If you like music, you listen to it rather than read about it. Nonetheless, this book works.
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century, by Alex Ross, is a tour-de-force of writing about music. Interweaving metaphorical descriptions of particular pieces with stories of composers’ lives and circumstances, Alex Ross leads you down the path of 20th century music. A compelling and essential read.
My Paper Chase is an autobiography Of Harold Evans’ life in journalism. It is written in episodic form, chronological in order, by Harold Evans — not surprising since it’s an autobiography. Despite his apparent humble beginnings, Harold Evans rose to apparently the top of British journalism at 39, assuming the position of Editor of the Sunday Times. During his editorship, he managed to increase readership, maintain high standards for journalism, improve health-care for Continue reading My Paper Chase, by Harold Evans (2009), 592 pages.
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)
This animated film is a follow-up to the 1995 film Ghost in the Shell by Mamoru Oshii. Machines and people are almost identical. It is difficult to discern reality.
Likely one of the most beautifully drawn and told sci-fi/noir/anime films ever made. The version we watched was in Japanese with English sub-titles.
I first saw Ghost in the Shell and did not consider it remarkable despite its reputation as one of the great Japanese animated movies. I’ll certainly re-visit it after watching Ghost in the Shell 2.
The Sun Also Rises (1926), by Ernest Hemingway.
Imagine the show “Friends”. Now imagine the show with real characters, introduce alcohol, unrequited and unobtainable love, bull-fighting, and seething silent anger with the world. Hotels as abodes. American arrogance and European condescension. And a refreshing, pared down writing style that reads as cleanly and crisply today as it did almost 85 years ago. OK. Don’t imagine the show friends. The great “Lost Generation” novel.
Is this a hopeful novel?
I read Hemingway in my late teens and liked his writing, but I never really appreciated his writing. I’m sure at that time I read A Farewell to Arms, along with Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls. At twenty in a college course I was challenged to write in Hemingway’s style in an advanced writing course. The writing came off stupid, child-like, written by a robot.
For years I put Hemingway aside, thinking his writing “just wasn’t my thing”. Instead, I enjoyed Joyce, Faulkner, and Tom Robbins — all the great 20th century artists.
A week ago I decided to give Ernie another try by reading A Farewell to Arms, his 1929 novel. How could I have missed the flat ironic tone? a tale of the walking dead? the angst of an entire generation? At this point, all I can ask is, what’s next? (Suggestion: The Sun Also Rises)
A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn (2005), 729 pages, presents a radically different view of American history — one from the point of view of working class, disenfranchised, and oppressed people. From the opening chapter’s depiction of Christopher Columbus as a genocidal megalomaniac, supported by research, you realize this is not the history we were taught in public school. The first edition was published in 1980, selling its one millionth copy 23 years later. Whether you characterize Zinn as a radical historian, a pacifist ignorant of the terrorist-fed dangers all around us, a socialist, unpatriotic, or a voice of truth emerging from a jingoistic capitalist wilderness, one thing is clear: if you have a critical mind you will never view the story of history the same way. Highly recommended.
The Basque History of the World (1999), by Mark Kurlansky
From the author of “Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World” (1998) and “Salt: A World History” (2003) comes a facinating book about a complex people more mysterious than the Picts. (Purchase all three books and support one of the better contemporary writers. Note: merely check out from your local library “The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell” (2007) — it’s not so good). Continue reading The Basque History of the World (1999), by Mark Kurlansky
I could have done a couple of things differently over the last few days. I could have listened to Mariah Carey. Or Celine Dion. But, instead, I dove deep into the 278+ page “The Secret Live of Lobsters”.
“While I do not know for certain, I believe that lobsters may feel pain,” Jelle [Atema] says. “When we kill them for food we should do so quickly. But we should also honor them with thoughtful appreciation for what they have done for us. I believe we should strive for this in all corners of our lives.”
Lobsters, p. 278.
I have always thought that a good writer could make a seemingly mundane subject come to life. And a bad writer could ruin the most interesting of subjects. This book is a testament to the former although, now, I think that lobsters are an interesting subject. So it really doesn’t prove my point. Mary Tyler Moore’s recipe in the appendix on page 273.
Lastly, if you were wondering, the phrase “seemingly mundane” was pun intended.
Back to Celine. (Actually, Anouar Brahem’s The Astounding Eyes of Rita. More on that later.)
Seven years before Francis Ford Coppola released Apocalypse Now, and 28 years before Dreamworks released The Road to El Dorado, Werner Herzog went into the Peruvian jungle with the half-deranged Klaus Kinski and made a film about Spanish conquistadors traveling down the unforgiving Amazon river in search of the mythical city of El Dorado. It is a movie about madness and power and obsession. The use of the hand-held camera, giving the film an immediate documentary feel, predates by almost 25 years the “novel” use of a hand-held camera in Breaking the Waves . “I, the wrath of God, will marry my own daughter and with her I’ll found the purest dynasty the earth has ever seen.” On a sinking man-made raft full of monkeys, even.
Werner Herzog does in 1971 what Godfrey Reggio, Philip Glass, and Ron Fricke did more popularly in 1983 with Koyaanisquatsi. A sequence of images — mirages — from the Saharan Desert, of wrecked planes, lizards, the desert itself, and a freakish vaudevillian performance at the end. Peppered with passages from the Popol Vuh, it rivited hippies, college students, and disaffected expatriates at the time it was released publicly without Herzog’s knowledge. Now it lies as a curiosity of modern documentary film-making where the viewer brings his own depth to the party.
