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Not to stick up for the NFL, but is it possible that they don't allow WCs to play their own division winner, unless that would mean forcing the top teams that would otherwise get a bye to play? I'm certainly not an expert in this, but it is hard to imagine all the NFL owners would just look the other way...

Don't know if anyone has come across this before, but I've seen my first DVD-R sold on Amazon -- 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse: http://www.amazon.com/thousand-eyes-of-dr-mabuse/dp/B002MZZUGK/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1262540946&sr=1-5 Looks to be on the sketchy side to me, but what do I know...

I've taken many of these to the local shop, so I'll try to update what's left over the weekend. I did want to gauge if there is any interest in some LPs from ECM, mostly Gary Burton, Ralph Towner or Jack DeJohnette. I picked these up from Reckless, and they weren't kidding when they said they were near mint. I'm in the midst of transferring them to CDR now, but they could be yours by next week...

Price reduced to $175 (+ shipping) through Jan. 5.

This show is only up for 2 more days, but it might be worth a listen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pd812 esp. if like me you are wondering whether the Bing set would find a place in your heart. I can't tell how far back this program was developed and recorded, but it does not feature a single track off the Bing Crosby Mosaic.* What a wasted opportunity. I would certainly have delayed the program if necessary to include a track or two off the set (or asked Mosaic to send some kind of advance copy). I'm not even sure they mention the new set. Oh well, I guess I'll find out tonight. * And while the Bing Crosby-David Bowie duet on Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth is not a bad track, how jazzy is it really...

Facebook scams are popular too. I don't have Facebook or anything like that, so it is pretty obvious when I get an email saying there is something wrong with my Facebook account.

I'm interested in the following 2, if still available. Houston Person - The Opening Round (The Groove Masters Series) (Savant) w/J.DeFranceso, B.Purdie, R.Jones, T.Wormworth $4 Lew Tabackin Quartet - I'll Be Seeing You (Concord) $6 I can't manage to get PMs working from work, so will send something out tonight. Sorry. Eric

Columbia Small Group Swing Sessions currently for sale.

You also might want to check out A Dead Man's Memoir: A Theatrical Novel, which appears to be a new (2007) translation by Andrew Bromfield of Black Snow. I suspect this is the version that I will eventually read (although Glenny's translation can be found for much less). Glenny seems to be falling a bit out of fashion as a Bulgakov translator, though most critics seem to feel his Heart of a Dog remains better than Mirra Ginsburg's version.

Ok, this is probably only of interest to Bulgakov buffs, but still... Anyway, an odd coincidence struck me. It turns out that a Russian critic (Yuly Aikhenvald) -- an early supporter of Nabokov -- died in a tram accident in Berlin in 1928. I can't find any direct evidence that Bulgakov interacted with him, but I think he would have had to have heard of the accident, given how close-knit Russian literary circles were at the time. I do wonder if the incident helped shape the early drafts of the Master and Margarita. Now I currently have three translations, but after this exercise is over, I will give two away and hold onto the Peavar and Volokhonsky. (This picture is a bit blurry. Michael Glenny's somewhat outdated translation is on the left; P-V is on the right.*) As I said before, the Burgin-O'Connor translation is very good indeed, but I think P-V go just that extra half-step and reveal some of the slyness of the novel. Here are two examples (with P-V as the second entry): The Muscovites (an editor and a poet) say the Devil, like God, doesn't exist. The professor (actually the Devil) responds. 1) "Well, now, this is really getting interesting," cried the professor, shaking with laughter. "What is it with you? Whatever comes up you say doesn't exist!" 2) "Well, now that is positively interesting!" the professor said, shaking with laughter. "What is it with you -- no matter what one asks for, there isn't any!" During the professor's performance of black magic, an self-important bureaucrat is "exposed" as having an affair with a minor actress. 1) The young relative was seized with another fit of satanic laughter. "If anyone can lay a hand on him, I certainly can," she answered through her laughter, and again her umbrella was heard, cracking Arkady Apollonovich over the head. 2) A second brief wave of satanic laughter seized the young relation. "Who else should dare touch him," she answered, guffawing, "if not me!" And for the second time there came the dry, crackling sound of the umbrella bouncing off the head of Arkady Apollonovich. In the first example, I get the echoing of rationing and empty (cheese?) shops that doesn't come into play with the "doesn't exist" formulation. The second example is a bit more of a tie. It should be fairly evident to a careful reader that the distant relation is also involved with the bureaucrat and she is giving him "Elin" but his loathesomeness and the fact that he has to use his influence to win over ladies comes through a bit stronger. Again, this is mostly taste. I think P-V get it just a bit more right, but both are very readable, and I would encourage anyone who enjoyed the novel to borrow the other version for the notes at the end, since they do cover different aspects of the novel. I certainly feel I understand the book much better on what is essentially the second and third go-around. * I can't attach using this browser; I'll have to fix tonight.

