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Finally have my home library more or less reconstructed, though I am missing a few books (and more annoyingly some key DVD sets). At this point, I have to hope they are in the boxes still in Chicago, which are getting shipped up in Jan. (The goal was to ship all the office stuff, books, DVDs, CDs, etc. in the first batch, then household goods and clothes in the second round. Who says I don't have my priorities in order? ) Anyway, I realized that I had relatively little in the way of Faulkner. While the LOA sets are pretty nice, I don't think I need a full set of Faulkner -- that's what the public library is for. While this is old news, Oprah pushed a three-volumne set of Faulkner in 2005 (As I Lay Dying/The Sound and the Fury/Light in August), and it is hard to beat this price for some of the used sets that are kicking around: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307275329/ref=oh_o01_s00_i00_details I just ordered one of them for just a bit over $5 plus shipping. Personally, I think what Oprah did for some of these somewhat more challenging novels was great. I don't understand at all people carping at her for her book club. Someone commented that Faulkner would be turning over in his grave! Are you kidding me? He would have been thrilled for hundreds of thousands of new readers to pick up his books. She might have actually moved a million copies of this 3 book set (can't come up with exact figures), and if even 10% read them all the way through, and I expect it was considerably higher than that, I think that's amazing. For a slightly deeper push, I might go for Absalom, Absalom and then perhaps the Snopes Trilogy (conveniently collected into this Modern Library edition): http://www.amazon.com/Snopes-Trilogy-Library-William-Faulkner/dp/0679600922/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322852552&sr=1-1 Then some of the collected stories, and I think one would be set. Not saying that other Faulkner isn't worthy of reading, but probably wouldn't need much more for a home library (where space is always an issue). On the other hand, I may break down (someday) and get the entire LOA set of Steinbeck's novels. For some reason it has a greater pull to me as a set. Anyway, I certainly would if shelf space weren't a consideration (with cost a slightly secondary consideration).

Well, it's always something. I was looking into mobile phone service here in Vancouver, and there are a number of studies showing that for a complete package, including a basic data plan, the US and Canada cost more than nearly all other countries, including most African nations -- by a factor of 10 in many cases. As it happens, I went with a start-up (Mobilicity) that is ultra cheap, but their coverage is super limited.

They seemed ok with the pirate stuff, though the parts on the island itself could have been shortened up a bit. Anyway, I really thought Kidnapped dragged. While they don't have cell phones themselves, it is hard to imagine an entire world where not one person has a cell phone, which would have almost instantly cleared up so many matters. Oddly enough, they do enjoy The Railway Children, which doesn't hold my interest, despite the many various episodes that make up the book. Both Railway Children and Kidnapped have many sections that seem overly moralistic to me. This may be an apocryphal story, but I heard that some students were learning Romeo and Juliette, and they asked things like, why didn't Romeo put a mirror under her nose. Nowadays you'd probably have some kid say There's an app for that too.

Curiously enough, I am also reading this, and also from the library. I actually wasn't expecting it to come in nearly so soon, but I think they ordered a bunch of copies system-wide. I'm halfway through, and I'm going to have to go with some of the less positive Amazon reviewers -- meh. I do have slightly higher hopes for the newer stories in the last section, but I haven't found the first ones compelling at all. In particular, The Runner strikes me as a writing exercise where he was trying to write a Raymond Carver story and didn't pull it off. While I say I admire DeLillo, the truth is he is really hit or miss for me. White Noise is an outstanding book (I'm actually going to try to reread it in 2012) and I also really liked Americana. On the other hand, I really slogged through Underworld and can't recall much of it at all. I struggled with Libra and have put it aside for the time being. I wrapped up Kroetsch's Badlands, and it was ok but not outstanding. Fairly shortly, I will reread What the Crow Said, which I guess is a kind of magic realism (written before Garcia Marquez had really gotten much attention in the north). I think what Kroetsch is really trying is to take seriously what life would be like in a backwards, frontier town if mythology were real (Zeus as a golden shower and so on, though in this case it is a swarm of bees that seduces a young girl!). My understanding is that John Banville's The Infinities is along similar lines, and I'll be reading that relatively soon (nearly ordered a copy, then realized the library had many copies already). I finally finished reading RLS's Kidnapped to my kids. I know some people love it, but I found it pretty boring. The language was a considerable challenge and I found myself having to change a lot of the words in the middle of reading to make it understandable. Ultimately, I skipped over large chunks that were basically insensible if you didn't know the difference between a Whig and a Jacobite. This wasn't nearly as much of an issue with Treasure Island, which they did like. Probably read something shorter next time. If I can dig out my copy, I'll probably go ahead and read A Christmas Carol to them this holiday season.

Don't know about that, but I do know that Nickleback played the Thanksgiving Day game (Lions-Packers) and the good people of Detroit put together a petition asking for another band.

