I was blissfully unaware of how small press books were distributed, so I can't claim to contextualize this in any way, but it sounds fairly alarming 😬 :
https://lithub.com/the-small-press-world-is-about-to-fall-apart-on-the-collapse-...
I was blissfully unaware of how small press books were distributed, so I can't claim to contextualize this in any way, but it sounds fairly alarming 😬 :
https://lithub.com/the-small-press-world-is-about-to-fall-apart-on-the-collapse-...
#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude
I've always been a fan of whole albums, enjoying repeat listens from start to fish, figuring out my favorite tracks, and sometimes reevaluating after a few listens. But I'm so distracted nowadays with all the options a streaming world offers that I only just gave a second listen to this recent release from Palehound, an indie rock band I've been following for awhile. And it's probably my favorite of theirs so far.
Whether it's visual art, music, movies, or literature, I love seeing an artist reference their own favorite influences. In Oyeyemi's latest, she mashes up two Calvino novels - If on a winter's night and Invisible Cities (maybe more? - those are the only two I've read) with a few nods to Borges mixed in. It's perfect fuel for this meditation on the infinity of mental representations of the same city that exist in the minds of its visitors 👇
#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude
This week I'm going to recommend Open Mike Eagle's podcast 'What Had Happened Was' where each season he interviews an artist or figure significant to hip hop. Making the interviews season-long instead of varying by episode means you get about a memoir's worth of stories. I found it via a Spotify recommendation because I'm a longtime fan of Questlove's podcast, and he's the interview subject for Season 4 👇
One of my very favorite kinds of character-driven novels. Murata's title character describes her difficulty relating to other people and how her work in a convenience store became a sort of salvation for her. Many novels would lead someone like this towards making some kind of first-time human connection, but Murata shows how much more interesting it can be to get to know this person instead of portraying her lifestyle as a problem to solve.
There's no accounting for taste when it comes to music, right? Actually, music producer Susan Rogers and co-author Ogi Ogas would argue that's not entirely true. They combine research and Rogers' own experiences as a producer of Prince and other bigtime acts to describe 7 dimensions of listener taste that form our 'listener profiles'. And they've got a website with links to all the songs referenced so you can hear the distinctions in real time 👇
#AuldLangSpine
@TheBookHippie @monalyisha
I love the concept of a bio that zeros in on an artist's favorite hobby. Something about focusing on something besides her writing made Emily Dickinson feel more like a real person instead of her standard brilliant poet role. The page layouts are gorgeous - McDowell discusses ED's relationship to gardening throughout her life, along with photos, illustrations, poems, and excerpts from letters. 🌺🌻🌼🌷🪻
#TuesdayTunes @TieDieDude
The first time I listened to Tierra Whack it wasn't love at first listen - I still haven't fully warmed to the modern trap sound that's become so pervasive. Then I watched the video to Whack World and 😯😮😲. I had to give her music a second listen, and I'm really glad I did. What seems random or goofy at first is full of clever lyricism and the kind of genre-hopping that many of my favorite artists practice.
#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude
Latin music and non-English language music in general is a gaping musical gap for me. But I did recently discover the Chilean artist Mon Laferte and was an instant fan. It's always nice when you find someone who's got a large musical catalog because it's like suddenly stumbling onto this treasure trove of music. This is her song Química Mejor:
#MissMyDad @Rissreads
My dad wasn't much of a reader, but he was a fan of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits book, and I still think about both it and him when I'm working, even if it couldn't be further from my reading preferences. The odd thing is, I have all these bookish memories linked to him: 1) him wanting to buy me this expensive book when I was a kid but making sure I would read it (I never did), 2) me taking John Dean's memoir from his shelf 👇
#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude
Today was a soul/funk day: highly recommended when you need to reduce work stress but also fight drowsiness. When I was choosing the book for this post, I realized my Rufus listen may have been subconsciously inspired by a character of the same name from Kindred, which I'm reading now. And that, in turn, made me wonder if Octavia Butler was a Rufus fan since the novel was released right around peak Rufus popularity 🤔🤯
I've heard good things about Charles Baxter, but I should have started with one of the works he's known for instead of his latest, which is one that almost works but not quite. It's got an intriguing plot involving a middle-aged couple concerned for their missing son who may have gotten involved in a group called The Sun Collective, which is split between community service and radical violence. There's a bit of magical realism I also enjoyed 👇
#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude
I'm a day late, but I wanted to highlight this 2006 album from Robyn Hitchcock that I first listened to sometime in the late 2010s I think. In listening to it again this past week, I had that experience where I had completely forgotten about my favorite song on the album and sang along while riding in my car (but not in San Francisco): https://open.spotify.com/track/4cgltQXyXC4tDGD45xY1Ni?si=4xRH4dahSeu2_rlQT44BtQ
After an auto mechanic shop opens in the main character's backyard, he embarks on an increasingly desperate series of attempts to get some peace from many varieties of noise in modernizing 1950s South American society. It's not as slapstick as it sounds - more like a very long short story with weird character quirks. You feel bad for the guy, but he also reveals himself to be a bit of an oddball, so that adds another dimension to the mix.
