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I've been thinking about this lately, and I would COMPLETELY go the other direction. My wife is going to be in no condition to deal with grief and then posting a list of 1000s of CDs onto a listserv or even worse eBay and then haggling with folks. It's a huge effort and not worth the stress. It's generally not even worth posting CDs here because there is so little I have that is intriguing enough for others to bother bidding on. It was generally not worth it 4 or 5 years ago, and with the rise of postage costs, forget about it. It's all going to the consignment shop, if I don't start getting rid of it myself first.

See the thing was it was supposed to be Anthony Blackman, but some producer got nervous, and they changed the script on me. {Joking.} It's more bizarre when you think it could have been written in a way to only use a first name, n'est pas?

It is really hard for me to understand the whole Drabble vs. Byatt feud. What would be unbelievably droll is if they cooked it up to help stir up sales when things were slow. Maybe there will be some grand reconciliation towards the end (like Dostoevsky and Turgenev...). Anyway, I am wrapping up Herzen's My Past and Thoughts tonight and will be immediately launching into Turgenev's Sketches from a Hunter's Album, which I've never read. Then Fathers and Sons for the first time in 20+ years. It's been a long fall with the Russians, but quite rewarding.

I suspect that a high percentage of respondents were copping out by saying the Bible or Shakespeare, so they decided to take those off the table to make it more interesting. I guess it really depends how long you think you'd survive on a desert island, even one with abundant coconuts. Not too long in my case, surely. But if that weren't an issue, I could see how boredom would set in and you'd be desperate to read anything. I wouldn't turn my nose up to the Bible, if it were the King James Version. I find it all but impossible to decide on a single book that would keep me occupied for the rest of my stay. I have five books in the running Tolstoy - War and Peace Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov Joyce - Ulysses Tom Stoppard - Plays 5 (Arcadia, The Real Thing, Night and Day, Hopwood and Indian Ink) The Histories of Herodotus Every time I think about it, I would choose a different one (or try to sneak in another one like Perec's Life: A User's Manual). Anyway, today, it would be Herodotus.

Calgary - 45

I'm just back from seeing Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Mutter Virtuosi (sort of a youth ensemble that she is training). They did Mendelssohn's Octet and Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Both very well done, and there are relatively few performances of the Octet, so I was really glad to see this pairing. Two encores. Quite a night. Apparently some nights on the tour she does Previn's Violin Concerto #2, but on this night it was more of a curiosity to round out the bill -- Sebastian Currier's Ringtone Variations, which sounded pretty much like you would expect a piece of music inspired by ringtones to sound. I'm assuming, though don't know for sure, that they alternate the Previn and the Mendelssohn. If that's the case, I am glad they selected the Octet for tonight's performance.

Well, Alice Munro just got it, so I suspect North America will be passed over for a couple more years, just like the World Cup...

Really only heard a few of these programs, but one favorite (favourite) was Andy Kershaw's. He did his own program the same week with another 15-20 songs that he couldn't squeeze in. Really too bad he went off the rails.

There are quite a few jazz musicians it might be interesting to meet, but I've never once had any interest in hanging out with Miles... Give me Coltrane or Eric Dolphy any day.

And no bad teeth. Like one young lady told me when relating her rejection of a family-proposed suitor (she came from a culture where such things still are fairly common), "I'm not making a baby that's gonna maybe have a jacked-up grill". I like a good snaggle tooth.

Yes, I am hoping he is not suffering too much. I had the pleasure of seeing him at least twice, and possibly three times (can't remember if he was still in the SF Jazz Ensemble line up on the later tour, though most likely not).

I'm maybe 20% into the second part of Herzen's My Past and Thoughts (Ends and Beginnings from Oxford Press). It's good but I think Isaiah Berlin blew it up just a bit much (putting it on the same level as War and Peace ). Herzen himself thought of his memoirs as comparable to David Copperfield. I would be enjoying it a bit more if my expectations hadn't been raised quite so high...

Grabbed a couple of books for an upcoming plane ride. One of which is Jonathan Levi's A Guide for the Perplexed. It really comes across as wanting to be a mix of Umberto Eco and Calvino's Invisible Cities, though in truth I find it a more Baroque version of Jan Morris's Last Letters from Hav. I'm trying to be fair, but it just seems a bit labored, as if Levi was trying way too hard to turn out a hit. I'll probably give it about 100 pages and then drop it if I still don't care about any of the characters. Edit: Not surprisingly, I didn't like it and skipped almost all of it and skimmed the last 35 pages. Overly convoluted and quite pretentious.

Mine turned up too. Was expecting it next week. Not sure what to start with, as it is so massive.

