Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything Is Illuminated

I'm a bit in two minds about this one.

On the one hand, I admire its verve and ambition, and I do think that it pulls off the trick of demonstrating that, as Alex writes to Jonathan, "humorous is the only truthful way to tell a sad story". It made me laugh a lot at the beginning, and feel a lot at the end, and think a lot throughout. For the most part, it involved me and made me want to keep on reading, and I didn't find myself growing impatient with any of the three (mostly) separate narrative strands. Y'know, it's a Good Read, witty and clever and maybe even a little wise.

But on the other hand, I feel as if it tries to do too much, and in so doing falls short of what it could have been had its focus been a little less diffuse. It's as if Foer is trying to tick off all the big themes of literature and life (love, death, change, memory, family, communication, the individual in society) while also working to some kind of state-of-the-moment checklist of contemporary lit-fic tropes (writing on the body, metafiction/unreliable narrator, intertextuality, Borges, Invisible Cities, magic realism, interrogation of the possibilities of language/language as constitutive of the self, etc) and the result is that the novel sometimes feels overly precious and too clever for its own good.

For the most part, though, I think he does succeed in drawing it all together - he makes it work, so that the big old sprawling, covering-of-all-bases, tendency mostly works in his favour, causing me to quibble about rather than damn the book's inclinations in that direction. Yeah, Everything Is Illuminated is good alright, if not as good as it maybe wants to be - it has a heart and a head, and plenty enough of each and of real substance for me to forgive Foer's having slightly overreached himself.

Jane Siberry - No Borders Here

I bought this because of "Mimi On The Beach", which quotes Philip Glass both lyrically and musically, filtering those references through new-wave synths and eccentric 80s singer-songwriter stylings (which might initially sound incongruous, but isn't at all once you stop to think about it) and ending up with seven and a half minutes of tuneful, pulsating, resonant, widescreen pop genius ("...don't you have money i asked? 'of course i do'...the great leveller, or the great escape?"). Unsurprisingly, there's nothing else that approaches the greatness of "Mimi" on No Borders Here, but the album's quirks (well, it's basically all quirk...I'd say that we're talking weirder than Kate Bush here, or at least with a more unconventional sense of melody and pacing) and strangenesses ensure that it's never less than interesting, and there's a fair degree of songcraft apparent, albeit of an untraditional nature (also, a lot of the moves she makes seem to be references of one kind or another to other pieces of music, all of which I can almost but not quite place). I can't imagine myself listening to this record a great deal, but I'm happy that I have it nonetheless.

Laura Cantrell - When The Roses Bloom Again

And more again...

The album that came after Not The Tremblin' Kind (and before Humming By The Flowered Vine), and has a slightly fuller and more produced sound than that debut, and also generally a more upbeat tempo, but retains the same indefinable something which seemingly characterises all of her work. That said, at this stage I don't think that I like it quite as much as the other two - it doesn't seem quite as finely-wrought, somehow...I don't know - but, y'know, I still like it fine and some of its tunes ("All The Same To You" and "Vaguest Idea" in particular) have a definite tendency to get stuck in my head and run around over and over...also, "Yonder Comes A Freight Train" is way fun.

Laura Cantrell - Not The Tremblin' Kind

'Charming' is always the word that comes to mind when I'm trying to explain the particular appeal of Laura Cantrell - there's something inexpressibly delightful about the music she makes, done with a simplicity, warmth and sweetness which is pretty much irresistible. Take the title track and album opener, say - it drops in so unassumingly, all plinking guitar lines and deceptively casual-sounding singing, throws in a few graceful harmonies on the bridge (or is it a chorus? Whichever it is, love the way her voice wavers and reaches on that first "it's alright"...), then drops back to up-and-down repetitions of the verse and an instrumental break which is basically the guitar restating the main theme over again, follows it up with one more iteration of the bridge, then more repetition of the verse...and then it's over and, me at least, well, I'm charmed anew.

And the whole album is really good. There's not much to say about it, really - it chugs along not seeming to be doing anything remarkable, but there's a kind of grace and elegance to it all which encompasses both the more introspective, slowed-down numbers like "Two Seconds" and the sprightlier pieces (especially "Churches Off The Interstate" and the sweet-as-it-gets "Do You Ever Think Of Me", the swoop of Cantrell's voice on the line "do I ever cross your mind?" in that latter being another too-charming Laura moment); apart from the ones I've already mentioned, currently particularly liking "Queen Of The Coast", "The Whiskey Makes You Sweeter" and waltzy closer "The Way It Is". It just all comes together - Cantrell has an ear for a good song (and her own compositions don't suffer by comparison), a knack for perfect arrangements, and one of my favourite voices in music at the moment (pop and/or country, or whatever). This, her debut, may be better than Humming By The Flowered Vine - which itself ended up as probably one of my three favourite albums released last year (the other two being Funeral, if that counts as an '05 release, and Illinois, which has seriously grown on me since my initial listens) - but, more likely, it's just as good but simply differently wonderful.