#TuesdayTunes @TieDyeDude
There's this podcast from Slate called Hit Parade whose host covers all different eras of pop music by analyzing slices of charts history. This led me to consult Spotify, where helpful users have created Hot 100 year end playlists (as in, one from each year since the charts began), and I've just finished my first decade's worth to find my favorite songs: what I know and love, and what I missed (a lot as it turns out!) 👇
#TuesdayTunes
There are a couple decades in between my two most recent favorite albums, and they are not remotely similar except both were clearly labors of love. I also enjoy albums where every song doesn't sound the same - there's a lot of variety in both of these.
Thanks for starting this @TieDyeDude - I'm always curious what people are listening to 🎶
#auldlangspine @TheBookHippie @monalyisha
Late as always with finishing this challenge, but I thought this was a very good essay collection. Each confronts aspects of antisemitism in a variety of contexts. My two favorites were on bits of history that aren't that widely known (an early 20th century Russian Jewish community in freezing Harbin, China, and Varian Fry, a journalist who rescued famous artists being persecuted by the Nazis) 👇
#AuldLangSpine
This quote is from a family friend of the Dickinson's about visiting and being received by Emily 🍷⚘️
I am loving this so far - I keep trying to ignore the cold weather in my present reality and transport myself into Emily Dickinson's expansive garden @TheBookHippie @monalyisha
When an insecure character wrongs someone and then tries desperately to get back in their good graces, they usually end up making things even worse in the process. Usually, this is played for comedy, but the Barnes' version is several shades darker and speaks to how easily consciousness makes us the hero of a story vis-à-vis gaps or distortions in our memory. Lots of moral ambiguity arranged in short, crisp sentences that still pull their weight.
A fantasy about what grief after a parent's death is like when the relationship was complicated: they hurt you, you blame them for things, but you also regret some of your actions. So you cycle between exploring painful memories and shutting them out. Maybe you indulge in things you know are bad for you, or sometimes you just walk around in a fog. Belle cycles between these reactions in a dark alternate reality teaming with fairy tale imagery 👇
#AuldLangSpine
This inventive spy thriller has a few unique features that really elevate the action: 1) The spy MC is also a famous assassin who uses poison, something her new partner doesn't even know. 2) 1920s Shanghai is an ideal setting for spy noir. 3) The Shakespearean inspiration of As You Like It gives it a nice comic touch. There's also a lot of fantasy elements and references to the prior series, which I haven't read 👇
Books like this are satisfying for me on the basis of writing style alone. The plot is almost besides the point - descriptors like 'missing girl' and 'coming of age' are true for countless novels. Vida makes this one memorable through her wry humor and keen observations for how teenagers interact. And there are moments that crystallize just how awful those teenage years can truly be.
#AuldLangSpine
Here are a few things about me @TheBookHippie Excited for January to start!
@monalyisha
#AuldLangSpine
Thanks @TheBookHippie for sharing this list! I've only read the Hardwick. After I finished it, I thought it was just ok, but I kept thinking about it after - it really stuck with me. So I'm going to revisit a couple of its essays. I'll be pairing the Rich and McDowell with poetry from Rich/Dickinson. I'm kicking off the year with Foul Lady, which is soo far outside my wheelhouse, but that's part of the fun of this exchange.
#Top23of23
It worked out that I had 22 5-star reads this year (I was tempted to bump one of the ratings up 🤓). Here they are in rough order of enthusiasm and broken down by fiction and nonfiction (+1 poetry).
-The Buried Giant wins for my favorite of the year, as I knew it would immediately after finishing it.
-Strangest Read: Stranger to the Moon
-Best Essay Collection: Pulphead
-Best Memoir: The Man Who Could Move Clouds
Happy reading in 2024!!