First off, let's not have some long debate about how crappy it is to run MS Windows products on a PC and how I would be better off with Apple. I'm not interested. My problem is that MS used to support Windows Picture and Fax Viewer and they kept scaling it back. You could basically force it back on in XP, but that was the last time. The program has been completely removed in Windows 7 and several tech boards have come up empty in terms of running the program in Windows 7. (Believe me I didn't want Windows 7, but had two computers die on me in the space of two weeks, and had to get something right away, and that's all that's in the stores now. It is better than Vista, but that's about all that can be said for it.) I am aware of a few competing products like STDU Viewer and IrfanView, but they don't actually have the features I wanted (or I can't make them work properly perhaps). For that matter Windows new Photo Viewer doesn't have them either, and I am definitely not signing up for Windows Live Essentials, which may be the wave of the future, but I'm not having it. If it gets to the point you need that to run Windows system, then I will take the time to learn Linux and go off the grid so to speak. Anyway, I seem to be one of the last people to use .tif files extensively, but this is what I use to store thousands of scanned articles (in multi-page tifs). The features that I am looking for are an integrated sidebar with thumbnails of the tifs. The ability to grab multiple pages and rotate them. The ability to cut and paste the individual pages of tifs, both to reorder the main tif file and to cut and paste across tif files. The ability to add notes (this was rudimentary in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer but you could do it). Some basic OCR capability (also rudimentary in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer), but this is not a deal breaker. To actually save the changes... All of this was handled very well in WPFV and I cannot believe that MS doesn't realize what a step backwards the Photo Viewer is. Or how much better tifs are than pdfs. Maybe I am not understanding STDU Viewer and IrfanView, but they sure don't seem to have this capability. Anyway, if anyone has suggestions, please let me know. My real preference is to turn on Windows Picture and Fax Viewer in Windows 7, but if there is another program with the features I desire, and it isn't ridiculously expensive, then I would go in that direction. As a last resort, I will probably just get a cheap reconditioned machine that is Windows XP, but that won't last me forever... Thanks.

Well, I had heard of Freap, but I was not aware that he had at least 3 other BN albums (2 appear to be Japanese imports only, the 3rd never on CD). If Mosaic was still going strong with the Select series, maybe his BN recordings would be a good candidate?

Yeah, you can listen to samples of pretty much all their releases on their website: Boddie at Numero Numero is definitely more soul, and even pop, oriented (than most of what I listen to), but many of their releases have been quite good. (I would definitely check out the Cult Cargo series also. One of them has a crazy cover of Take Five.) I kind of think of Numero releases as the alternative history of pop music. Some of these groups had the talent to make it quite big, but they signed to the wrong label and/or broke up before they really got noticed (and switched labels). And perhaps had there been less payola in radio at the time, maybe some of them would have gotten further. But in general, I like the Numero model a lot more than the RSD model with its artificial scarcity. This piece kind of hints at the pros and cons: Chicagoist on RSD. Honestly, I think some people just get the colored vinyl for scarcity's sake, and it's not much better than those people getting collector spoons or first day issue of stamps. But then when the industry sort of suggests that there is money to be made, but in fact fans are left with crappy products with no inherent value, then that definitely risks burning out the whole movement when people start to feel they've been scammed -- or alternatively they find they can never find what they were looking for because it sold out in minutes (or wasn't actually distributed properly). The positives only slightly outweigh the negatives in my mind. Incidentally, here is co-founder of Numero Group discussing RSD: Rob on RSD

I guess I was a little harsh on RSD. It can be fun, if you like dealing with crowds. I never really did (in a shopping context anyway) and I am probably more anti-social than ever (for me on-line shopping is not only acceptable, it is definitely preferable). I just don't think pushing jazz through RSD is going to lead to any long-lasting benefits. I do, however, really support what Numero Group is up to and have bought quite a number of their recent releases, including the full-blown Boddie Recording Company set and the newest Eccentric Soul. Haven't had a chance to listen to them though.

I think it is perfectly legit to consider him a very, very minor figure in jazz. I'll cop to not being consciously aware of him. Wasn't really aware we had to do our homework before coming on the site.

Speaking as one who loathes Black Friday sales, I basically can't support RSD. It's just an attempt to create artificial scarcity (and the subsequent buzz) around products that are very rarely worthy of such attention. An hour to stand in line and buy some crappy limited edition vinyl? No thanks. Personally, I don't think that making casual customers go through that is more likely to bring them into the shops at other, more normal, less crowded times. Ironically, I did go to the RSD just a short while back since I was in Chicago and wanted to see what the Numero Group's pop-up store was like. That at least had some true rarities, though in the spirit of honesty, the super rare 45 I picked up from them -- I listened to it once and found it totally forgettable. Now the limited edition CD that Numero Group put out (Burned at Boddie I think it was) is actually pretty good, but it's been available at DG for months after RSD was over, so I certainly didn't need to hustle down there.

