army? - very interesting article on Lt. Col. Jason Dempsey’s research on armed forces members’ political affiliations.

New York Magazine
March 7th

Toast Is Burning - the toast renaissance.

The Sketchbook Project - 10,000 sketchbooks were mailed around the world, filled, and returned for this touring gallery show (full tour schedule here).

February 21-28 Fashion Issue

Why Fashion Keeps Tripping Over Race

>83 janemarieprice: I never thought to record my periodical reading. I am at least two months behind on most of it, so no thoughts I had would be very timely. The last 2 years or so, I read my magazines as they arrived and found it had a negative impact on my book reading, so I am making a concerted effort to focus on books now, to the detriment of all else. I really need to find a happy medium!

84 - Honestly, I've read a lot of periodicals recently because they are easy to read while watching March Madness. :)

Playing Ball with the Boys: The Rise of Women in the World of Men's Sports by Betsy M. Ross

More of a series of interviews and profiles of women involved in the sporting industry in various capacities than a unified thesis, but I found myself breezing through it nonetheless. Part of the reason for that is that this is a subject of great interest to me. Though I never played a ‘boys’ sport, I’ve always enjoyed sports, was a tomboy, and am still ‘one of the guys’ in the sense that I tend to connect with men on a friendship level more than women. The other reason for my enjoyment was the variety of women Ross profiles. I went into it expecting mostly women working on the broadcast end of things, but she profiles women coaching, working in the managing end of teams, in advertising, sports medicine, etc. What was very sad for me was realizing how relatively long ago some of the gender barriers in these fields were broken only to see very few if any others reach the same level.

My biggest complaint, however, would be the cursory way in which Title IX is dealt with. Title IX requires equal access to educational opportunities, programs, and activities regardless of sex. This opened the door for organized female sports at all levels. It has become an increasingly complicated issue in recent years because the legislation provides no standard for judging what ‘equal’ means. Some universities implement it by having equal numbers of female and male athletic scholarships; some maintain a number in proportion to the student body demographics - you run into problems with both of these methods because a sport like football that is all male has 85 scholarships and there is no comparably large female sport. Therefore, many athletic departments use Title IX as a reason for cutting programs. It’s an issue I find interesting and am not sure what the best way to handle it is. It would have been nice to see this dealt with on a level above superficiality.

I got a gift card for which I cashed in for some books by my favorite fantasy author Sharon Shinn

Troubled Waters
Exactly what I was looking for. Zoe, after the death of her father, is returned to the capital city to marry the king. However, she escapes once there and we follow her journey of discovery of her past, political intrigue, and magic. In this world, people and families belong to various elemental groups which have effects on their personalities. The plot was fast paced and exciting. Zoe, like most of Shinn’s heroines was dynamite.

Quatrain
Four novellas set in the worlds’ of Shinn’s other books.

Flight set in the world of the Samaria series - A former angel-seeker now worries that her niece will follow the same path. Enjoyable but felt a bit rushed.

Blood set in the world of Heart of Gold – A Gulden man’s search for his mother in the capital city. Loved this one – all of the characters were complex which is a treat in a novella.

Gold set in the world of Summers at Castle Auburn – A princess is spirited away to an addictive fairy land to avoid a war. My favorite in this book, quite a mesmerizing world.

Flame set in the world of the Twelve Houses series - A prequel to the Twelve Houses series in which Senneth finds herself in trouble in a small town when her magical abilities are realized. The weakest of the four, there was little plot to speak of.

The Safe-Keeper Series – Loosely a series as there are no recurring characters, just set in the same world. Tagged as young adult but not overly childish.

The Safe-Keeper's Secret
When the Safe-Keeper of the village dies, the two children she has raised must struggle to find our where their place in the world lies and what secrets their mother kept even from them. Even though I could see the twists coming in advance it was still nicely unfurled. It had a kind of delicate touch to it.

The Truth-Teller's Tale
Twins Eleda and Adele are mirror opposites in all of their life – one a Safe-Keeper and one a Truth-Teller. When their flighty friend falls for the dancing instructor’s assistant, chaos ensues with a rash of secrets and mistaken identities. Plot wise the best of the series with lots of twists and turns.