I didn't realize until just recently that Criterion now has the rights to La Dolce Vita, and has put out a Blu-Ray. That may finally drag me (kicking and screaming) over to the technology, but I'm only getting something that plays Regions A and B, which means I have to do a bit more shopping. Anyway, I am so totally torn over the Tati Collection: http://www.criterion.com/boxsets/1069-the-complete-jacques-tati I have all the feature films, even Parade, and most of the shorts. The last short Tati directed sounds kind of dull -- Forza Bastia (1978) -- is roughly 25 minutes of him pointing his camera at the fans in the stands. Dégustation maison (1978) isn't by Tati at all, but by his daughter, where she sort of revisits the seaside town where M. Hulot's Holiday was shot. It is more properly considered one of the many bonus features on this set, and those are fairly generous. I think it's obvious this isn't something I need, but it may ultimately be something I want badly enough to get, especially given the upgrade to Blu-Ray is supposedly pretty fantastic.

I like the Secret Museum cover. Is that a real place or Photo-shopped together?

Definitely. Of those I've posted here to this thread, I agree, Into Somethin' and Goin' Up (which I presume is what you meant by "Up Up Up") -- are the two best. And I agree that cityscapes, much as I love them, are going to be of less interest. Yes, that is what I meant. Perhaps too soon, but this is another possibility. Here's someone with the same idea: http://architizer.com/blog/kickoff-sxsw-20-architectural-album-covers/ Of this set, the Streets LP might be worth considering.

If you are soliciting opinion, then don't let your love of the album distract you. Of the ones up so far, I think architects would only dig Into Somethin', Up Up Up and possibly Symphony for Improvisers. I definitely think focusing on a single building rather than a cityscape (like the Hancock) is going to work better. In terms of iconic building covers, it's hard to forget this one:

I don't know where I got this idea about Briefing for a Descent into Hell, but it was completely wrong. Aside from the parallels Leeway mentioned (DeQuincey and Burgess), I have to wonder if Barth's The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor drew on the earlier sections of Briefing. I knew pretty early on that this wasn't what I was looking for, and I bailed within a day. I doubt I'll ever come back around (to finish it) but you never know. I'm finally reading Herzen's My Past and Thoughts, in conjunction with Isaiah Berlin's Russian Thinkers, which will then be capped off with Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia, which as Stoppard freely admitted, was entirely inspired by these two sources. I was fortunate enough to see the whole cycle of plays earlier in the year, and they were really something else. Perhaps the most intelligent theatre I've seen in a long time.

The quality should be fine, but if Criterion recently remastered a film then the Art House will still be the older version. That doesn't apply to too many titles, I would think.

Wrapped up the Death of Ivan Ilych, which has some memorable sections, particularly when Ivan finally thinks over his whole life and realizes that he wasted it after all. Kind of the anti-Christmas Carol, as it were, as it is far too late to do anything about it. (And Tolstoy is honest enough to make it clear that had he recovered, he would have gone right back to the same correct but empty life of before.) I didn't care for The Devil at all, so, for me, Tolstoy is only a 2 out of 5 for his short novels, which is a low success rate for sure. I just started Lessing's Briefing for a Descent into Hell. I certainly am aware that quite a bit of literature from the late 60s and early 70s shares this interest in madness and, along with Laing's Knots, questions whether normal people are "sane." I think this approach has really fallen out of favor, perhaps in part due to the emptying out of mental hospitals with many mental patients ending up as the homeless. It is much easier to tell yourself that "No, I'm not crazy" when the reference case shifts so dramatically. I also wonder if literature is generally returning (even more) to its function as an escape valve as the economy gets increasingly pinched for the middle class. They don't have time to ponder whether they are crazy (or if the whole rat race is a rigged game and they are frauds for participating, see Ivan Ilytch) and when they do read it is more for pleasure. I haven't really made up my mind about Descent yet, but I'm pretty sure it isn't going to be a "keeper," simply because my shelves are so over-crowded now.

Fair question. Lack of interest in life? In others? In musical possibility? In the things that any educated person knows about music? Like if you never read a book by a person who had been alive during your lifetime and didn't think anyone else should either? Could be anything, I don't know. A possibly unfair idea that most contemporary classical music is pretty lousy. Or not wanting composers to hang around and bug you for not doing it exactly the way they have it in their heads. Or finding out that you recorded some sonata that has to be scrapped because three notes of the melody came from some other living composer who plans to sue -- or that the composer was a child molester. There are a lot of reasons to favour dead composers.

If it's anything like the Criterion/Eclipse distinction (aside from the fact they don't put the same films on each label), Art House probably doesn't come with any bonus material, and maybe not even any commentary tracks.

What a shame. I wasn't a regular listener, but my dad was and when I was visiting, we'd usually hear these guys on the radio. RIP

So far no US release date (not in the Amazon.com system). Given shipping prices it might actually be cheaper to get it up here in Canada from the UK site than the US! Anyway, this looks like one that I will be springing for. Thanks for the update.