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Just a head's up that Barnes and Noble is having a 50% off all Criterions sale. Can't tell how long -- maybe a couple of weeks. It appears to apply to everything, including the Criterion and Eclipse box sets. Unfortunately, the sale does not appear to apply to pre-orders so the two sets I am most interested in -- Rossellini's War Trilogy and potentially AK100 -- will not be covered. This sale seems to hit every year around Thanksgiving, so I can afford to be patient and see if I can scoop these up next year. Oh, they even seem to have a few copies of Ran left in stock, so this might be a good time to grab them before they are gone forever.

Interesting. Certainly a good price at FNAC, though with shipping not too good on this side of the pond. However, it looks like Amazon is already importing them: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002BX4VH...-30&seller= And here is a Bechet 3 CD set: http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-RTL-Sidney-Bechet/dp/B001NXO8WO

Well, that is very cool. Thanks. I'll give it a listen and try to report back within the week. Like the blog too.

Wow - had no idea this thread was here - this is the first post I noticed since I joined back in March. I have the Don Lee poem in a book called Understanding the New Black Poetry, edited by Stephen Henderson, but it was published in 1972, so it would probably not be much easier to find than the original chapbook. Anyway, I'm excited to see this thread. ... Well, I found a copy, though now I can't recall which of his early chapbooks it was in. It seems he has not kept it in print whenever he puts out a new collected or selected poems. I think it is unfortunate, but I guess he has mellowed and doesn't want to attack the church anymore. On a much more debased note, Roger Ebert has been running a limerick competition here: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/11/ho...eet_mrlear.html I guess the competition will be open for another few days. A little of this goes a long way, and there are already 250+ limericks at the site. Still, some of them are awfully clever. Probably 70% or more are dirty. Here is a "clean" one that I submitted: The world’s too much with us, he sighed. To reimagine the world, I have tried, emulating the Greeks. This lasted for weeks, then I threw myself into the tide.

I took the list from Wiki, and I have to agree with you, Henry Sugar (and even The Vicar) definitely ride the line and are not entirely "kids' books." I probably would read some of the stories to my kids but not all. I'm currently skimming his description of going to English public school. What a sea change. It is astounding how in a relatively short period, collectively most Western nations decided that corporal punishment, particularly by teachers, was unacceptable. I'm certainly not sorry I missed out on beatings at school (even if it would have made me a better writer). Still, Boy is in the box set, and Henry Sugar could have been included as well. It would have fit thematically anyway. I did read The Vicar of Nibbleswicke. It is one of the last things he wrote -- a fable of sorts that was to benefit a charity working with people with dyslexia. It's fine but very slight. Unfortunately because some of the reversed words are kind of obscene, I'm going to hold off on reading it to my kids for now. So I would probably have put it into the adult column. (And I would generally recommend just borrowing it from the library.)

Read about 20-25 pages of The Transit of Venus. Just could not get into it. Shirley Hazzard is like a living High Priestess of Modernism. Like Djuna Barnes cubed. Deliberately, willfully obscure prose that just begs the reader to "look at how clever I am." I looked at the reviews on Amazon, and nearly half the readers couldn't even tell how the book ended, since everything is so over-written. 20 years ago, I would have (probably) lapped this up, and even 5 years ago I would have forced myself to finish. Now I just feel time is too short. I'm still kind of mad that I forced myself to finish Bolano's Savage Detectives, when the payoff (for me) was so meager. However, I am just really digging Mark Salzman's The Soloist. I'd like to finish in one sitting, but I have a few too many other obligations. Jess Walter's The Zero is on-deck after that, and it also looks promising.

Allen. I'd be interested. Let me PM you.

That's pretty obscure. But definitely worth checking out. Thanks. My son is starting to find science interesting (thank you TMBG!) so I will check this out and probably order it. I am particularly intrigued that the one in print (a Nov. 2009 edition!) is an updated edition. What could that possibly mean, I ask myself. I will try to find out who did this updating before I decide which edition to get. Edit: Most likely it was her son according to this article: jump If it is just updating the text about the natural science a bit and not tinkering with the illustrations, I can probably go with that.

Since my oldest child is just creeping up on the age where he might appreciate Roald Dahl, I've been thinking of how to go about sourcing them. While I was in the UK, there was a nearly complete set of Dahl's children's books, but somehow I could never manage to get one (sometimes you had to join a club or what have you). Anyway, to my surprise, there is a roll-out of a new collection of 15 (out of approx. 22) of Dahl's books. Making it even better, particularly for us in the US, is that these will have all the Quentin Blake illustrations (sometimes dropped in US editions). Apparently already available in Australia, most other countries including the US will get this in March 2010. It is kind of a long way off, but the pre-order price at Amazon is very nice, working out to less than $2 per book with free shipping: http://www.amazon.com/Roald-Dahl-Book-Box-...3852&sr=8-1 The books included should be: Fantastic Mr Fox The Witches The Twits James and the Giant Peach Charlie and the Chocolate Factory The BFG The Magic Finger The Giraffe, The Pelly and Me Esio Trot Boy Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator Danny, the Champion of the World George's Marvellous Medicine Going Solo Matilda If you are keeping score, not included are: * Dirty Beasts * The Enormous Crocodile * The Gremlins * The Minpins * Revolting Rhymes * The Vicar of Nibbleswicke * The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More My plan will be to review the non-included books at the library and see if any are must gets (leaning towards the Henry Sugar story collection but may end up getting all of them). No connection to anyone involved in the set, I just really appreciate Dahl as one of the few authors writing for children (well basically pre-teens) that isn't afraid of mixing in a little vinegar with the sugar and spice. Perhaps my favorite from childhood was James and the Giant Peach where the aunts get smooshed within a few pages and no tears are shed over them.