The Dream-Maker's Magic
My favorite of the series and the most complex. Kellen is raised as a boy by her mother who swears she birthed a male child. She befriends Gryffin, a crippled boy. While the ending was a bit too neat, I thought the emotional relationships were realistic.

New York Magazine
March 28th

Water Water Everywhere - A good reminder that Katrina was not an isolated incident – 55% of Americans live in counties protected by Corps levees. New York is particularly vulnerable.

Miss Grundy Was Fired Today - A profile of controversial former DC school superintendent Michelle Rhee. Still very unsure how I feel about education reform.

Not Quite Copenhagen - Infuriating article about the fight of NYC’s new bike lanes (particularly the Propect Park South one). *There was a profanity strew sentence here, but I have decided to restrain myself.*

Group Think - A sort of review of Tina Rosenberg’s new book, but more a complaint about so-called ‘big idea books’. Curious what others think about this. I agree to a certain extent – there do seem to be a rash of nonfiction books that draw together many fields and coalesce them into some overall thesis that tends to have a save the world type message. I almost always agree that nothing is so simple.


Oxford American
Issue 72

Dean's Crash: A Short History of the Flying Faulkners - creative nonfiction – Very interesting account of interviewing a resident of the town where William Faulkner’s brother died in a plane crash.

Family Blood – A young woman’s trip home amidst fears about her brother and mother. Very lyrical, but didn’t totally gel for me.

Another Long Haul – A trucker hears his wayward father on a CB and tracks him down. Quite good.

Poetry
Nice bit from I, you, reader, stoned man, silly lady by Peter Cooley

"I, you, reader, stoned man, silly lady,
we're all some mirror of the admiring sky"

Very nicely laid out with great collages by Mark Weaver (I highly suggest a Google image search, he’s got some trippy stuff). One from the piece:

Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? edited by David Rutledge

I wish I would have read this before the follow-up, Where We Know. It is a similarly beautiful book – well designed, laid out, edited, and written. Striking in the fact that it was produced so quickly after Katrina. I find most things written shortly after got bogged down trying to do and say too much – I know my own work did. They tried to describe every little facet of New Orleans, every personality and neighborhood, every nuance of a life you cannot possibly understand unless you have lived it. Do You Know does not fall into any of these traps. Each essay confines itself to one topic, but it is that subtlety that makes them telling. The reason I wish I would have read it after Where We Know, is that the immediacy of the pieces for me felt like a still in shock phase. They did not have the emotional power of the sequel nor were they as firmly rooted in the historical – both long and short term. Now, I think it is still one of the best things I have read about New Orleans and a necessary read for anyone interested in that time period, but I would suggest reading the two in order.

Jane, I'm enjoying your magazine and literary journal summaries, and I think I'll co-opt your idea. I have a few years' worth of back issues of The Paris Review, the Bellevue Literary Review and Callaloo that I haven't read; I'll try to read at least 1-2 of these every month, and summarize them on my thread. I did read the excellent Art of Fiction interview of Louise Erdrich in issue 195 (Winter 2010) of The Paris Review this weekend, so I'll make that the first one that I read.

Nice review of Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?; I also enjoyed that collection.

Nice reviews. I'm interested in Do You Know What it Means to be Miss New Orleans. Sounds tempting.

I love the art you feature here (so wished I had access to the galleries you visited in >57 janemarieprice:); I'm interested to see that >83 janemarieprice: The Sketchbook Project is coming my way this summer.

New York Magazine
March 14-21

Latter-Day Saints - Not sure I’m glad I read this. I love South Park and want to see The Book of Mormon, but there may be a little bit of knowing too much about the artist here.

Peter King’s Muslim Problem - Only made it halfway in and threw the magazine across the room.

Dwell
April 2011

An Introduction to Home Gardening - sort of vague, some good tidbits, but nothing you wouldn’t know if you had ever planted anything. Great drawings to go with it though.

