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I've been pretty good for a while now, avoid purchases aside from the eMusic renewals, though I did get a classical box set (Jean Martinon) just a while back, but it was a steal, so that doesn't count... Anyway, I'm on a mini-Mingus kick. I ordered Mingus in Europe v.1 (Enja) and am hoping against hope that they ship this instead of v.2, which I already own. It's something I could have picked up easily a while back but now it's become fairly rare. Also, I guess I've been sleeping on the two-fer from Collectibles that combines Me, Myself an Eye & Something Like a Bird. Jack Walrath himself has an Amazon review saying that the mix isn't the best -- and that there were unused takes that could someday be released -- but I'll settle for this for now. I"m pretty sure I haven't heard any of this music before. While I'm waiting for this to arrive, it's time to break out the Mosaic Mingus box. I really have barely scratched the surface of this set.

I've not read that many of Henry James novels, either the early or later ones. I'll probably get around to it one day, and have 3 or 4 that will someday make my to read pile. The one that I read in college was indeed The Ambassadors. I found it a novel that one admired more than really enjoyed, which is the case with a lot of late James.

Congrats.

Sad, but not terribly shocking. He was 94 and apparently passed away peacefully, i.e. he wasn't ill. Nice way to go if you can get it. RIP

I am quite abashed that I didn't see this until today, though in the wake of Bowie and Rickman, pretty much all celebrity deaths took second stage. Brian Bedford, a mainstay of Stratford, passed away of cancer on Jan 13. He was 80. A nice obit here: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/stage/2016/01/13/brian-bedford-a-veteran-of-ontarios-stratford-festival-dead-at-80.html I believe I saw him 3 times in various Stratford productions, including a powerful Julius Caesar in an otherwise muddled production. He had slowed down and more or less stopped performing since 2013, and I've only been able to start going to Stratford on a regular basis since 2014. But he left a very strong legacy at Stratford -- and very limited work in films or TV, which unfortunately means he will not leave much of a trace in the general culture. He did have a role in the movie Nixon and was the voice of Robin Hood in the Disney movie, which is probably the height of his fame. It is likely that Stratford has some DVDs available, though probably not for the roles I'd be most interested in. But I'll check around this summer when I go down. RIP

I finished God's Grace by Malamud last night. It is the freakiest book by a well-known member of the "literary establishment" that I can recall. Maybe Bear by Marian Engel, but she is basically an unknown outside of Canada, and I'm not really sure she was ever part of the establishment. I didn't like it for lots of reasons, but I can't really go into them now. I am starting Galapagos by Vonnegut. I'm enjoying this more, though the narrative voice is a bit overbearing at times (and even smug) as John was discussing. Still, even though Vonnegut probably has an even bleaker worldview than Malamud, the tone is not as off-putting. I've read a couple of the stories in Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, and think they were pretty good. I'll turn back to reading this full time after Galapagos.

Yes, it is called Henri Duchemin and His Shadows. It's five or so short stories and one slightly longer story (not quite a novella). It's good, but probably not the best introduction to Bove.

I actually cannot locate it. We moved about two months after I would have gotten this, and it is probably in a random box in the basement, since I hadn't fully integrated my shelves before the move. So in one sense, I can understand why I don't remember having the set, but if this isn't a wake up call, I don't know what is. I have a whole shelf of box sets that I have only listened to once. I think I need to rethink my priorities. It is true that I have cut way back on buying new (or reissued) music. But I need to actively purge more music. Who am I kidding that I will listen to this?

Larry, thanks for this. That's a solid review. I own Night Departure/No Place (as well as Quicksand) but haven't gotten to them yet. I hope to before too long.

I quite like Hotel Savoy, which is my favorite novel by Roth. The Legend of the Holy Drinker is good, but probably better to get out of the library. It's fairly short. I've heard good things about The Leviathan, but I've not read it. That can be read as a stand-alone or in his Collected Stories. I also like his reportage quite a bit. I'm wrapping up The Hotel Years, which is good. His non-fiction is also collected in What I Saw and The White Cities. It's a bit out of left field, but I'm finding some interesting parallels between Roth and Emmanuel Bove, so he might be a writer worth checking out at some point. For Bove, My Friends/Mes Amis is a good starting point, as well as the newly translated Henri Duchemin and His Shadows (NYRB).