No. When I mean comparing translation, I just mean putting them side by side, and seeing which works better based on internal logic or my own tastes really. On rare occasions I will try to read French novels or poetry in the original. That's really the only other language I can read. This has been a great opportunity to see if Peavar and Volokhonsky really should be considered the gold standard in Russian translation, and I have to say the hype seems justified. Most of the time, you can only compare their translations to Constance Garnett and not to a modern translation based on the most accurate text. And I don't mean to diss Ms. Garnett either, though I do think Peavar and Volokhonsky are more capable translators. I grew up on her translations of Dostoevsky, and without her prodigious efforts*, 2 or 3 generations of English-speakers might not have read these works, particularly Chekhov and Turgenev. This is less true of Dostoevsky (and Tolstoy**), who would eventually have been translated, of course. * Over 70 translations! ** To my shame, I have read nearly nothing of Tolstoy (penciled in tentatively for 2012) and I may well skip over her translations in favor of Peavar and Volokhonsky. I can't possibly read two versions of War and Peace back to back. Even Anna Karenina seems too long at over 700 pages, though I might read her version first for old times' sake and then P-V a couple of years down the road. But I did read nearly all of Dostoevsky growing up, even ripping through the Brothers Karamazov in just under two weeks. What I would do with that kind of time now!

That's a shame. I liked the Borders in Cambridge and occasionally did stop in and buy a few things. It was one of the few places in the city centre open past 7 pm.

I'm still debating this, but am in no hurry. For me, the ability to display PDFs is quite critical, but maybe even more important is the TIF format, since I have been converting literally thousands of pages over into TIFs (before OCR'ing them). But most likely TIFs will remain in the province of laptops, and I am not going to carry around a laptop and a Kindle-equivalent. But most likely for books that I want to read on the train, I will stick with paperbacks. I even have a few books that I had in electronic format (from Project Gutenberg) that I went ahead and ordered in paperback.

So I am slightly over half-way through both translations of The Master and Margarita. This is a pretty interesting novel, and having to go back and forth is slowing me down so I can really appreciate it (often on rereading a book, I will rip through it and the finer points are wasted). I'll post my thoughts on the translations a bit later. I'm doing a mini-survey of Soviet literature before starting in on my ambitious plans to go through Nabokov, Narayan and Mafouz in 2010-11. Vladimir Voinovich is definitely an heir to Bulgakov, esp. the Ivankiad, which I read many years back, and The Fur Hat (which may well be inspired by an episode in the Master and Margarita). Currently, I've checked out The Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Chonkin, and I'm trying to get my hands on Moscow 2042. I'm also going to read Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. This was another case where there are multiple translations (at least 3 in print). It looks like the most popular translations are Clarence Brown (Penguin) and Natasha Randall (Modern Library). (For some reason the Mirra Ginsburg version isn't discussed much.) So I was able to borrow both of these and do some comparisons. While it is a pretty short novel, I am not going to read both translations. I think Randall gets the linguistic devices a bit better, and I generally prefer her style. Brown seems inordinately proud of the fact that he predicts that uniform would be shortened to uni and not "unif" which is what most translators use. However, he is a total prat about it -- and he doesn't actually use "uni," but "yuny." I'm sorry, but there is no chance in the world that uniform would end up shorted to "yuny." Having to read "yuny" on page after page? No thank you. That sealed my decision, and I ordered a copy of the Modern Library version.

I thought the early paperbacks started from the beginning; am I wrong? Just wondering as I still have the first few. So I got this for Christmas (thanks, Santa), and it is a nice package. Much thicker than I thought (284 pages). I think the review on Amazon overstated how many new cartoons there are. There are definitely some not in Loose Tails, but probably more on the order of 5%, not 50% as one reviewer hinted. On the other hand, I have no problem with the reproduction quality. If you have all the old books, this is probably not necessary. I have the oversized collections still, but not the other ones, so for me, it is worth getting. Breathed glosses some political and pop culture references in the margins, but not others. It's kind of an odd effect.

I've completely given up on Borders as far as CDs or DVDs. It is always cheaper elsewhere. Occasionally, the 30% off coupon can give them a slight edge over some book I see on Amazon. However, I am finding more and more that many books are simply unavailable in their system, particularly academic books. I can think of 5 books in this category, including Bulgakov's Six Plays, which they certainly should carry. It used to be if it was in Books in Print, you could get it there (or special order it). Now you are just out of luck if it isn't on their website. I even emailed the chain and got a response that it was out of their control whether a publisher would send it to them. How weird and how sad. I went in for about 5 minutes to see their Boxing Day sale and it was complete tripe. I still don't think they will exist as a chain five years from now.

