You asked for it! So let’s try it out.
An open thread to discuss arts and culture related topics that you just have to get off your chest or need to gauge the opinion of the faceless mob. The more random, the better in my opinion!
GBK Gwyneth
Hola
fbenario
Robert Butera
Robert Butera
macarolina
Scott
Bin Birru
Cubalibre
J_T
At Home in Decatur
At Home in Decatur
AJC Attempts to Explain the “e” in Clairemont Avenue
And you need something special
Yeah, you need something special all right
You need a fast flyin’ train on a tornado track
To shoot you someplace and shoot you back
You need a cyclone wind on a stream engine howler
That’s been banging and booming and blowing forever
That knows yer troubles a hundred times over
BD
BD = Bob Dylan?
Yah. Part of his “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” poem that I linked to a few weeks back in a Morning Metro. I’m sort of obsessed with it at the moment.
The American Booksellers Association has announced the finalists for it’s for the 2012 Indies Choice Book Awards and the E.B. White Read-Aloud Awards. Below is the adult stuff. Kids’ stuff can be found on Little Shop’s blog:
http://www.littleblogofstories.com/2012/03/congratulations-to-carmen-agra-deedy.html
There are some great, great books listed here. I’m currently reading The Tiger’s Wife, which is amazingly good.
BOOK OF THE YEAR – ADULT FICTION
• The Cat’s Table, by Michael Ondaatje (Knopf)
• Everything Beautiful Began After, by Simon Van Booy (Harper Perennial)
• 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel (Trans.) (Knopf)
• The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury USA)
• Wingshooters, by Nina Revoyr (Akashic Books)
BOOK OF THE YEAR – ADULT NONFICTION
• Blood, Bones, & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, by Gabrielle Hamilton (Random House)
• Blue Nights, by Joan Didion (Knopf)
• Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, by Robert K. Massie (Random House)
• Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War, by Tony Horwitz (Henry Holt & Co.)
• Townie: A Memoir, by Andre Dubus III (W.W. Norton)
• What It Is Like to Go to War, by Karl Marlantes (Atlantic Monthly Press)
BOOK OF THE YEAR – ADULT DEBUT
• The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown)
• Mourad: New Moroccan, by Mourad Lahlou (Artisan)
• Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles (Viking Adult)
• The Tiger’s Wife, by Téa Obreht (Random House)
• We the Animals, by Justin Torres (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• You Know When the Men Are Gone, by Siobhan Fallon (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam)
I have the Murakami, the Eugenides, the Massie, and the Obreht on my Kindle and wonder when the hell I’ll get around to them. The Harbah book is terrific, a great baseball book even if you don’t give a flip about baseball.
Thanks, Dave. Looks like a great list.
I really really really wanted to like Murakami’s work, but after reading Kafka On The Shore, and hearing that it was one of his more “accessible” works, I just had to give up. I’m a fan of fiction that offers a challenge to traditional writing conventions, like realistic plot lines, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around some of the elements he included.
JC, you might take a shot at Murakami’s Norwegian Wood before you give up. I have no idea when I’m going to tackle his IQ84. I’m still recovering from Bolano’s 2666, which I read about two years ago!
Cool, I’ll give it a shot.
Absolutely loved Rules of Civility! Couldn’t put it down.
Re Blue Nights by Joan Didion: I’ve always been a fan of her books. I really liked The Year of Magical Thinking. But while I enjoyed Didion’s usual skillful prose, Blue Nights left me cold. It seemed self-absorbed and superficial to me. But maybe I’m resisting the theme of aging…..not the most optimistic topic.
Saw the Iranian movie “The Separation” and really liked it; even my husband who is picky about movies liked it. Not a thriller or comedy but a thoughtful character study of a separated couple and the relationships around them.
I also very much liked “A Separation.” Probably the best 2011 movie I’ve seen thus far. Check out the same director’s “Fireworks Wednesday” (available on DVD from Netflix and from the DeKalb Library). It’s also a thoughtful domestic drama, though not as polished as “A Separation.”
Wow, cool DM!
I have been listening to an audiobook read by the author: “A Wolf at the Table,” by Augusten Burroughs. Burroughs wrote “Running with Scissors” and other memoirs about his life.
“A Wolf at the Table” is an amazing and horrifying story of Burroughs and his father. One thing that really sparks my amazement is that Burroughs’ father was from Chickamauga, GA, and his mother was from Cairo. I don’t know why, exactly, but the nearness of those characters to my home state fascinates me. This must be due, in part, to Burroughs’ vivid writing.
And Burroughs’ reading is dramatic, amusing and accurate when he imitates their Georgia ways of speaking.
So I salute him and recommend the audiobook for your pleasure.
I’d love to discuss the audiobook experience, as it compares to reading. I love the listening experience, but I’m not sure why it’s so appealing.
