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You have a stronger stomach than I. You are the second person in this thread to express their distaste for the book. I haven't found anything in it so far to explain why this should be so. What's the story? Ayn Rand is considered the patron saint of a certain brand of libertarianism. While she was never a full-fledged follower of Nietzsche, she shared the belief that superior individuals shouldn't be shackled by lesser men. Generally, her work is noted for its hatred of collectivism, its love of individualism, and its admiration for American capitalism (taken from here: http://atlassociety.org/objectivism/atlas-university/deeper-dive-blog/4444-response-by-william-thomas) My personal animus towards her followers makes me completely unwilling to ever crack open one of her books.

Finished up Bleeding London. It was ok, not great. I was able to guess one significant plot point from almost the beginning. Am partway into Open City by Teju Cole. It's pretty good, though it reads a fair bit like a diary and not a novel.

You have to go into the .bios file and edit this. I don't recall all the details off-hand, but a quick google search should give some instructions.

I mentioned it to a friend who lives in Queens. He's thinking of dropping by.

I don't think anyone's posted on this yet. The 2015 schedule is out for the Toronto Jazz Fest, which runs the last two weeks of June. More info here: http://torontojazz.com/sites/default/files/calendar.html BTW, I guess this is not until 2016, but I saw the SF Jazz Collective is going to be doing another tour, but this time they are presenting the music of Michael Jackson. I'm really having trouble getting behind that. It reminds me of all those terrible LPs of jazz musicians interpreting the Beatles or what have you. I'll have to hear back that the tour is really incredible to convince me to go. Back to the jazz festival, it isn't amazing, but there are a few interesting shows. I am likely to see Chris Potter/Dave Holland/Eric Harland. I'm still debating the Christian McBride Big Band, but I'll probably go. Curiously, there is a free show just a bit earlier at Nathan Phillip Square with Chelsea McBride and her big band. (Pretty sure no relation.) And Ikebe Shakedown is another free show that I think I'll be checking out. The most amusing is that Morris Day and the Time will be performing for free early in the festival. I'll probably skip this, but my wife might go if I can get home in time to watch the kids.

Wasn't sure I would make it in, but saw Tafelmusik doing a free show on Friday. Was very entertaining -- and hard to beat free! Highlights were Telemann's Wassermusik Suite and Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #3.

I saw the play version of Of Human Bondage, and perhaps not surprisingly they played up the Mildred angle to the hilt, even increasing the conflict above and beyond what was in the actual book. They completely eliminated Philip's uncle and that whole subplot. They killed off a couple of characters and switched around who committed suicide. They made one of the shop assistants into an imitation of Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served, and kind of changed that plot slightly. The Persian rug was actually spared and brought into the happy ending. I guess most of these are relatively minor revisions, and the emotional core of the plot remained, but I was a bit taken aback (and spent much of the play just thinking of where they had made these changes). I generally could only abide the novel when Mildred was not in the picture, and of course she was around most of the time in the play, so I didn't really enjoy myself. I finally finished The Burn. Didn't like it. I know he was often attempting this novel to be a contemporary update of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, but I found it far more reminiscent of Moscow to the End of the Line (another book on contemporary Moscow that I found exhausting, though that was considerably shorter). I've just started Geoff Nicholson's Bleeding London. It strikes me as a mainstream writer slumming a bit and writing genre fiction, specially the crime/revenge story. While it came out well before, the plot seems a lot like Kill Bill. I think I'll finish it, but it isn't doing a lot for me at the moment. Unlikely to read any other Geoff Nicholson. I guess the good news is that the next stack of books looks a lot more rewarding.

Yes, I remember this discussion from before on a different thread. I bought the Ralph Ellison-themed CD just for that cut. Not sure where it is at the moment, however...

I've kind of lost track of what I wanted and didn't want and what I actually ordered. I think I had it narrowed down to the new Louis Armstrong set and probably the Clifford Jordan. The Bee Hive material will have to wait until next sale apparently...

How is the Blake book? I've been dying to read it, but it's incredibly expensive in the USA. I'm 60 pages in and very much enjoying it. There's a big section of plates in the middle that are linked into the text and help you understand his early work as an apprentice engraver (that might explain the expense). Very good on the origins of his worldview in the Dissenting tradition. I've never quite 'got' what Blake was railing against but it's starting to make sense now. I knew he was deeply suspicious of industrialisation and 'reason' but the text makes clear how this was rooted in a general mistrust of authority both civil and religious. Thanks for your initial thoughts, I keep looking for a cheap, used copy here. From what I can see online, used copies in the U.S. are far from cheap. Good luck with your search, Matthew. If you act fast, it looks like the copy from Better World Books is a pretty good deal: http://www.amazon.com//gp/offer-listing/0300089392/sr=/qid=/?condition=used&tag=bkfndr76-b-20 I've had pretty good luck ordering from them over the past 5 years.

Haven't watched in forever, but I used to watch 3 or 4 shows at a time on Adult Swim. Still have a weak spot for Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. Not sure if The Venture Bros. was on Adult Swim, but I used to follow that to some extent. It's not quite as fun when it starts going mainstream though, like Archer.

So no one is commenting on what is going down re: FIFA in Switzerland? I guess it may be too political...

He didn't offer to cut it on wax cylinders? That would make thematic sense...