True confessions time - I came quite close to pulling the trigger on this set - Jean Martinon with the CSO: http://www.amazon.com/Jean-Martinon-Complete-Recordings-Orchestra/dp/B00PCCWXPG/ref=pd_sim_15_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=41ZbXNCA-NL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=0489FGCWJ58W7R9PCKV3 Fortunately, I checked my email account, and I have already bought the set last April. Obviously it didn't make much of an impression. I haven't even been able to locate it, but I will spend some time this weekend looking in some places where it ought to be. Nonetheless, this looks like a fairly interesting set, and hopefully I will be able to post some impressions later on.

Not sure if this has been mentioned before but Gunter Wand The Great Recordings: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Great-Recordings-G%C3%BCnter-Wand/dp/B0069EOZT8/ref=cm_rdp_product I think I'll pass, since I know I will hardly crack open a box like this. The price on the Abbado RCA/Sony set has dropped a bit: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Complete-Sony-Album-Collection/dp/B00J1XNMDO/ref=pd_bxgy_15_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=06MNBBRSZ32RQQHRWH7G (I ordered it before, but this price drop is not so extreme that I regret the previous order.)

I've not seen it but Alan Rickman was Obadian Slope in The Barchester Chronicles. I probably should snag a copy, though I really would prefer watching it after I read the books, and that is several years away.

Not to belabor this to death, but the former DA has indicated that he will testify in court regarding a deal with Cosby's lawyers back in 2005 that could (and probably will) sink the criminal proceedings against him: http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/15/us/bill-cosby-email-sexual-assault-charges-pennsylvania/index.html The new DA is basically saying that the deal wasn't completely kosher and he won't be bound by it, but you can imagine a judge saying that this is going to be a radioactive case and thus striking the deposition from the record which would effectively kill the case. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Good point about Illinois! I wouldn't be as worried about a multi-state lottery.

I wrapped up Narayan's The Financial Expert. There were a few good scenes (especially in Madras) but this seemed to me to try too hard to be clever. Plus, I didn't care for the main character, I absolutely detested his spoiled son, and I couldn't really fathom the motivations of the third character (they seemed all over the place and just not internally consistent). I have to say I think God's Grace by Malamud is just not for me. It is a very strange book, but almost anything I write about it would be a spoiler. Speaking of spoilers, the latest edition of Nabakov's Invitation to a Beheading has a blurb on the back that spoils the entire novel! Are you kidding me? I honestly don't know if I should bother now, even though this is the publisher's fault and not Nabokov's (and I realize plot is not usually the main point of reading Nabokov, but still...). I'll get a chapter or two in and see if I am still feeling it, but I have a strong intimation I will abandon this. After I clear out all this, I have Faulkner in the batter's circle: Go Down, Moses. I'm pretty sure this is a book I will enjoy without major reservations.

That assumes the winners actually do invest it all -- highly doubtful -- and they have a surefire strategy that will consistently beat inflation. For most periods, that's probably true, but this has been a period of extremely low inflation combined with volatile market activity. I'd probably go with the annual payments under that scenario. On the other hand, it depends how big the payoff actually is, since it might be better to be in the top tax bracket in one year and then return to a slightly lower bracket later on (depending of course how the investments are structured and/or sheltered, how much goes into a trust, how much to charity, etc.). I think it is not totally straight-forward until you consider all the variables.

RIP Lousy, lousy, lousy week. I'm hoping to dig out Galaxy Quest (I should have a copy somewhere) and play it over the weekend.