A mixed bag as in most things. I moved to New York in 2000 and had the best job of my life, bar none. Unfortunately, my wife disliked living in New York and we moved back to Chicago (then to the UK, then back to Chicago) and my work career has been trending downhill since then. On the personal side, I had two beautiful children and they are finally starting to be somewhat independent (one is in kindergarten, the other starting preschool). I wrote a play and am more creative than I have been for a long time. I'm on the board of a small theatre company. But still some major pieces need to get put back together again, particularly on the work front. I think 2010 will be pretty much more of the same, but have some hope for 2011.

Something very similar happened to a friend of the family. She was getting remarried and was dropping weight like crazy (to the point where she became unattractively thin) and then she had some blood sugar problem (leukocytes?) and went into cardiac arrest. She was about 36. If Britney Murphy was indeed anorexic, then catching any kind of illness could definitely push her over the edge. So sad. RIP

Astonishingly, the storm didn't come anywhere near Chicago. (The weather patterns are such that it usually moves across the US, and New York gets Chicago's weather one day later.)

We have different blends of cards here. Most of the debit cards are still issued with Visa or Mastercard on them, so that they can indeed be used overseas. I actually managed to get by for 18 months in the UK with a Barclay's debit card, a US debit card (that said Visa on it) and a Discover card (that was truly useless overseas). Since then I've managed to keep my debt levels very low, though a broke-down refrigerator and some computer repairs have kept me a little bit in the red.

So I got started on this a little early. The temptation of reading the dueling Bulgakovs at Christmas was too tempting to pass up (if you are familiar with it, it involves the devil (or his surrogate) coming to Moscow and finding the people easy pickings, interwoven with chapters of Jesus and Pontius Pilate). My feelings so far are that the Peavar-Volokhonsky translation is a bit better than Burgin-O'Connor, in part because they seem to have worked from the most complete version. I do think the notes from the Burgin-O'Connor just a bit better, however. To add to the confusion there is a mass paperback of the Peavar-Volokhonsky (that I've only ever seen in the UK) without any notes or footnotes. I would probably steer away from that as some notes are helpful. But either translation is fine. Heck, even the original one I read by M. Glenny is good. If you are at all interested in Russian (or particularly Soviet) literature, you should read this book.

I can't actually find it in the phone book. It is a new place, and currently they don't have the credit card machines, though they are working on that. So it is books by the pound, cash only. (A co-worker said this was exactly how students were treated when they sold books back in India ) Anyway, it is one or two stores due east of Comix Revolution, which is 606 Davis Street (near Chicago Ave). A couple other bookstores of note in Evanston are: Howard's Books 2000 Maple Avenue (@ Foster), Evanston, IL (847) 475-3445‎ Amaranth Books (866) 999-0779 828 Davis, Evanston, IL 60201 For just general fiction, I tend to favor Howard's Books, which is a bit off the beaten path. For even cheaper books, you can always check the charity shops. Two that I actually go to from time to time for a pretty good selection are: Brown Elephant Resale Shop 3651 North Halsted Street Chicago, IL 60613-4315 Ark Thrift Shop 3345 N Lincoln Ave (between Marshfield Ave & Paulina St) Chicago, IL 60657 (773) 248-1117 (773) 549-5943 One very important thing to know about The Ark is that is a Jewish philanthropic organization so it is open Sunday, not Saturday.

Well, I found The Amazing Toshiko Akiyoshi on sale at YesAsia and am cautiously optimistic that it will get here (by Jan perhaps). I have ordered through them before, so I know they are not just a fly-by-night website. That still doesn't change the fact that it is a (minor) scandal that her albums don't have distribution in the US. I guess she has such a low profile that it isn't even worth Lonehill's time to put out her early albums. Maybe she didn't hit her stride until 1961 which wouldn't be up for grabs for another couple of years (not that this has stopped them in the past), but I can think of 3 or 4 worthy albums released in 1958 or before. Oh well.

So upstream there was some talk about a second Akiyoshi select that would feature the live recordings. Is this still a possibility or has the economy deep-sixed this? Anyway, it is so frustrating that her early albums are so hard to come by (outside of Japan). I would think iTunes or Amazon would be able to sell them as downloads at least.

Maybe this isn't unique, but I have just come across a used book store that doesn't price books individually but rather sells them by the pound (or kilo ) There is one price for fiction/non-fiction/children's books and then a higher price for comic books/manga. Kind of weird, and maybe a bit disrespectful. Interestingly, the book store is not full of trashy paperbacks but mostly trade paperbacks and a lot of good literature that was current about 3 years back. I picked up Klima's Love and Garbage and a couple of other titles.