My guess is that audiobook lovers either have a lot of long drives in their life or are auditory learners. I’m a visual learner so audiobooks haven’t appealed to me except for when I lived out West and had regular 1+ hour long drives over empty terrain and needed something to keep me awake. But I’d keep getting distracted by something on the road or in the scenery and then I’d have to keep stopping the book and going back over the same sections until I paid attention the whole way through. I also had some recorded work seminars to listen to and that was hysterical. My memory of them would be: Interesting introduction, deadly boring section, reverie about interesting guy I met, interesting section, Wow look at that sunset, deadly boring section, wonder whether it’s going to rain tonight, deadly boring section, compile mental grocery list for pot luck tomorrow night, Conclusions, Questions, ……Wait, what was the point of that seminar again?
Both of my children went through several years of audiobook loving, kind of from age 3-4 years through around age 7-8. My observation is that they were interested in more sophisticated content than what they were able to read at that point. Audiobooks allowed them to “read” and develop a higher level of vocabulary than what they were able to read from print. As much as children’s lit can be fantastic, sometimes it can be a drag for kids to be at certain reading levels. Thank goodness for Mo Willems.
Name your terms of discussion, Parker. Time, place, what?
Here? Now? What is the appeal of audiobooks? How is the audiobook experience like/unlike the paper book experience?
I agree in part with AHID, I first experienced “books on tape” as a diversion for long car trips between Decatur and Miami. That was kind of cool because in the car I’d be sharing the listening experience with my husband–way different than the solitary experience of listening.
When the technology changed I began bringing books on disks to the gym.
When it changed again, I started downloading to my ipod. That’s when I became hooked.
Listening to something great while doing housework or laundry, listening for an hour or so each evening before bed.
It is not the same as reading–but I can’t put my finger on the nature of its appeal. Could it be a return to the infantile pleasure of being read to?
Remember the “oral tradition” goes back a long way, to when people were not as likely to be able to read, or to have access to written material, and yet the hunger for literature was no doubt as strong as it is now. And it produced great literature.
Listening to books seems to be a different kind of pleasure, one that combines the thrill of sound with the pleasure of words and stories and figurative language. And there’s that intimacy of the book, too: someone speaking just to you, or to you and one or two other people. With headphones you are free from the social constraints of how your reactions might be interpreted by others, or vice versa. Potentially, a very intimate experience.
Two excellent new “alt-country” albums that came out in February:
Where It Hits You by Jim White.
White now lives in Athens and we’re blessed to have him play Atlanta more often lately. An amazing storyteller, he is one of my favorite live performers. He was sort of a protege of David Byrne’s and there’s a shared sensibility. His documentary film Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus is a special tour of the gothic South.
Dead Fingers
This duo opened for Kinky Friedman at Smith’s recently and won over a tough crowd. Think Civil Wars meets Moldy Peaches. Very quirky, perhaps a little too eccentric for mainstream taste.
I know I should just let it go and move on with things, but I just can’t get over how bad of a movie The Tree of Life was. If anyone can tell me if they found any redeeming value, please do it so I can stop feeling like I completely wasted 2 hours of my life. The only thing I thought it did a good job of was depicting what it’s like to be a boy. Past that…suck, suck, suck.
I’m with you Keith! I really wanted to like that movie, and at times the acting was good, but overall I just found it to be a snooze fest. And I am definitely into movies of all types.
I didn’t love it either. I think my husband liked it. It took me way too long to figure out that I was watching the evolution of life. I was very confused.
I laughed out loud when the dinosaurs popped up. It was a laugh of frustration. I heard a story where an Italian movie house played the show for a week with the first two reels of the film reversed and nobody noticed.
Yeah, and when the T. rex left the other dinosaur alone, was that supposed to show how even an aggressive, competitive animal can show empathy? Huge reptiles had empathy? And so did the T. rex represent the father in the movie and the other dinosaur represented the boy? The mother? I’m so confused. I might have enjoyed the part about the evolution of microorganisms–molecules evolving out of the primordial stew and then organic compounds and then primitive microscopic life forms, etc. but I didn’t catch on to what I was watching until real late. I needed subtitles.
I felt like every scene in the movie was like an opening scene where you don’t quite know what’s going on but you are sure you will figure it out as the movie progresses. 20 minutes in I couldn’t take it anymore and looked online to see what others said about the film. It because obvious that it was not going to get any better so I shut it off. I like artsy/independent/foreign films and this movie was unbearable. I’m just glad it was only $1 at the Redbox that was wasted.
I will say this in defense of A Tree of Life: It is a different experience at a theater on a big screen. The cinematography and sound are stunning, and, despite the lack of plot, it held my attention. However, the religious pretensions and new age-y ending were pretty sophomoric.
Since Saturday, I have watched two seasons of Downton Abbey (except the last episode of Season 2, which I’m saving for the weekend). I know, I’m the last in town to catch up, but I wanted to watch it from the beginning and had to find time. It’s completely addictive. Scheduling tips: Netflix has Season 1 but not Season 2. Season 2 is still up on the Masterpiece Classics website but all episodes expire on March 6.