A frustrating book! Frustrating because it's like an unfinished sculpture: inside there is a true fantasy classic, where dreamy depictions of the spirit world lay aside comical satire of a community in the grip of 'progress', yet undone by greed and thirst for power. But there needs to be 100-200 pages chiseled away from neverending scenes of partying, fighting, more partying, more fighting, dragging on indefinitely.
Melanie Finn strikes me as one of those wonderful anomalies among authors. Are her books thrillers? Or literary fiction? Some people dismiss these as empty marketing terms, but most of us have our favorites, and how rare is it to find an author who isn't more one than the other? Both this and The Gloaming are steeped in an atmosphere of dread and feel a bit unreal even if nothing impossible happens. But they're also slow burns, so patience is key.
#TitlesandTunes #Blue
Happy publication day to Jesmyn Ward for her latest! I'm always about 5 years behind, so I just finished SUS. I'd heard it described as a road novel, and it technically is, but didn't feel like one. The journey matters less than the fact that the family must share tight quarters when they'd previously been drifting apart. I spent the whole novel concerned for them all: the entire novel is located on the brink of disaster.
My local bookshop hosted this reading last night from Mona Awad and Laura Sims: Sims read from 'How Can I Help You' which I still need to read and Awad from her latest Rouge, which I only found out about last week after finishing her previous novel. Apparently, the two authors have been friends since 2018, which came through as they posed questions to each other about their work. A fun night of reflections on serial killers and dark fairy tales 😈
Nothing like a good book and a glass of the golden remedy to ease your mind, am I right? If you've read this, you'll know this last phrase is repeated over and over. After a while, I was repeating it to my cats ('That's some yummy food, am I right?'). It's one of many careless phrases uttered by the happy that serve to irritate the miserable in Awad's theater of the absurd. A perfect dark comic meditation on the gulf between sickness and wellness.
#TitlesAndTunes #Blues
From the synopsis, SUS sounds like a road novel that is steeped in loss and haunted characters (maybe literally?). The perfect pairing with this Lurrie Bell album I picked up at a record shop recently. I'd never heard of Bell before, but his guitar riffs are a joy, the kind of blues that take you on a journey, which is perfect for an emotionally charged road novel. And it certainly channels its own ghosts of blues legends.
What if you turned your dreams into short stories? Such a simple concept, but one I hadn't seen until I picked up Naguib Mahfouz's The Dreams. The content varies a great deal, and even though this one could be considered a nightmare, it made me laugh out loud just because of how ridiculous yet terrifying it became in just a few sentences 😨😲😆
#TitlesandTunes #TheWorldismyOyster
My favorite almost-pick of the year? Fitzgerald's inventive writing saves this story of a Princeton student 'finding himself' from being boring. But it also seems meandering and uneven - not like Gatsby at all in that respect. For all the strangeness of the lost social norms of the period, it's crazy to me how similar the mc's character is to a contemporary college intellectual dude. @Cinfhen @BarbaraBB
...or just open your eyes and look at the picture? 🙈
Joking aside about People's attempt at click-bait, I do like how many celebrity book clubs there are now. Seems like a great way to attract new readers. All that said, I've never actually participated in a celebrity book club - does anyone have a favorite they would recommend? I'm curious what the discussions are like.
#DramaQueen #Titlesandtunes
What a great opportunity for me to read my most anticipated selection from my shelf (I'm weirdly proud I lasted a year for it to 'wait its turn', even though that makes no sense 🤷🏻). After Bunny, I can only assume this story of a director staging All's Well That Ends Well will have some bizarre complications. I think it's 'the drama I've been craving', as Sleater Kinney sing on one of my all-time favorite albums.