These are pretty clever poems about the classic Hollywood monsters (Frankenstein's monster, Wolf Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon and so on). Now that Halloween is over, they should be back at the public library! Anyway, I'll definitely be checking out more by Adam Rex. One warning is that The True Meaning of Smekday is a long book for upper-level readers, which I found out after ordering the book. C'est la vie. I'll get to it eventually with the kids.

This just never grew on me, though I ended up reading (with a bit of skimming) nearly all of it. I've just started Birds in Flight by Brad Kessler, which is about the after-effects of a plane crash (sure glad that I didn't grab this one on that long flight to Sacramento!). Anyway, this looks promising, maybe even too promising in that I might hang onto it after I've read it (the goal this year was to get through a huge stack of disposable fiction that I would only read once. I think I have purged in the neighborhood of 25-30 books. Next year I will go back to more enduring fiction.) I like the cover too.

It is pretty astonishing -- and sad -- how well known Von Freeman is in Chicago (for any jazz musician) and the lack of recognition outside of Chicago. He is always playing somewhere in Chicago to our great benefit, although I haven't caught him in a while. I think there is no question that of the earlier records, the Nessa and SteepleChase recordings capture him better than the others. I'm not sure where Von and Ed (Peterson) on Delmark would fall, but I like it, since it reminds me of the times I caught these two doing their battle at the Green Mill. I would say that for whatever reason, the recordings since 2000 pretty much across the board capture him well (The Great Divide, The Improvisor) maybe simply because people stopped trying to make him into something he wasn't. Anyway, I haven't ordered this one yet, but I think I'll ask for it for Christmas. Thanks again, Chuck, for helping keep him in the spotlight (a bit) outside of Chicago.

I feel for you. I tend to have a similar situation where I get a nagging cough at the beginning of fall, and I just kind of live with it (to the annoyance of my wife). Generally, it is some kind of post-nasal drip thing getting into my lungs. In the past, I had a doctor prescribe some inhaler but the side-effects of the steroid that was its main ingredient made me decide to not take it and just spend longer in the shower, trying to bring everything up the hard way. This season things did seem to take a turn for the worse, particularly after a long flight back from Sacramento. I went to the clinic yesterday, and the practitioner said he was sure I had walking pneumonia on top of very restricted airways, so he gave me some anti-biotics. He said I was just going into a downward spiral and I would not have been able to shake it on my own. Anyway, I do feel a bit better already. You might have something similar. They should have some answers soon.

Von also didn't make all that many albums, did he? (Well, more than George.) Part of the local hero stuff, I imagine. MG I think he falls into that category of better late than never. He doesn't have that many recordings from the early or middle part of his career (5 as a leader covering the 70s and 80s!), but he's been recording far more regularly since the 90s (15, including Vonski Speaks). That's a pretty remarkable late career resurgence.

How are his novels? I have a copy of "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" but haven't read it yet. A friend also recommended "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" to me recently. Well, I really enjoyed Yiddish Policemen's Union, but you have to be a fan of alternative worlds/speculative fiction to appreciate it. As you may have heard, in this universe the state of Israel was never founded and most European Jews ended up in Alaska.

Wrapped up Ted Mooney's Traffic and Laughter. As I said, definitely some parallels to Crash. The ending is supposed to be ambiguous I guess, but also seems to imply that a fission bomb could be set off by being struck by a bullet. Highly unlikely I believe, not that I would want to test this out. Anyway, surprised myself by finishing American Fuji by Sara Backer on a long airplane ride. This is one of those books that tries to get at the truth of contemporary Japan and explain it to American audiences. For that, it was still well done. Some parts of the plot stretch credibility, and yet the ending was still more moving than I expected. Am in the midst of a short story collection by Lynne Schwartz called Acquainted with the Night. I am very underwhelmed and probably will just read a few more and drop it. The stories are from the late 70s and early 80s and just feel completely dated, particularly a few where everyone is in therapy. I wonder in general if short stories date worse than novels, or at least those that rely heavily on their setting rather than aiming for "the universal."

