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I just read Barbara Comyns' Mr. Fox. It was ok, mostly interesting for the various scenes of London during the Blitz. Apparently she really did live through it. It's nice to have a slightly different take from Anthony Powell's. I will say that I liked A Touch of Mistletoe a bit better, which covered more or less the same territory. She does tend to return over and over to the same general tropes (feckless mothers, the impossibility of making a living as an artist in Britain, women pairing up with men only out of economic necessity, and so on). Of course, this is how I feel about Saul Bellow, who was also a great recycler. Apparently, her The Juniper Tree is one of the most different books from all these others, but I won't be reading that until the fall. I took a peek at Cyrus Colter's City of Light (Thunder Mouth Press). Just terrible. Don't bother. I should be able to finish up The General in His Labyrinth this weekend. It's definitely worth a look.

I just wrapped up Teju Cole's Every Day is for the Thief. This reads exactly like a memoir of a Nigerian living in the U.S. who comes back to visit Lagos, and is largely very disappointed by what he sees. This is apparently entirely fictional (Cole doesn't have a white mother and apparently never studied to be a psychologist), but it certainly seems informed by trips he would have made back to his home town (Cole was actually born in the U.S. but grew up in Nigeria). So I can't separate the fictional from the autobiographical. It certainly paints a fairly bleak picture of Lagos. I'll try to get around to Open City one of these days. I've started Garcia Marquez's The General in His Labyrinth. An interesting fictional biography of Simon Bolivar's final months. After this, Barbara Comyns' Mr. Fox. And then another sustained push on Proust. I'm currently about halfway through The Captive. Not quite in the home stretch but getting there.

As many had feared when he went into the hospital, Gabriel Garcia Marquez passed away at the age of 87. My understanding is that his health had been poor for some time. I'm certainly a big fan of his work, though I will admit he inspired a lot of really lousy followers who used magic realism indiscriminately. Of his major works, I like them in roughly this order: The Autumn of the Patriarch No One Writes to the Colonel Collected Short Stories One Hundred Years of Solitude Chronicle of a Death Foretold Love in the Time of Cholera In Evil Hour I've actually never read The General in His Labyrinth (and some of his later story collections), and I'm going to start The General this weekend.

My cheapo stereo with cassette decks didn't survive all my moves. Just a while ago I bought a super-cheap cassette player with USB output, so that these old cassettes can be digitized. Generally the results are ok. However, I am not hanging onto the cassettes after they have been digitized. For a short while, I tried giving them away, but no takers...

This sounds like a survey with a completely unreliable sampling strategy. Maybe just asking people that participated in Record Store Day perhaps. Anyway, the fact that over half the people buying an LP and 23% buying a cassette have no intention of listening to the darn thing makes this pretty suspect. These are not music fans in any meaningful sense. This behavior (and Record Store Day more generally) truly is a silly fad, propping up a moribund industry.

I would also opt for Pacifica, though if money (and storage) is not an issue, one could certainly get both.

I'm glad a few people got to see it. I tuned into a live-feed from somewhere else (AZ?) but it wasn't that exciting not seeing it in my backyard. In six months or so, it happens again. I'll be in Toronto where the skies are more likely to be clear, but it is going to be a lot later local-time...

Just wrapped up Two Days in Aragon. It was good, though a touch melodramatic in places. It really read like a screenplay, and I'm a little surprised it has never been optioned. In her heyday, I could see Meryl Streep playing the part of Nan, the tough governess who basically runs Aragon, the large estate in Ireland, owned by the Foxes. However, the actual ending of the book would probably have to be shot as an alternate ending (for the DVD), as I don't know that it would be considered acceptable by studio heads. Now reading a number of short books, which can be nice. I'm just starting Barbara Comyns' A Touch of Mistletoe, and then after that is Teju Cole's Every Day is for the Thief. This is actually his first novel, but it wasn't translated until the success of Open City. Comyns has such a distinctive voice. It's one that I find a bit grating at times, but it is definitely distinctive.

So frustrating. Crystal clear skies last night, and cloudy tonight. I can't even tell where the moon is supposed to be! I guess this is the case over much of the U.S. and Canada. Well, next time perhaps...

Miles at the Fillmore (Bootleg Vol. 3). Nearly made it through the whole thing over a couple of days. I'll wrap up disc 4 tomorrow.

I gave at least 50 cases to a used record store. I normally do keep cases unless I am doing a big mail out to cut down on shipping costs.

Apparently there will be a lunar eclipse which should be visible from much of North America tonight. And there may be as many as 4 visible this year. It occurs quite late in the Eastern and Central time zones, but it will start around 11 pm and run until 1 am tonight for those in Pacific Time, so not so bad. The main question is whether the skies will be clear (they were unusually clear last night). I probably won't get the kids up unless it is just super-impressive. Sadly it appears it may be overcast. Here are the details for the Pacific Northwest: http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/canada/vancouver

I saw a very nice version of Schubert's Octet played by a contingent of the VSO. This may be the first time I've seen it live.

Didn't AS get better ratings than... Letterman? (And pretty much everyone except Leno/Fallon.) Personally I'm less interested in these stupid "late night wars" and much more interested in who Comedy Central picks for the "blowhard parody" slot to replace Colbert. Limbaugh and O'Reilly would be excellent candidates. I really think Colbert Report will go away after Colbert departs, though he might be allowed to do a few special events here and there, particularly around election time. My guess is that John Oliver gets some show crafted around his persona.

