Invisible Cities

Another great read from my awesome book club: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Truth be told, I've had a number of Calvino books gathering dust on my bookshelves for years. It all started with If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, which I picked up roughly a decade ago and got stalled on about the fifth page. After that, there were gifts of Calvino, I tried If On A Winter's Night at least another couple of times, but to no avail. In fact, until a couple of weeks ago, there were at least five Calvino books in my/my husband's possession, neither of us had read any of them, and they did not include Invisible Cities, so I had to purchase another Calvino for book club. ARG! However, I'm really happy I did, and I'm glad my book club ladies provided me with the motivation to get through the first several pages.

Now how about I discuss the book? It's a series of vignettes about fantastical cities that Marco Polo tells to the emperor Kublai Khan. There is no plot, not a whole lot of character development - so why did I like it?? The vignettes themselves are quite lovely and often depressing in their resemblance to real life. The tone is pretty heavy, philosophical. It took me exactly 91 pages to really get into in. It was the chapter "Cities & Eyes 4" that really drew me in. This vignette describes a city that appears wonderful and unique to a newcomer but grows dull and monotonous over time; only the travelers appreciate the city because they are the only ones who actually look around them. Okay, writing it out, it sounds a bit trite - but the vignette itself is quite moving. It was the first one to really resonate with me, and then I loved all the rest. Basically, it was a lot like reading poetry - only easier because there was some kind of a story/structure -- also there were full sentences!

Thriller, Short Stories, Thriller

Woops – been away for a while, but I have several books to report on. I’ve read three since I last posted. They are:

“Ex Libris” by Ross King (literary historical thriller, mediocre)
“Dangerous Laughter” by Steven Millhauser (mysterious short stories, intriguing and good)
“Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson (cyber-uber materialistic thriller, good)

Can you tell I’m looking for some escape in my bedtime reading these days? Not going to spend a lot of time on “Ex-Libris” – it was okay, not the worst one of its kind I’ve read but certainly not the best (that designation would go to “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, which was awesome).

“Dangerous Laughter” was a nice change of pace for me as I don’t often pick up books of short stories these days. The recommendation came from the same friend who recommended “The Outlander” (thanks Dozier!), and though not as great as that, the stories were very different/creative and refreshing. The author – Steven Millhauser – wrote the novel on which the movie “The Illusionist” was based, which might give you some sense of what the stories were like. The writing is lucid; its combination with the subject matter is often startling, as the subjects are strange and surreal. Some of the stories’ central ideas are particularly fun to think about: not talking again for the rest of your life or the idea of a machine that produces touch (the sense) much as television produces vision. In some of the stories, Millhauser has a talent for disguising the absurdity of his central theme until you’re solidly into the story; it’s a jarring but fun effect. My favorite of the stories was probably the last one – “The Wizard of West Orange.”

And finally, “Pattern Recognition,” another inhalation read. Good plot, definitely scores high on the addiction measure. Gibson’s writing style is hip and modern. Although it was written in 2003 and depends heavily on cyber/modern sci-fi themes, it still feels fresh today. I haven’t read a lot of novels that often reference 9/11 (actually only one – “Emperor’s Children” by Claire Messud, which was fine), as Gibson does here; I thought it was quite well done. The most intriguing part of the novel, for me, was how Gibson hammered home the materialistic nature of his heroine. She works in advertising, is generally likable. The descriptions of her interaction with the external world are fascinating and sometime hilarious in the commentary they offer on our brand-permeated lives. At first, I found these descriptions exhausting and slightly irritating – I think I was probably taking it personally/judging the character. Before long, though, I got used to it and came to appreciate it (and I think Gibson toned it down after the character was sufficiently built and the plot came more into focus).

Bob Dylan versus...

I. Dan Bern

Dan Bern's been compared to Bob Dylan ad nauseum, and it's obvious why. I've been a huge fan of Bern's from the first time I heard him though (once I realized it wasn't Dylan), and once you get to know Bern's songs, the similarity quickly fades into the background.

The similarity is certainly nowhere more in your face, though, than in "Talkin' Alien Abduction Blues," which is clearly an homage/pastiche/rip-off of Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues" from the classic album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Bern's take on Dylan's satire of Cold War paranoia (make what you will of Bern's choice of modern parallel for the '60s fear of nuclear annihilation) appears on Bern's first release, the 1996 Dog Boy Van EP. I like to think Bern saw the endless Dylan comparisons coming, and simply decided to get this one out of the way right off the bat. These are fun to listen to back to back.

Dan Bern - Talkin' Alien Abduction Blues
Bob Dylan - Talkin' World War III Blues (youtube)


II. PJ Harvey

I was re-listening to PJ Harvey's great early album Rid Of Me and re-discovered her cover of "Highway 61 Revisited," which frankly I'd never really paid attention to before. I think I've become more obsessed with covers in recent years.