Shadowrise by Tad Williams

More interesting than the second in the series, you learn a lot more about the fae world and see a good set up for the final volume. Looking forward to the finale.

Seeing by Jose Saramago

I loved Blindness and so was looking forward to this semi-sequel. Unfortunately it was a disappointment. The language is just as beautiful:

"The second voter took another ten minutes to appear, but from then on, albeit unenthusiastically, one by one, like autumn leaves slowly detaching themselves from the boughs of a tree, the ballot papers dropped into the ballot box."

And the premise is intriguing – that of an election where the majority of people submit blank ballots in the capital city, the government abandons the place, and political maneuverings follow in which the characters of Blindness become suspects. Somehow, though, it just didn’t hold my interest in the same way. I found the pacing extremely slow and kept setting it down for long periods.

I find the narration of both books fascinating. Sometimes it interjects as in this excerpt:

"or if it simply had to happen because that was its destiny, from which would spring soon-to-be-revealed consequences, forcing the narrator to set aside the story he was intending to write and to follow the new course that had suddenly appeared on his navigation chart. It is difficult to give such an either-or question an answer likely to satisfy such a reader totally. Unless, of course, the narrator wwere to be unusually frank and confess that he had never been quite sure how to bring to a successful conclusion this extraordinary tale of a city which, en masse, decided to return blank ballot papers"

Another interesting bit is the unnamed characters. everyone is referred to in some way in which they are known – their job, something that happened to them etc. – except the dog which does have a name. Curious.

Gateway by Sharon Shinn

Another Shinn, set in St. Louis and an alternate version of it. I blew through this one on a plane and it was an entertaining young adult fantasy but not as strong as most of her work. The characters lacked the depth that I’m used to with her work, but the plot moved along well and kept me reading.

95: Nice review, Jane. I keep meaning to get Blindness at the Library, but I'm always distracted with other things. Your review has reminded me why I wanted to read it in the first place.

I love the chronicle of your reading (and gallery-hopping). There's such variety in your sources and your reading - a eclectic palate! Your chronicle is very much like what I imagined we'd all do in the original Club Read idea (back in the Crustacean Period of late 2008); but even I fail at doing something similar consistently.

97 - Being a bit farther away from it now, I must say that the real beauty is in the language, very evocative.

98 - Thanks. It helps me to keep track of other things because I always remember something interesting I read somewhere but can never find it. I've never been very good a keeping a physical journal. For a while, I would pull out articles I thought were interesting but then I would be low on space and throw them out. This seems like the easiet way.

Catching up on more magazine reading:

Dwell
May 2011

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore - Photo journal of Greensburg, KS, a 1400 person town that was completely wiped out by an F5 tornado and made the decision to rebuild green.

A Platform for Living - Beautiful weekend home/camp northwest of Tokyo. Just look at that view:



20th Century Fox - Eero Saarinen / Alexander Girard designed home which will open to the public soon.

Columbia Magazine
Spring 2011

A Sentimental Education - Interview and article about playwright Tony Kushner who is just genius.

The World in a Jug - Book review of Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World, a new biography of Alan Lomax, folklorist and ethnomusicologist, famous for discovering such talent as Lead Belly and Jelly Roll Morton. I must get this book.

Beauty and Brains - Fascinating end piece about the visualization of the brain – out in coffee table book Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Centruy


Photomicrograph of a mouse hippocampus

New York Magazine
April 11, 2011

The New York Apartment: A Biography A history of apartment typologies; tales of neighbors, apartment purchasing, nostalgia, homeless neighbors, house-sitting, renting on a tugboat; profile of extreme apartments; update on the sale of the Chelsea hotel; how NY apartments are portrayed on screen; a tale of life in the famous Ansonia building; and artist apartments

Today’s Gowanus Is Tomorrow’s Tribeca - The up and coming neighborhoods, one of which is mine for better or worse.

April 25, 2011

This ‘Melo Is - Profile of Carmel Anthony’s return to NY.

"How are you…How are you all?" - Excerpts from conversations of New Yorkers with their family members in Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Libya during the recent uprisings.