Well, I saw part of Stefon Harris' set at the Jazz Showcase. I am on the verge of getting sick, and my son was coughing a lot as well. So we sat in the back in case we had to leave early if we became too much of a distraction. So let than ideal conditions. My mood did not improve when they started 30 minutes late. The opening song (Gone) was quite nice, but then immediately they switched to a vocoder for the song "For You." I absolutely hated it, though some in the audience were digging it. Probably only a few years back, Joe would have pulled the plug. Anyway, this is one of the featured tracks on their new album Urbanus and I probably will pass on the album specifically because of this song. (To my taste, even worse than Jason Moran's Bandwagon stuff.) Sadly, 40 minutes in, we were feeling worse and worse and decided to bail, which was particularly disappointing as I liked what they were playing as we left.

To be honest, I had no idea he was still alive. I've got a couple of his books but really only browsed through them. Still, certainly an intriguing figure. I did like the Quai Branley museum, which was inspired by his approach to the study of cultures. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/eu...tml?_r=1&hp

Shoot. Hope all goes well for him and that the fest can fill in the big empty spot. I'll pass on any info on the latter if I hear it. Yes, pass it along. I was thinking I might actually be able to make the 10 pm show, but probably will pass under the circumstances. While this isn't quite as exceptional as the Umbrella Fest, Stefon Harris will be at the Jazz Showcase Thurs-Sun. I intend on making the Sun. matinee.

Well, it was a few days ago, but I saw Vijay Iyer with his new trio at Chicago Symphony Center. Very good. Mostly playing material off of Historicity but also Andrew Hill's Smokestack. (Both Vijay and Jason Moran have always given props to Andrew.) The bass player's string broke right as they were tuning up! Somehow he managed to get through the performance and still sound great. I believe that was why he had to lean over the bass much of the time and play at the very bottom of the strings, trying to get the correct notes. After the break it was Dave Holland, Jason Moran, Chris Potter and Eric Harland on drums. As you would expect, they were also very good. I'll look over my notes to see what they played, but it was essentially all originals by the various members of the super-group.

Finished up Glen Gold's Carter Beats the Devil Really plot-driven, and a bit over the top, but in a good way. I could absolutely see this as a movie. I'm about 1/3 of the way into Ted Mooney's Traffic and Laughter. This is somewhat reminiscent of Crash, though it actually came out a few years before the movie. I suppose any book set primarily in LA with a large cast of characters is going to remind me of Crash. It is also set in a slightly alternative future. As far as I can tell, the book is set in the late 1980s-early 90s, but they are only now getting around to testing the atomic bomb. Most parts of the book are fun, but when Mooney leaves LA, he leaves his footing. For example, when he shows us diplomats arguing about testing the bomb (in South Africa!), the dialogue is not convincing.

Well, I was fairly close. I've been scanning and then recycling a ton of paper lately. Kind of feels like passing my entire academic career through a shredder at 50 pages a pop -- though not quite so satisfying. Anyway, this reminded me that I never got the answer to this question, so I went back to the interwebs, and what do you know, now this poem shows up, cited in Google Books a couple of places. I know there is a lot of controversy over Google Books and copyright etc., but I think what they are doing is great. Anyway, it turns out it is not Baraka but Don L. Lee (aka Haki Madhubuti) "In the Interest of Black Salvation." Now I just need to track down if I have the chapbook the poem is in. It turns out he is releasing a new volume of his collected poetry -- and is giving a reading in Hyde Park next week, though I don't think I will be able to make it. Well, I'll keep an eye out to see if he is doing any downtown or northside readings.

Well, this is more of an earwig song, but it certainly has got me. I've got Lexxus & Benz by Macka Diamond running through my head. Part of it is the weird juxtaposition of harmonica overlaying dancehall rhythms. Part of it is probably just really listening closely to it in a failed effort to untangle all the lyrics. I suspect that if I can get ahold of the lyrics, it's hold over me will be broken. If that doesn't work, I'll listen to TMBG's Here Comes Science, which is insanely catchy.

well, yes. And no. And yes. A few years back, maybe a decade or so, it used to be four days. Then the Thursday was cut from Grant Park. Then they brought back the Thursday as a paid event. Then they got rid of the paid event. I'm biting my lip here, but I think that there are a lot of wise things that could be done that aren't being done, and the end result is that the Jazz Festival will either turn into a one day affair or will be completely ravaged by sponsors. Well, it has gone up and down, but 2008 had three days in Grant Park plus a free event (Sonny Rollins) in Milennium Park on the Thurs. I think 2007 was the same. So it feels like it has gone from 4 days to 2 in 2 years. Almost all the smaller music festivals are moving over to Milennium Park. I suppose a year or two down the road that will happen to the one day jazz fest.

Probably mentioned above, but I cannot stand the fact that you need Administrator overrides for everything. I am working at a library computer, and I need to move some files into different folders (on my own portable HD), and it won't let me do that, since I don't have an adminstrator's password of course. It just seems intrusive and a memory hog. I explicitly went back down to XP when I bought a new computer (getting harder to find sites that will let you do this). If I absolutely need to upgrade, I'll switch over to 7 but never Vista.