My sleep patterns are all jacked up, but it is certainly as a result of my choices -- staying up too late to try to get too much in any one day. I wouldn't say I exactly have insomnia, since I fall asleep almost instantly but then wake up in the middle of the night -- 3 or 4 am. I get up and surf the internet and work on blog posts, so it isn't terribly productive time, but isn't completely wasted either. Then I maybe get two more hours sleep, and then I am grouchy at work until lunchtime. So I know better, but it is a hard pattern to break. Still, I feel the consequences a lot more now than I did 10 years ago, so maybe I'll wise up one of these days.

I'm a fan of basically all his periods, though I have only a few of the classic albums (Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Ziggy of course) and am more of a singles guy throughout this period). Like Rooster, I have nearly all of his post Tin Machine CDs, and I just ordered Outside and BlackStar to complete the set. My favorite is Earthling, but the others have some great songs. I'll be going through a lot of this over the next week.

I am just stunned and really taken aback. RIP I managed to see him in concert twice -- once in 1990 on the Sound + Vision Tour (when he was supposedly retiring all his hits -- glad he didn't stick to to that). And then in 2004, the Reality tour, which of course was his last tour. I liked most of his later albums (haven't heard the brand new one yet) and respected how he didn't just play it safe but kept changing things up (at least relative to most rock/pop artists).

While I don't care much for the annoying central character in Nancy Lee's The Age (a teenage girl who is just desperate for love and human connection and who makes some bad decisions as a result), this is a pretty compelling book. It is about growing up in the 1980s and being sure that nuclear war would break out at any moment. Coincidentally, I am also reading Bernard Malamud's last completed novel God's Grace, which is about what happens after the entire human race is wiped out except one man. I'm not very far into this one. Next up after these are Narayan's The Financial Expert and Munro's The Moons of Jupiter.

That is so, but Trollope was a working stiff much of his life -- he had a long career at the Post Office and only started earning enough from his writing that he was able to resign at age 52. Also, he ran as a Liberal in Beverley, though apparently, this was primarily a scheme to show how corrupt the borough was and led to its eventual disenfranchisement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Trollope I remember it taking about half of Can You Forgive Her? until I finally got into the rhythm and pace of Trollope -- after that I enjoyed him a lot and finished up the Palliser novels. However, I did not have the time to read the other 41 novels he wrote! I've decided in the next 2-3 years I will read some stand-alone novels: The Three Clerks, He Knew He Was Right and The Way We Live Now. After that I'll try to tackle the Chronicles of Barsetshire.

Has anyone seen the latest tour by the SF Jazz Collective? Apparently it features them doing new compositions and the other half is the music of Michael Jackson. I realize they did the music of Stevie Wonder a year or two ago, though I could see how that would have more possibilities than MJ's music, which strikes me as considerably simpler and not all that interesting as a starting point for jazz soloing. But perhaps I am just being far too snobbish about the whole thing. They are coming through Toronto in a few months, and I haven't really decided either way, though I may go in the end.

I like Mahfouz quite a bit. He has two main periods (three if you count the trilogy of novels he wrote about ancient Egypt, which I don't find very interesting). He wrote longer, realistic novels with multiple characters, up through the Cairo Trilogy. I think Cairo Modern is a good representative novel of this period, and if you like it, you might read a few other early novels and perhaps tackle the Cairo Trilogy. The only one from this period I don't like is The Beginning and the End. His later period (the majority of his career) features shorter novels, simpler stories (only a handful of characters), often focused on meetings in cafes. Also, they are somewhat more fable-like or dream-like. He mostly started to shy away from writing about politics, though The Day the Leader was Killed, is actually a fairly bold work from this period. From this period, I might recommend Adrift on the Night or Arabian Days and Nights. Or indeed The Thief and the Dogs, which is starting out well. Both periods are good, though I have a bit of a preference for the earlier novels. Fair enough. I was thinking more along the lines of the heavy drinkers William Kennedy wrote about, but your explanation makes sense. I think I read The Emperor's Tomb too early and didn't much care for it, but now that I have a fuller understanding of Roth and his work, I will try it again after tackling Radetzkymarsch.