Some books you read and know exactly what you think of them. Others you read, puzzle, struggle over, and consider bailing on and off for four months, with final ratings of 0-5 all seeming equally plausible. That was Art and Lies for me. I went with a cautious '4 stars' because it has undeniably beautiful sentences and stretches of ecstatic musings. But it's tough going - like Virginia Woolf, not sure I even know what's going on at times, tough 👇
#TitlesandTunes #SexDrugsandRockandRoll
A Faustian tale that isn't really about Faust so much as his bandmate who has to live with the aftermath of his bargain. It's not really about the tragedy of giving into temptation so much as the vacuum of being 'soulless'. When heavy metal becomes nu metal and gets taken over by corporate overlords, it's not mortal sin, just sad. Thankfully this novel has plenty of soul: it's darkly funny and fast-paced 👇
#Titlesandtunes #TheWorldIsMyOyster
I've never read anything else by Fitzgerald except the one we all read. While that novel is about someone looking back on his youth, his debut is about a young scholar who's looking ahead to his future with great zeal as he attends Princeton. Nas must have had a similar perspective when he made his debut album Illmatic, and I thought The World Is Yours is perfect for the theme. @Cinfhen @BarbaraBB
I'm not usually a fan of fantasy novels, and I don't usually cry from books, but this one broke both of those trends. I enjoy fantasy landscapes and themes, but I'm a poor visualizer of action sequences and prefer simpler world building. So Ishiguro's brand of fantasy that brings imagery to life through dialogue is perfect for me. The action is short and memorable, much of it being described through one character relaying a tale to another 👇
This novel opens with Vesta, an elderly widow, finding this note in the woods behind the remote lakeside cottage she recently moved into with her dog Charlie. If you think that this sounds like an intriguing opening to a mystery, you should know from the start that this is not that novel. Because it is initially disappointing to find this isn't the mystery you think you're getting. But the odd character study that emerges is truly unique 👇
#TitlesandTunes #GuiltyPleasure
Way late with this review, but I really enjoyed this fast-paced sci-fi thriller. It seems ready-made for a blockbuster film treatment and has some interesting narrative inversions. My least favorite part was the particular phenomenon: it reminded me of trying to explain the neurological reasons why Harry Potter spells work. But it also doesn't over-explain, which helps it deliver on the action and suspense.
#TitlesandTunes #SexDrugsandRocknroll
Quite behind on this past month's read, so just starting it now, but when does that ever affect choosing a next read?
I decided to go with a double-Hendrix for my pick this month. Grady has long been on my list of authors to try - I've read Paperbacks from Hell but never any of his novels. Message to Love is from Jimi's live album Band of Gypsys, one of my favorites from college. It's chock full of solos 🎸
I know I've heard of largehearted boy before (possibly on Litsy?), but I totally forgot its main purpose of combining reading and music, perfect for #TitlesandTunes It's also been around since 2002 so I'm a bit late to the party! One of the features, "book notes" has authors creating a playlist inspired by a recent release of theirs, so I've been listening to the last few of those. My favorite is from Megan Fernandes' poetry collection (tagged).
It's been nearly a decade since I last read a McCarthy novel, but he made an impression on me - my Litsy handle is taken from Billy Parham who appears in The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, two of my favorite novels. I enjoyed those novels even more than Blood Meridian (not pictured), which has one of the most frightening literary villains I've witnessed. But The Border Trilogy focuses on two heroes, which is tougher to pull off in some ways 👇
#GuiltyPleasure #TitlesandTunes
It seems right to start this post with a confession: I don't have guilty pleasure reads. I read mostly literary fiction and have noticed what people call guilty pleasures are mostly romance or thrillers. My explanation for that is bad versions of those genres can still be fun, but exactly 0 people want a bad LF novel. So I found one thriller on my shelf - actually well-reviewed but check out the tagline 🦴🤐
Why is LoTF a great novel? Many will point to the symbolic aspects - how the tensions that emerge from the society of the boys mirror the wider world's lusts for power and violence. But for me, that's all icing, and the novel's true appeal is in how it handles the drama among its three leads. Their boyhood felt authentic to me - as they attempt leadership, they also battle fear and indecisiveness, and the suspense builds to unnerving levels.
#IslandVibe #Titlesandtunes
I was never assigned Lord of the Flies in school, but it's been a long-time resident on my shelf and one I'd been interested in trying. So this month's prompt is a great excuse, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I just finished the scene where they're feasting on pig meat, so I thought Jimmy Buffett's 'Cheeseburger in Paradise' might be a fitting song pairing (even if a hotdog theme would be even closer 🌭 🏝).
What a Shakespearean opening: in 19th century Italy on the cusp of a regime change, a Sicilian nobleman with fading influence sides with his favored nephew over his loyalist son. And the tragic action that unfolds? His nephew gets married and...that's about it. I'm being a little unfair, but the writing, which offers imaginative descriptions and an endearing, satirical humor also isn't quite interesting enough to compensate for the lack of a plot.
A favorite author of mine, Martin Amis, passed away yesterday. I think he wrote the best novels with unlikable protagonists. It's kind of a lost art today, but what's great about Amis' novels is they're neither tales of condemnation nor winking approval of bad behavior. And definitely not redemption. But you get great insights into the characters, as unsavory as they may be, and all with a biting dark humor narrating their actions.