Galaxie 500 - Peel Sessions

A newly-released packaging of two Peel sessions laid down by these great daze-rockers in their prime - one in 1989 and the other in 1990. I don't think they've previously had an official release; at any rate, I hadn't heard any of these versions before. It's been a while since I really listened to Galaxie 500 but I still feel their music, and it didn't take long for the searing glory of it all to come flooding back while listening to these recordings (specifically, during the first slow-burn guitar solo in "Flowers", which leads off the 1989 set - which comes after the 1990 one on this cd). Tracking them down:

1990 session
1. "Submission". Covers were always a large part of the band's repertoire, and their take on "Ceremony" is still probably my favourite cover version of any song by any artist, ever, so I had high hopes when I saw that they'd had a go at the Sex Pistols' "Submission", but in fact it's only so-so...a bit messy and unfocused and never hits the heights that the band is capable of.
2. "Final Day". I have a soft spot for the studio version of this gentle tune, and the Peel recording has a similar charm, jingling and chiming along and blessed with a confident, sensitive vocal from Naomi.
3. "When Will You Come Home". But of course it's the reverb-treated, wracked voice of Dean Wareham that really 'makes' Galaxie 500, and he resumes lead duties with this one, the slowly unspiralling nature of the song coming through well in the live setting. (It's actually rather impressive that he's able to so closely duplicate the performances he gives on the albums.)
4. "Moonshot". And, well, given that both Neko Case and Galaxie 500 have covered her songs, obviously I need to check out this Buffy Sainte Marie chick. "Moonshot" is a plaintive tender Dean strumalong; and good, of course.

1989 session
1. "Flowers" / 2. "Blue Thunder" / 3. "Decomposing Trees" / 4. "Don't Let Our Love Go To Waste". An On Fire set, and the electric guitar is plugged-in and in full voice throughout. I like this session more than the 1990 one - listening to it is such a comforting experience, hearing these songs with which I'm so very familiar done over in style while remaining closely faithful to the studio versions. They're all good, and while "Flowers" is the most immediately striking (because it's the first), and the band rocks out in fine, ragged, climactic style on "Don't Let Our Love Go To Waste", it's a relatively muted "Blue Thunder" which is a little bit special, just because, for me, it always has been and remains the single best and most emblematic song that the band ever recorded.

Ah...without realising it, I'd missed having Galaxie 500 moments!

Ms John Soda - Notes and the Like

Here's the context: browsing in Readings the other night, I became aware of the music playing over the instore system, reminding me variously of New Buffalo and Saint Etienne - a mix of digital and organic sounds with a girl vocalist singing/speaking the vocals over the top in breathy, pensive tones. So I checked it out and it turned out that it was the new cd by band called Ms John Soda; I hadn't heard of them, but I know their label, Morr Music - and once that second piece of information slotted in, I realised that they sounded like nothing so much as a female-fronted Notwist, circa Neon Golden.

I didn't buy it at the time, but a couple of days later (yesterday) did a circuit looking for it; Readings had sold out in the mean time, Polyester didn't have it and nor did Synaesthesia, but I ended up getting the cd at that old standby, Missing Link. They're a two-piece - girl sings, boy makes sounds (as often seems to be the case) - and it turns out that the boy is, in fact, a member of the Notwist...not really a surprise, I suppose. Having now listened to the whole album at home, I reckon that there's as much of Ms Kittin as Sarah Cracknell to vocalist Stefanie Böhm's singing, and the electronic elements definitely predominate more than in New Buffalo carefully constructed, gilt-edged, piano-based compositions, but the basic concoction is much as it had struck me in Readings: as the Morr insert puts it, 'an analogue idea of digital music, or precisely vice versa - loud and soft, warm and wide awake' (labelmates Lali Puna are an obvious reference point, and, to an extent, Múm - also reminds me a bit of Cyann & Ben).

It veers a bit close to lifestyle music at points with its polite bleeps, clicks and tones, gentle strings and murmured vocals, and overall sense of drifting blurrily along in that pleasantly melodic way without having much in the way of outright hooks or standout tracks, but is set apart by the Euro-disaffected vocals and the subtle variations from track to track which keep it all interesting - shifts in the tone-bed which form the underlying substance of each song and in the instrumentation which appears at the edges to augment and decorate that bedrock. This kind of electro-indie-pop is hardly new any more, and Notes and the Like strikes me as only a relatively minor entry in the genre, but it's still very nicely done and I wouldn't be surprised if it reveals more depths over repeated listens.

David Bader - One Hundred Great Books in Haiku

Really, the title of this book says it all. One hundred classics, mostly but not all from the Western canon, mostly but not all works of prose fiction, distilled into the 5-7-5 structure and usually with a fair degree of irreverence; some of them stick fairly closely to just summarising the original (inasmuch as that's possible with an exercise of this sort), while others insert more explicit contemporary commentary. I started noticing it in bookstores a few months ago, and it has made me laugh plenty...I could never have justified buying the book for myself, but yesterday I picked it up as a gift for a friend and took the opportunity to read it from cover to cover while enjoying a drink in the window of Degraves.