I know. We’re totally addicted too. Anyone know when season 3 is anticipated to premiere?
BTW STG, if you haven’t seen this, you’ll enjoy it. http://www.npr.org/2012/02/13/146652747/im-just-sayin-there-are-anachronisms-in-downton
My dad sent it my way a couple weeks back.
It goes into production this spring, so it’ll probably air in the fall? Hope we don’t have to wait until after Christmas!
Season 3 is filming now. Supposed to show in the US starting next January; earlier in the UK. So if you know a teenager, they
can probably find the eps online….:-)
I heard it was airing in September in England, which is what Season 2 did, and then was here in January. Downton is my newest happy place. If I need my mind to stop racing, I just Netflix an episode.
I’ve become a bit obsessed with England during WWI, ever since my stepmother introduced me to the Maisie Dobbs series. So that, coupled with the similarity to Gosford Park, an all time favorite, just makes Downton irresistible.
Later this spring PBS will air an adaptation of “Birdsong,” a novel about an English soldier in WW I. Written by Sebastian Faulks, who wrote “Charlotte Gray” (set in Berlin immediately after WW II) — which book I also enjoyed but was disappointed by the movie because they changed the plot so much.
Must find out about this Maisie Dobbs you speak of.
I’m also a big fan of P. G. Wodehouse, whose stories and novels are set a bit later, more “between the wars.” They’re quite silly. The ones featuring Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, his valet, I find hilarious. Either PBS or BBC adapted some of the stories years ago in a wonderful series starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.
Oooh, thanks! Just looked up Birdsong on IMDB. Something to look forward to!
I can’t watch House because I keep seeing Bertie Wooster.
Thanks! But dang if that isn’t a long way off.
Count me in as addicted as well. The lapse in time when it airs over there and then here, sparked an interesting debate on Salon about how the powers that be are basically encouraging people to illegally download it since it’s already out there, meanwhile we’re waiting for no good reason. If people are willing to pay to see it when everyone else gets to see it, count me in that crowd, it doesn’t make sense to make us wait.
So glad to know about the March 6th deadline – I guess I’ll just have to watch them all this weekend…darn.
Netflix has Season 2 on disc but not on Watch Instantly.
I started watching the series last weekend. Have only the Christmas special episode left to go. I’m totally hooked. Can’t wait for Season 3.
Amazon has season 2 to watch instantly – but you need to buy each episode for $1.99 an episode…
Now here’s NEWS!
http://bit.ly/yBi6nm
The ALIENS pre-quel. Please, please, please, Mr. Scott, let it be great.
What goes around comes around. “The Artist”, Academy Award winning silent movie, on the BIG screen at the Fabulous Fox Friday, March 9, 7:30 PM. The Fox was planned for silent movies, but by the time it opened, talkies were reality.
Interesting. In what ways was it “planned for silent movies”?
It has a huge organ…huhhuhhuh.
Remember it was designed in 1927 – still the silent era.
This is fun. Thanks, DM. And Thursday seems like a good day, as we all plan for our weekend entertainment.
Agreed, but might need to push it back a day or two so it doesn’t bleed into FFAF.
Anyone see Radiohead at Philips last night?
I’ve been a fan of Radiohead for nearly 20 years, but had never seen them live until last night (mainly because they have always played outdoors here, and I hate outdoor concerts).
Have to say I was disappointed. Yeah, I knew going in that the set list was going to be heavy on the new stuff, but I’m still surprised that they would only play one song from what is widely regarded as their magnum opus, OK Computer. No Paranoid Android. No Karma Police. Don’t get me wrong: I like the new stuff. In Rainbows and King of Limbs are excellent albums, especially the former. But by my count there were more songs from the relatively minor Hail to the Thief than from The Bends and OK Computer combined.
Set list complaints aside, I thought the show lacked momentum. There were few peaks outside of the blistering rendition of Idioteque and the musical nod to REM (Yorke, close friends with Michael Stipe, sang the chorus from “This One Goes Out to the One I Love” before launching into “Everything In Its RIght Place”). I hate to say this about one of my favorite bands, but for me the show could be summed up by the title of my favorite Radiohead song: “Let Down.” Which, of course, they didn’t play.
What are all the cool, post-youth, aging hipsters listening to?
Why, this of course: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/26/147195131/first-listen-the-magnetic-fields-love-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea
took the kids to see The Atlanta Opera’s “Rabbit Tales” at DHS last Sunday. It was well staged and performed, and I see value in exposing young ones to less than familiar genres . . . but in between me nodding off a few times, my persistent thought was: “could this music be any less relevant?” and “how much more engaging would this be for everyone here if it was culturally relevant?”
mind you, i was a professional musician for the better part of of my life and have worked in every genre under the sun, have sung arias, lieder, etc. but still, i couldn’t stop wondering why we keep genres on life support some 150+ years past their expiration date?