A Little Less Crazy After All These Years - Interview with Paul Simon about his new album. I love him so much.

May 2, 2011

The Comic Stylings of Brian Williams - Interesting article about his comedy work made more interesting by the great fact dropped that he has a backpack that he carries with him everywhere, 24 hours a day, with his passport and everything else he needs to go anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice. Fascinating.

May 9, 2011

They’re Heeeeeeere - Profile of invasive species.

The University Has No Clothes - Infuriating article about the rise in claims that college is unnecessary or overvalued.

Extreme Decor - Six extreme designs, my favorite being the black and white rental – living/dining done in electrical tape, bedroom with fabric and black ink, and study with black and white photographs.

hmm, I may have to subscribe to New York Magazine. I wish that issue on apartments was a whole book!

I subscribed to New York Magazine for many years but it got so tacky I gave up. I know someone who gave up his subscription and then was enticed to renew it by an unbelievably low-price offer; I'm waiting for the same. I am old enough to remember the really fun competitions they used to have at the end of each issue, and I miss those.

>102 rebeccanyc: drat, that sounds like my experience with Chicago Magazine :( I'll take a look at some issues at the library.

Well, this just started showing up at our house one day. It's addressed to myself and my husband so obviously someone sent it to us, but we haven't found out who yet. The food sections are definitely my favorite parts and occasionally there are issues that are really interesting (like the apartment one), but a lot of articles I skip.

>100 janemarieprice: What did you take away from the "University has No Clothes" article?

105 - Hmm...I can see where they are coming from - the idea that tuition has increased so much that you don't get as good a return on your investment. But, first, the two main guys in the article are advocating not going to college and just figuring yourself out or becoming an entrepreneur. That's not really that easy to just fall into out of high school. It's downright impossible if your parents aren't wealthy and willing to support your slack.

Second, these same guys are wealthy, college-educated, white men who lets face it are sending their freaking kids to college. It has a slight veneer of ‘college was so much more worthwhile when those poor brown kids weren’t here to lessen the value’. I don’t think that’s really what these guys are about but it makes me uncomfortable.

Third, is the country really that much better with me managing a store in the mall in my hometown or doing what I do now and paying much more in taxes and student loan interest (that I presume employs someone).

And finally, they just gloss over the non-financial benefits of college. I love school. I want to go back to school. There are things I learned and experiences I had and ways I learned how to think that you don’t get from working (obviously the same can be said of work vs. college). Now, I don’t think college is for everyone, and that’s an interesting discussion that I think more people should be having. But this article focused mainly on the money side and didn’t really touch anything else.

I WILL finish my backlogged reviewing this week. In the meantime, here is my birthday presents from my wonderful husband:



Larousse Gastonomique and coffee cup with a bear inside.

New York Magazine
May 16, 2011

Paper Tigers - Not sure about this angry polemic on Asian-American overachieving and place in society. A worthy topic that devolved into happiness and success being defined as being a CEO and fucking blondes.

”You Never Forget That First Taste of War” - A profile of war photographers following the deaths of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Lybia.

No. 1 With an Umlaut - crossposted from the Interesting Articles thread. Not really my thing but thought it might be of interest.

The Kitchen Debate’s Actual Kitchen - The Kitchen Debate photo between Nixon and Khrushchev is probably the second most presented photograph in school’s of architecture throughout the nation. The house it was based on has recently been found by the architect’s grandson who is making a documentary about it.



And this fabulous bookshelf:



May 23, 2011

Where to Drink 2011 - few interesting sounding new places. Specialty cocktails really big right now – gorgeous slideshow of colorful ones. I went and tried this excellent Cajun Manhattan (bacon infused-bourbon, maple syrup, bitters, and Tabasco):



42 Minutes With Harry Shearer - Recently made a documentary about Katrina and the Corps of Engineers. You go Harry!

May 30, 2011

Last Supper of the Food Hacks - NY Mag’s food critic’s last 47 course dinner at the famed El Bulli which will close at the end of July.

Alfresco, All the Time - Outdoor spaces for dining, drinking, and snacking. Yay summer!