Probably already discussed above, but if you don't have to have everything, here are a few focused Boulez bargain sets (especially through secondary market): (Bartok) http://www.amazon.com/Conducts-Bartok-Pierre-Boulez/dp/B00GZHRFDC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1432649441&sr=8-2&keywords=boulez+Bartok (Webern) http://www.amazon.com/Anton-Webern-Complete-Works-1-Op/dp/B00EC0VW3S/ref=pd_sim_15_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0AZ9HEK6V50CFCFPK1P6 (Schoenberg) http://www.amazon.com/Pierre-Boulez-conducts-Schoenberg-Arnold/dp/B00AK3X3U6/ref=pd_sim_15_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1APP6ZH2QN0X6QW8ZT2H I believe that quite a few of the Columbia albums can now be released under the Sony budget imprint, though I may be wrong. (I saw a number of Bartok titles in the Columbia box, for instance, but he could have recorded them twice for instance.)

I've finally gotten reasonably deep into The Burn by Vasily Aksyonov. I have to agree with the reviewers that say it comes across as a Russian version of Pynchon's V or Gravity's Rainbow. If anything, I am having more trouble keeping track of characters and what is real vs. what is imagined than I did with Pynchon. I should try to dig out my copy of the Golden Years of Soviet Jazz CDs and play them while reading this. It would probably help me get in the mood a bit better.

I did go, and the first half with Don Byron and the Gryphon Trio was enjoyable. To me, the standout composition was Byron's piece "Basquiat." In the somewhat unlikely event he records it, I would go ahead and track it down. (I mean if he records this particular arrangement for clarinet and string trio.) I do believe this is the first time I've seen Byron without dreadlocks... The second half was alternating between the Gryphon Trio playing a trio by Ives, which was ok, and several contemporary pieces played by the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal (ECM), which I strongly disliked. Had I known how it all would have unfolded, I would have left at intermission, but I guess you just never know.

I don't mean to nitpick, but Divine Days came out in 1992 and Forrest died in 1997. I do agree it is in dire need of editing down. Forrest was all but finished with Meteor in the Madhouse when he died and that came out in 2001. That's sort of a novel composed of novellas -- and I believe set in Chicago. There is a quirky novel about someone trying to blow up the Harold Washington Library -- Instant Karma by Mark Swartz. I also have a soft spot for Making Love to the Minor Poets of Chicago by James Conrad, though part of it takes place in Nevada. Finally, if you are open to short story collections set in Chicago, I would highly recommend Stuart Dybek's I Sailed with Magellan and especially The Coast of Chicago.

I finished Ben Lerner's 10:04, but it didn't do much for me. The combination of a really self-absorbed New York writer (how many times do we have to hear how big his advance was?) and postmodernism fell flat. I've just started Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai, which is much more to my taste. It is a coming-of-age story of a gay boy in Sri Lanka. It is quite different from most, as it starts out a fair bit like Narayan's Swami and His Friends, though the boy wants to play with girls, but gets far more serious as the boy grows older and as ethnic tensions erupt in Sri Lanka. The author and his family ultimately fled to Canada. It is not yet clear if that same fate awaits the protagonist of the novel.

I'm tempted, but I'm sure I would only listen to it once or twice. It should go to a more worthy household.

Haven't entirely decided but will probably be seeing Don Byron on Friday, though it isn't really a jazz setting. It looks like one of those Stravinsky pieces written for Benny Goodman, if you recall those and others on the same lines. http://performance.rcmusic.ca/event/21C/illusions Still, it looks like an interesting concert and tickets aren't outrageously expensive. It would be a no-brainer if I wasn't supposed to be at home packing...

The person on the right is Mitch Miller I think. He played oebo on the first Bird with strings date. Bird is the one on the left I can't recall Bird ever having had a beard like that in any of the known photos. .. It is just a mustache, since the "goatee" is just the mouthpiece of the saxophone. I wouldn't say Parker sports even a mustache all that often, though I did see some footage of him with a scraggly looking one, nothing quite as luxurious as this...

I believe if you have the 2 Decca sets this covers all the Phase 4 recordings, but I don't really have the patience to check: http://www.amazon.com/Leopold-Stokowski-Recordings-1965-1972-Original/dp/B0000B0A0P http://www.amazon.com/Original-Masters-Stokowski-Recordings-1964-1975/dp/B00067R3BQ/ref=pd_sim_15_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=0WM0P44JGTTK3557HV3Z (The second one has gotten kind of pricey, so if you don't already have it, the Phase 4 box may be the better deal anyway.) The new box has new and probably better mastering, but I thought these were fine. I'm not sure if there is a single box just covering his Phase 4 recordings.

There's a nice but not life-changing exhibit of Emily Carr on at the AGO. I've seen a lot of Carr in my time, mostly out in Victoria and Vancouver, and it was nice that not every single painting in the exhibit was from collections out west. On the other hand, it all looks exactly the same -- tree forms and occasional totem poles. A much more varied exhibit on American Modernism, drawn from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, is on at the Joslyn Museum, but you have to be in Omaha to see it. Probably not worth it for most of us...

Oh, that's right. Copyright protection covers only recorded works, not written works. Thanks for reminding me. I can't tell if either of you are just being snarky, but of course copyright covers written works as well. So whenever they finally got around to publishing the First Folio, Shakespeare would have been covered (if copyright had any meaning back in his day, which it did not).

Perhaps so. There are several books I liked in my youth that I don't care much for now. I kind of shudder to think what I'd think of Catcher in the Rye now. Perhaps my experience is tainted in having had one or two of those hopeless love affairs, but I had at least a bit of dignity and managed to move on (even if it took a bit longer than it should have). I can't have any respect for a spineless character like Philip, and yet I don't take pleasure in thinking how much better I am than him (that's what I meant about car crashes and reality TV).