Granta

The Narrows - Michael Connelly Flesh and Blood - John Harvey The Light of Day - Graham Swift The House of Sleep - Jonathan Coe and in progress The Winshaw Legacy - Jonathan Coe

I have a 15 gig iPod. My primary goal was to put every Thelonious Monk cd I have on it and now I've got 1.7 days of Monk stored (5.59 gigs). I used the highest bit rate (320) and with some Sennheiser headphones, everything sounds pretty good. And using the smart playlist option, I have some fun playlists like 31 versions of Epistrophy running from longest to shortest. I use the Griffin iTrip to listen in the car and in bed on my Bose Wave Radio. (I think my right channel audio input in the Bose is damaged and I get some odd sounding performances when I use cables and the dock for the connection. The cables sound better than the iTrip but the iTrip is still decent enough.) I have my only Mosaic on it - the Horace Parlan (and it appears as if I've lost disc 1 of the Carmell Jones Select). And lots of Tina Brooks, Sonny Clark, and Red Garland. I read the Newseek and desperately want the new 40 gig iPod - but I'd need to add an external harddrive. And that's too much work for now. I'll wait until I but a new computer.

Every other day I shave my face with a Braun electric razor. Once a week I shave my face and head with a Gillette Sensor Excel in the shower. My girlfriend took my Mach 3 for her legs - but the Sensor Excel does a nice job on my head (though it is noticeably rougher on my face). And I use a Kiehl's aftershave/moisturizer. And I shave at night so my face can recover by morning. (I hate shaving in the morning and going through the day with irritated skin.)

Some of the things I've read since the Blue Note board closed and when I found this one: Nobody's Fool - Richard Russo The Haunting of L - Howard Norman Life and Times of Michael K - J.M. Coetzee Erasure - Percival Everett Corpsing - Toby Litt The Book Against God - James Wood What Was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal) - Zoe Heller The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon Chasing the Dime - Michael Connolly Cradle Song - Robert Edric Nobody's Fool was the best. And so much better than Empire Falls, for which Russo won the Pulitzer. Erasure was the biggest surprise - and a fantastic read. Now I'm reading A Special Relationship by Douglas Kennedy and some William Trevor short stories from his Collected Stories.

The DVD is fantastic. I'd never seen film of Monk before and it was amazing to watch his hands and fingers play. He has a distinctive sound and I've always had difficulty imagining how he creates his sound. The way he plays looks unorthodox (It is, isn't it?) but the results are obviously wondrous. There is a typo on the DVD - they got the year wrong, listing it as 1956 instead of 1966. And I noticed a few typos in the liner notes.