As long as we're dredging up old posts, Demon Dogs was lost when they rebuilt the Fullerton El stop. Both Fullerton and Belmont now span their respective streets, which is actually really convenient when trying to catch the buses going west. You used to have to dodge cars to get across the street. Plenty of people still do this, but most know to cross on top before coming out of the El. So there is a secondary station entrance right where Demon Dogs used to be. It is a shame that the CTA didn't do something more to help Demon Dogs relocate, but they were embarrassed when a series of articles came out in the newspaper claiming/proving that Demon Dogs had a sweetheart deal and paid almost nothing to the CTA. AFAIK, Demon Dogs never reopened in the city. I didn't eat there often, but from time to time I would get fries there. Interestingly, on the south side of Fullerton, DePaul just opened a new art museum right next to the station, relocating its existing one from a few blocks west. It's worth a look if you are in the area.

Got this a bit over a month ago. Some great stuff that isn't performed that often (septets and octets).

Problem is today's kids would think that is a compliment. Heck, I wouldn't mind having a t shirt that said "Groove Assassin."

Is Winnepeg and 40 still left? If so, I'll take that. BC does have a habit of choking in the big games.

But this seems entirely generational. The majority of Millennials do not care about physical artifacts and actually prefer not to have those bulky CDs laying around, so I do think the end is in sight, even if it doesn't come in 2012. But you know -- 2012 It's starting to make sense...

So I'm looking at tackling Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth, which I've had for a long, long time. This was the core of his unfinished second novel where he had some really powerful blockage going on. He actually wrote and wrote and wrote, but just couldn't bring himself to finish the novel. Anyway, Juneteenth came out over 10 years ago, but then a year or two ago a much longer expanded version of this unfinished novel came out called Three Days Before the Shooting. It is three times as long and just under 1200 pages. I have to be honest, the plot of Juneteenth doesn't really grab me (a white boy is raised by a Black preacher but then grows up to be a race-baiting U.S. Senator), though I think I can make it through this novel, but I can't imagine reading 1200 pages' worth. Anyway, just wondering if anyone had read either version.

Generally I've been pretty good, but I did place an order with Dusty Groove (to use up my remaining credit): Numero Group -- Eccentric Soul -- The Nickel & Penny Labels Tom Ze -- Grande Liquidacao and then over at Deep Discount (to basically draw down my Paypal account): Rendell/Carr-Shades-of-Blue & Dusk-Fire

Yeah, way too expensive for the Live vol. 2-4 box set. I thought the whole point was to make new projects possible, not to cash in on something that happened a long time in the past. Anyway, I'll probably get the Birdland CD, which should include Osby and Baron (actually details are kind of scarce on the CD itself). I think it would definitely be better if they accepted Paypal, however.

I read The Ginger Man when it was a cult book c.1960 and found it utterly trivial then. Funny, but the only bit I can now remember is when someone flushes the toilet in a rickety house and the contents end up in living quarters in the storey below. Yes, I did read that part. It actually ends up in the kitchen! And then Sebastian buggers off and won't help clean up in the slightest (though it was he that flushed the toilet) and he is too afraid to even confront the landlord to see about getting it fixed. That was basically the moment I decided this book wasn't worth my time, and I skimmed a bit more, then skipped ahead to the end.

There are certainly a few recordings that are so bad that I won't listen to them. I don't consider myself a musicologist or someone who really has to dig into the history of early jazz because it is "good for me" or something. I like early Basie or Ellington just fine, but if the recording quality is really poor, then no, I won't keep revisiting that album.

So I am about halfway through Norman Rush's Mating. It's pretty slow going and I am getting bored with it, so I will probably just stop. It is definitely at least 100 pages too long. Life's too short. I positively hated Donleavy's The Ginger Man. Basically only for those who find intellectual-poseurs and drunkards compelling (as found in Withnail and I). And then to add to that, the main character is a wife-beater who treats all women equally shabbily, basically trying to screw all the women in Dublin. Maybe this was genuinely liberating in the 1950s and early 60s, but it strikes me that the only liberation that mattered was for men. I can't imagine Donleavy remaining in the literary pantheon (in fact he's probably not there now). A poor man's Norman Mailer, basically (not even sure Mailer will be in the pantheon in another 50 years). Ultimately, it was the physical abuse of the women that make me stop reading -- I skipped to the last 25 pages and he was still a complete shitheel, so I tossed the book into a donation box. Life is definitely too short to read books that glamourize violence against women. Starting Kroetsch's Badlands. Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy is around the corner. Boy, that is going to be a tough book to digest. I imagine it will take a month at my current rate of reading.

finished it. not for me, but i see how others would enjoy it. I haven't read this, but I did read Moth Smoke, which had its moments. I will say that of Pakistani novelists, I prefer Kamila Shamsie to Mohsin Hamid.

I don't think there is a molester behind every tree, but certainly most institutions have some creeps and genuinely horrid people involved. This is a sad and sick tale, and I can't believe it is not given more coverage except that PSU is sucking all the oxygen out of the room. In some ways, I think the cover up here is even worse and certainly criminal, and I do hope some of these folks in the Boy Scouts (yes, the Boy Scouts) do some hard time but I guess it was just too long ago. Rest of story here: Boy Scout cover-up