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Given how many times he works in the N word (and indeed has someone say the Martians are genetically related to Africans!) I think it is safe to say quite a few people would be offended, not just people who care about the ethical treatment of Martians. Twain's Huck Finn and maybe Conrad's novel may or may not survive in today's cancel culture, but this much slighter effort might not.

PKD's Martian Time-Slip This cover is hilarious. Makes it look like a Heinlein juvenile... There was quite a lot I didn't care for, particularly when Dick kept conflating autism and schizophrenia, which I didn't appreciate (to say nothing of how crudely the Martian natives were discussed by the settlers), but he did stick the landing.

Exciting news. I believe this Friday is another Bandcamp Friday, so this looks like it will be added to the list...

I am tempted, and I'll probably eventually order it. But I am not quite read to pull the trigger. Thanks for the review though.

I'm holding off on this (for now), but I did order The Last Fandango from her store on Amazon.co.uk. Somehow they sent me 2 sealed copies! I'll see what they want to do but pretty much anything is going to be a bit of a hassle or perhaps costly.

I stumbled across Big Miller and a whole album of songs by Langston Hughes. Was pretty interesting: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112757312

Different loophole used as late as 1988 to mail bricks to Alaska - https://apnews.com/article/281d3e682569b2cc5edd890bf600d17e I actually remembered hearing of this one at the time.

Saw Night of the Iguana for the first time. Definitely interesting. I had seen the play many years ago. I hope to again some day, though it is not staged all that often. At any rate, I went through the script to see what Huston had changed or more typically rearranged. Williams' play is more direct about several things that are left a bit ambiguous in the movie, and the play also contains a couple of Germans who are Nazi supporters (!) (wisely left out of the film). Huston also seems to have moved the setting up to the early 1960s whereas the play is set in the 40s. I thought the rearranging of the very final scene worked pretty well, though there are certainly those who feel the stage version ends better. The special features were pretty nice, especially the color shots of the set (and apparently Huston pulled a Herzog, long before Herzog, building a set in a completely remote area where everything had to be hauled up a small mountain). And some clips of Elizabeth Taylor hanging out with the cast -- her presence was particularly scandalous as she was still married to Eddie Fisher...

I briefly considered ordering this, as it is a Canadian outfit, but even shipping within Canada ranges from $13-16, and I assume it is considerably higher to send outside Canada. Hoping that it is released more widely in another format and/or digitally... Actually, I see that Sonic Boom here has a few of their LPs in stock and may be doing curbside pickup. I may weaken...

This starts off well with strong shades of Kafka's The Trial & The Castle as the protagonist goes off to work at eerie Emberton Tower where the Emberton Dictionary is published but midway through it turns into a weird (and not very good) metaphysical fantasy where the essence of language is distilled into a liquid that can make dyslexic people read but at a cost of sucking words out of the world outside the tower. I probably should just drop it at this point, but there isn't much left and I do want to get it back to the library.

I've mostly been reading poetry for a project I've been working on. A lot of old favorites, but also exploring poets I'm aware of but not that up on their work - Richard Wilbur is a good example. I also stumbled across Michael Heller during this process. I've extended the library loan on Emberton a couple of times, but am going to finish it this weekend. I really should get back to Don Quixote after that. You'd think I'd find the time, since I really don't get to leave the house, but I still find it hard to focus.

I think your water table is too high, at least in the more humid parts of the state...

My favorite bit of dumb-assery from the article is the celebrity who won't catch Covid because they sleep with the temperature up to 90... Cases starting to come down pretty steeply in Ontario. Hope this trend continues even with the UK-variant breaching our defenses.

Saw A Shot in the Dark over weekend. I actually like it better than The Pink Panther which drags in quite a few spots.

I caught both nights of Eric Harland with Chris Potter, Joel Ross and Austin White. In one case, with only about 30 minutes to spare... I liked the vibes/sax combo. It worked well.

Thanks for the tip, though unfortunately they are about £5 higher than the BBC site...

The Barbara Thompson box wasn't on my radar, but it does seem tempting, esp. some of the big band broadcasts on the first few CDs. I'll give it some more thought and also see what the shipping costs are as everything shakes out. I mentioned elsewhere that Amazon.co.uk rates to North America are sheer piracy now, but sometimes there are better rates going direct with other vendors. Going through the BBC site shipping charges are roughly £15 to Canada and £19 to the US. I guess that is the Commonwealth-bonus? Certainly steeper than I like and I may hold off for a while and/or see if a North American distributor turns up.

Was poking around listening to Brett Dean compositions (some I like a lot, some do not do as much for me...), when I stumbled across Dean conducting Ross Harris's Symphony 4. Decided to investigate further, as Harris is a contemporary composer not afraid to use melody (largely abandoned by so many contemporary composers). His Symphony #1 does not appear to be on a CD release, but is available here: https://sounz.org.nz/resources/17385?locale=en Symphonies 2-6 are available on Naxos, and I'll probably go through the rest of them today.

So glad to hear from you and that you are well, all things considered. I read about finding the power chair as a Go Fund Me update. Awesome.

There is an unofficial website here that tells Canadians where they are in queue - https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-ca Everyone I know including myself is group 3, who will likely get vaccine in Aug/Sept. And that was before the Pfizer blip where Canada isn't getting any vaccines at all for about two weeks while they retool production lines.

You can sometimes get a better deal on shipping if you speak to seller and esp. when combining items, though more and more sellers simply don't want to be bothered... However, the base postal rates have skyrocketed. Several sellers have commented that you simply cannot ship an LP from the US to Canada for less than $20 anymore, so it just isn't worth it in the majority of cases. Brave new cloistered world...

Sounds incredible! I hope some of this, at least the photos and interviews, are digitized and put on-line. I hope the same for the music, but that is surely wishing for too much. Maybe Mosaic will be interested at some point, as with the Savory Collection...

Best wishes for a speedy recovery!

That is the hallmark of NPR's Tiny Desk concerts,usually just a teaser of 3 songs.