June 6, 2011

A Serial Killer in Common - An interview with the sisters and mothers of the women killed by the Long Island serial killer. Not the best companion read for 2666.

The Man Who Had HIV and Now Does Not - Absolutely fascinating. Some years after being diagnosed with HIV and controlling it with antiretrovirals, Timothy Brown was diagnosed with leukemia. He was given a bone marrow transplant from a donor with a specific genetic mutation which is very resistant to HIV. Since the second transplant in 2008, Brown has not resumed the antiretrovirals and has no detectable HIV virus (most HIV positive individuals controlled with antiretrovirals still have hidden copies of the virus).

The Urbanist’s Chicago - Just making me more and more sad that I have never been. Best bit was the segment where a Sox fan and Cub fan have to say what they like about the other stadium/fanbase.

An Out-of-Tune Piano - A pretty solid drubbing of the new Whitney museum design.

Dwell
June 2011

Grills Gone Wild - Profile of various portable grills. Cute.

Tunquen Treasure - Passive beach house in Chile.



Melbourne, Australia - Nice feature on the city and interview with one of its more famous architects.

Beach Reading - Silly reimagining of popular books as design focused.

Un’Introduzione al Disegno Italiano - History and current state of the Italian design industry.

The Believer
March/April 11

Virginia Mountain Scream Queen: My Life in B Movies by Rebecca Taylor – One woman’s interesting journey making low budget horror flicks.

The Factory Model of Desire: Walt Disney and Hugh Hefner Moved to L.A. and Forver Changed Sex, Death, and Boredom in America by Peter Lunenfeld – I have no idea how you compare Hugh Hefner and Disney, but it was awesome.

A Deck of Cards and a Golden Whistle: Grave Goods of the Stars by Bess Lovejoy - Catalog of the objects buried with Harry Houdini (his mother’s letters), Rudolph Valentino (his ‘slave bracelet’), Bela Lugosi (buried in his Dracula costume), Humphrey Bogart (small gold whistle), Buster Keaton (rosary and deck of cards), Tallulah Bankhead (rabbit’s foot), and Frank Sinatra (bottle of JD, pack of Camels, Zippo, cherry Life Savers, Tootsie Rolls, stuffed animals, a dog biscuit, roll of dimes, and a note from his daughter).

Creative Accounting: Hollywood Stunt: K-Rail Slide: $319,778.96 - A break down of one stunt in one of the Bourne films. Very interesting.

The Believer Book Award and Poetry Award Shortlists

A Montage of Cinematic Montages by Toph Eggers – An amusing analysis of montage types using the Rocky movies as an example.

Musin’s and Thinkin’s: A Monthly Stroll Down Folksy Byways - A fun sort of scat on folktales and oral storytelling.

Architectural Record
April 2011

Truffle House



May 2011

Do-It-Yourself New Orleans - A brief profile of the ground-up initiatives that have drive planning in the city.

Update: Make It Right - An update on Brad Pitt’s organization building architect-designed houses in the Ninth Ward. I’ve got mixed feelings about them, but it’s driving a lot of movement in that area.

Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion - Beautiful pavilion at the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s Art and Nature Park



Also came across these cool ceramic tiles printed with a photo of a bookshelf. Figured most people here would appreciate:



June 2011

Lincoln Restaurant Pavilion and Lawn - Now open, it’s a really cool space.

Continue to love your architectural photos. They are somehow energizing.

Oxford American
The Southern Music Issue 2010

Alabama Music Section - Oxford American puts this out every year with a CD of the music and a 1-2 page profile of each song/group. Very cool. Everyone needs to go listen to that Odetta cover of the Dylan. The write-up on her is here.

Skip James on Art by Greil Marcus – Fictional story of the life of Skip James – very moody and surreal.

First of the Month by Tom Franklin – Freaky story of a family carting their dead child around with them like he is alive.

Profile: Strange Machinery by Kent Priestley – The story of John Engle – an amazing fiddler who plays through Tourette’s syndrome.

After the Storm: To Be Continued… by Dan Baum – More on the life of Wilbert Rawlins Jr., band director of O. Perry Walker High in New Orleans, who was one of the characters of Baum’s book Nine Lives.