So far Two Days in Aragon is pretty good. I think Keane's strength is in her slightly wicked dialogue, as well as her insight into the English landed gentry in Ireland. She has some trouble moving on once the Troubles arrive. Also, some novels feature far too much "telling" not "showing" from the omniscient narrator. So far Two Days is avoiding these problems. The intro claims that this was the first time she took Sinn Fein very seriously, so I don't know how well she navigates that later in the book. I'm reading quite a bit of Canadian poetry as well, mostly Michael Crummey but also Carmelita McGrath.

I don't know if this recent ICON set was mentioned: http://www.amazon.com/ICON-Malcolm-Sargent-Great-Recordings/dp/B00I3LJRCA/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1397225145&sr=1-2&keywords=icon It's an 18 CD set of Malcolm Sargent. While I am sure there are some classic recordings here, I think I am going to pass.

Hmm, looks interesting, though probably not for this year. I just saw Stoppard's Coast of Utopia (brilliant stuff and I may post on it later). It inspired me to read Turgenev's A Month in the Country, which I saw several years ago, but didn't remember very clearly. You might well not have gotten Chekhov's The Seagull or Uncle Vanya without A Month in the Country. I don't know when I will fit it in, but I'll try to reread Fathers and Sons by the fall. This was a book I read in my teens and I was quite affected by it. I wonder how I will react as a middle-aged man... I should be starting Molly Keane's Two Days in Aragon tonight. I haven't been completely sold on the last couple of her books, so I hope this is a return to form. I have 3 more to go until I get to Good Behaviour, which is generally considered her greatest novel.

I guess this was two nights ago, but I saw the Vogler (String) Quartet and Ian Parker do Shostakovich's Piano Quintet. I'm fairly sure this is the first time I've seen it live. It was very well done, most enjoyable.

Slightly different topic, but I remembering being so hard up for cash as a university student that I reused the B-side of a cassette for French lab (rather than buying a blank tape), and of course now deeply regret having erased the B-side. At least I kept the A-side which was the more critical of the two. And then attempting to figure out a new VCR and accidentally erasing part of a VHS that I really wanted to keep. Arrggh. Yeah, I don't really miss cassettes or VHS tapes.

I've read a fair bit over the past couple of weeks. Joseph Roth's Hotel Savoy was probably the best Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban was actually a disappointment as nearly all the characters displayed some form of mental illness at some point in the story, and I just couldn't feel any emotional attachment to them. Michel Tremblay's The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant was generally pretty good, despite a tendency to rely on what we would now consider magical realism. It felt like a mixture of Under Milk Wood and Ulysses, but set in a working-class neighborhood in Montreal. Nearly done with Helen Smith's Alison Wonderland -- not doing that much for me, but it is short. Too much whimsy and an over-reliance on incredible situations that then undermine the sections of the book that are supposed to generate tension when the main characters are threatened. I've started Radclyffe Hall's The Unlit Lamp. While this topic (a mother stifling her daughter) has been done to death, Hall adds a number of droll touches that move things along. However, it is possible that as the story gets darker, these will be sacrificed. Probably the next book after this will be Molly Keane's Two Days in Aragon.

Ordered Mutations -- the new Vijay Iyer CD on ECM. Hopefully will turn up early next week, just as I am getting back from a business trip...

Given how anti-union most southern states are, I expect they would rather dump their sports programs and force things along into the minor league system. (Yes, those minor leaguers would be unionized, but it wouldn't be a union at the very heart of their state university system.) Are you serious? Half of the population of Alabama/Mississippi/Tennessee would revolt if you tampered with anything around their college football teams, and the same would happen in Kentucky/North Carolina with respect to college basketball. The extreme popularity of college athletics in the South is the NCAA's achilles heel. I am serious. I don't think people in those states would support those teams if they became unionized.

Given how anti-union most southern states are, I expect they would rather dump their sports programs and force things along into the minor league system. (Yes, those minor leaguers would be unionized, but it wouldn't be a union at the very heart of their state university system.) Anyway, it will be very curious how this develops. I'm particularly interested if state universities are indeed exempt, and also if the players' union (if it doesn't fold) is able to prevent a team from playing a non-unionized team. I'm sure they are saying that would never happen, but let's just say overreach and taking things to their absurd limit is a fairly common aspect of the way the law works in the U.S. Northwestern claims that it would rather drop its sports programs than begin paying athletes, so we shall see if they hold to that as well...

Another 100 pages on Chromos, which I should wrap up tonight. I really enjoyed Roth's Hotel Savoy. It had shades of Kafka's The Castle, though with a bit more overt humor. Basically the narrator is a former prisoner of war (WWI) and has returned to the city where his uncle lives. While he waits to find if he can get funds to move on from his uncle, he stays at the Hotel Savoy, where well-to-do individuals stay in the bottom three or four floor, while very poor boarders live in the top stories.

Right, but in that case you'd get multiple titles to select from. And if he didn't get that... I remember ripping The Beatles box set. Good god, there were at least four titles to choose from for each disc. Even one in Japanese script! I think it depends on the settings. When I am getting ready to rip a CD, it just defaults to the closest match and then you have to prompt to go off and look for additional titles. But I will say that I can't believe this dead horse is being flogged yet again...