Anyway, not much to say about this cover except that it's a lot of fun, and certainly strays far enough from the sound of the original to escape the common cover pitfall of just being a bad copy.

PJ Harvey - Highway 61 Revisited
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited (youtube)

N.B.: This post is in no way inspired by or in reference to James Taylor's new album of cover songs, cleverly entitled Covers, which is just lame. James Taylor is lame.

A or B: 80s tech

Which one is (was) more ridiculous?

A.

B.











I mean, it was the 80s after all and just look at the way that guy's looking at his watch. He's clearly very important and time is money and Gordon Gecko and so on.

On the other hand, was it so necessary to get your Golden Girls and your Perfect Strangers that you had to take up a significant part of your lawn with that Goldeneye-style dish?

Beck: Modern Guilt (and thoughts on going mp3-legit)

I finally broke down and made my first legal digital music purchase yesterday. Don't worry, I'm still a cheapskate: Amazon had Beck's new album, Modern Guilt, on sale for $5, so I just went for it. I could have easily found it elsewhere for, uh, around $0, but I still tend to buy stuff I like on cd, usually by seeking it out used or online, which is still as cheap or cheaper than a digital album from iTunes or Amazon. And it's Beck, so I very much expect to like it, and there's no way I was going to find the new Beck cd for $5, even used. Oddly, though, I think there was another factor that contributed to this spur-of-the-moment decision: the album's boring cover. Cover art and album packaging are still something I like a lot about physical music formats. In this case, however, the cover is really not compelling at all (I sort of agree with this guy). (The third factor was the DRM-free mp3 format, which meant zero hassle buying at work and transferring to home for the ipod, or anywhere else.)

So, the album? I'm giving it a first listen as I write this, and my initial impression is that it's most similar to the Beck of Sea Change and Mutations, but with more production, as you would expect from a collaboration with Danger Mouse. More Guero-style beats, bleeps and boops, but mixed together with that introspective mood and the acoustic guitar hearkening back to the very early One Foot in the Grave. Beck is amazing. He has a set of styles that he likes to use, and is very good with, and almost every album mixes them together in slightly different proportions. The result is often a sound that seems totally new and unique, and like something that only he could pull off. And it's always held together by his unmistakable lyrics and voice. Modern Guilt, I suspect, will grow on me much as Guero did, sneaking up on me until I find myself in the car some day, singing along every word to a song that I didn't realize I knew so well.


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Now playing: Beck - Gamma Ray
via FoxyTunes

Hi + a great read

I'm pretty sure no one but Matt and I read this, but just in case: I'm Letitia/Tish and I will now be contributing book rec's/rants and other miscellany to this blog. Hi!

The great read promised above is "The Outlander" by Gil Adamson. When forced to choose between plot/character development and prose I usually go for the former, but with "The Outlander" you don't have to choose. It's a dazzling read, and easily inhaled it in a few short days. Set in the West - although it's never clear if it's Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, or Canada (Alberta or Saskatchewan?? I just had to look those up - somewhere above Montana..) - it's about a woman who murdered her husband and is fleeing from her scary, red-headed, eerily twin-like brothers-in-law. There's a whole cast of memorable, eccentric characters reminiscent of the recent HBO series Carnivale. The pace is thumping, and Adamson creates a haunting picture of the widow's - as well as other character's - emotional state. And perhaps best of all, her visual descriptions are gorgeous and lingering. Overall , totally great. Probably the best book I've read in a year.

mp3 news

Hello!

Sadly, all the old mp3 links are dead (file storage service mediamax went bye bye).

Here's a random 7" I ripped using Garageband, to hold you over.

Maybe I'll scan the cover for you some time. If you leave a comment.

brief rant re: pretentious hipster record reviews

Memo to the editors at Dusted (and Pitchfork and all the rest of you): for those of us not "in the know," i.e. those that actually might be looking to the record review for information or analysis rather than with a pre-existing opinion, the following sentence might be better positioned at the beginning of the review, rather than in the last paragraph:

"Only a couple of the record’s 10 tracks are actual songs."

Well, that's good to know. Thanks for the tip-off!

summer mix tape

The RIAA strikes back.

A rock/pop mix "tape" thrown together for your summery listening pleasure. Some stuff you know and love, and a few more tracks that you probably haven't heard. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Ender's Game is here.

Read this story at Slate and/or listen to the story at NPR. No exaggeration here: the kicker premise of Orson Scott Card's classic science fiction novel Ender's Game is now completely possible.

In a nutshell, Raytheon hired video game developers to redesign the command and control systems for military drone aircraft. The result is a video game-like system that on the one hand, further isolates the operator from the very real death and destruction on the other side of the world, and on the other hand, makes the system intuitively easy to use, particularly for a generation of young people raised on incredibly realistic video games. It's impressive, and terrifying. The reporter's 7-year-old son watched the demo with him, and said, "It was really cool."