New York Magazine
June 13-20, 2011

Ode to a Four-Letter Word - Part review of the satirical children’s book and Amazon hit Go the Fuck to Sleep, part love letter to cursing.

Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

I loved this novel. There is so much that it is hard for me to really get into a good review, but I’ll try to work through some thoughts. Set in a fictitious African country, the reader is presented with an outrageous (and recognizable) dictator, his cabinet members and various politicos, corrupt businessmen, and our protagonists, Kamiti, an accidental sorcerer, and Nyawira, a political revolutionary. The Ruler, for his birthday, plans to build a modern Tower of Babel, financed by the Global Bank, and a series of satirical events pile onto one another.

It’s a very hard book to summarize. First, it is extremely long and dense. It delves into folklore, satire, allegory, fantasy, and comedy. Among the very sharp witted political observations, one explores the psyche and relationship of Kamiti and Nyawira, two delightfully independent people. (I find often when there is a romance in a novel, the main characters become semi-monolithic.)

This was a delightful read – fast-paced, poignant, humorous, and hopeful. Highly recommend.

#112 Oh, I really have to get to that one very soon. It has been on the the top of the TBR pile for ages.

Building the Pauson House: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Rose Pauson edited by Allan Wright Green

This was a lovely collection of the correspondence between FLW and Rose Pauson, an artist who lived with her sister. Included also are rare photographs of the house which burned down a year after it was completed. I can see this being of interest for anyone wanting to understand more about the design process – the letters review basic needs, small changes and concerns, etc. This is put out by Pomegranate press which makes some really beautiful books.

Side note: The editor Allan Wright Green is the son of Rose Pauson’s niece and one of FLW’s apprentices who was working on the house. I loved that little aside.

Additional addenda:

I was lucky to get a chance to visit another Wright project a couple of weeks ago – the Usonia neighborhood in Pleasantville, NY. A very interesting cooperative neighborhood – FLW’s site plan featured circular lots which are not strictly demarcated, no one can install a fence or hedgerow to delineate property lines so it functions as a wooded area with occasional houses. We were able to go through two of the three houses Wright designed there, guided by Roland Reisley one of the home builders who has written a book about the community.

>111 janemarieprice: haha I was nth on the waiting list at my library for Go the Fuck to Sleep but when I heard Samuel L. Jackson narrates the audio, I had to go audio :) Found it on YouTube -- I listened to the posting by "geofront88" which also has all the page views (since it's adult content, you have to log in to view).

hey Jane! --" I came out Cubist: 'Extroverted, Progressive, and Intelligent'." -- that does reflect your taste in books, yes? I always enjoy lurking here. :o)

116 - Beat me to it. :)

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test...

Extroverted, Progressive, and Intelligent

1 Cubist, -5 Islamic, -7 Ukiyo-e, -11 Impressionist, -2 Abstract and -7 Renaissance!

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. It revolutionized European art and inspired changes in music and literature. The first branch of cubism, known as Analytic Cubism. It was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between 1908 and 1911 mainly in France. In its second phase, Synthetic Cubism, (using synthetic materials in the art) the movement spread and remained vital until around 1919.

People that chose Cubist paintings as their favorite art form tend to be very individualized people. They are more extroverted and less afraid of speaking their opinions then other people. They tend to be progressive and are very forward thinking. As the cubist painting is like looking into a shattered mirror where you can see different angles of the images, the people that prefer these paintings like looking at all angles of a problem. These people are intelligent and they are the transformers of our generation. They look beyond what is seen into what things could become. They are ready to leave the ideas of the past behind and look at what the future has to offer.

Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy

Pretty accurate for me. Side note: I hacked they're message to put a painting I liked better. :)

We have the same art results! I like Impressionism too, but I love the angles and edges of Cubism. The results were very reflective of my personality!

>106 janemarieprice: Oh, excellent and astute comments, jane. Your gut feelings about the piece are probably right.

I've missed your commentary, Jane -- have you moved somewhere else on LT?