For example:

"The Prince" - Niccolò Machiavelli
What I learned at court:
Being more feared than loved - good.
Getting poisoned - bad.

"Das Kapital" - Karl Marx
October winds blow.
Your contradictions doom you,
capitalist swine.

"Lolita" - Vladimir Nabokov
Lecherous linguist -
he lays low and is laid low
after laying Lo.

"The Metamorphosis" - Franz Kafka
'What have I become?'
Uncertain, Gregor Samsa
puts out some feelers.

"Portrait of a Lady" - Henry James
Will she inherit?
Which suitor will she marry?
When will tea be served?

And three that I like muchly even though I haven't read the books themselves:

"Waiting For Godot" - Samuel Beckett
Act I. 'It's hopeless.
My boots don't fit. Where is God?'
Act II. The same thing.

"The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" - Laurence Sterne
I've torn out line two.

Reader, it was dull.

"Fathers and Sons" - Ivan Turgenev
A nihilist dies
without having achieved much.
Mission accomplished.

"All-Star World Percussion Spectacular" @ Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Sunday 19 March

Jarrod and I decided to go to this after reading about it while sitting in a training session and, a couple of days and a bit of haphazard 'planning' later, we rolled up to the Bowl with Keith, Penny, and a friend of Jarrod's named Alice to stake out our spot on the grass. Actually, it's just as well that we got there early; I read in the newspaper today that about 13,000 people were there and more turned away after the venue reached capacity (it was part of this 'Festival Melbourne 2006' that's attached to the Commonwealth Games). There was a really nice vibe to proceedings - it was relaxed and friendly, and everyone seemed to be there to have a good time and enjoy the music and the outdoor surroundings - and the music was ace. As far as I can remember, it went something like this:

The Kusun Ensemble from Ghana were first, and made an excellent show-starter. They appeared dancing in a line through the seated area, playing their instruments and singing as they went, and once they got on stage put on a great show - very much the kind of thing that most people immediately think of when they think about cross-over African music, warm and rhythmic, and complete with chants, clapping and costumes. The highlight, though, was the dancers, who first appeared en masse, then took it in turns at the front of stage.

I think that Talvin Singh - the main drawcard for us - was next. Anyway, whenever he was, he did a set entirely on the tabla (ie, without the electronics), and it was good and had the crowd hanging on every sproing, but it felt all too short.

Then Scrap Arts Music, a kinetic Canadian collective raucously creating music out of salvaged and recycled urban scrap. Not exactly subtle, but I thought they were good (Jarrod not entirely sold, his musical snob side coming out, I think).

Evelyn Glennie from Scotland seemed to be the biggest name on the bill, but she didn't leave that much of an impression on me - I suppose that her set was less obviously dynamic and loud than some of the others...I don't know, maybe more one for the percussion purists? Also, by this time, we were all freezing on the grass and things were beginning to get a little surreal, especially with the mood lighting that was happening.

Liam Teague hails from Trinidad & Tobago and plays an interesting instrument called the steelpan which, he told the audience, is not only the national instrument but also is regarded as the youngest acoustic instrument to have been invented in the twentieth century; the mc had earlier told us that Teague has been described as, variously, the Ricky Martin, Willie Nelson and Paganini of the steelpan (three analogues which seem more or less mutually exclusive to me, but anyway...). What he served up was a set of dreamy, chiming, rather The Moon and the Melodies-esque music - very nice...in his hands, the steelpan has a kind of Moog-y, vibraphone-y sound and it was all rather pretty and drifty (I wasn't paying close attention, but it settled gently around me).

Nexus are another Canadian five-piece, but made up of five rather staid looking middle-aged men (one of them's a bit of a Donald Sutherland). On the night, they were all dressed in dark suits and playing first ragtime xylophones then old-fashioned marching-band drums - one of my favourites (especially the xylophone piece).

The Dhol Foundation got a big reaction from the crowd, and I could see why once they started playing. They have a huge sound, beating these massive drums while jumping around all over the stage - plus, they have an electric guitar and standard drumkit to drive things forward. Especially good was the one described by the madcap turbaned frontman as their 'crazy Indian Irish Celtic song', underpinned by fiddle. This was the point when people got up and started dancing.

For mine, the best act of the night was the Renegades Steel Orchestra. Hailing from Trinidad & Tobago, they're a large (about 15 members, I think), brightly-clothed (ie, hot pinks, greens and oranges) steel band collective who make music too joyful and uplifting to resist (and they provided an extended figurative cigarette lighters in the air moment with a rapturous version of "No Woman, No Cry", getting the crowd to sing along) - they're the one act whose recorded stuff I might be inspired to go looking for.

Finally, Synergy, an Australian outfit, and something of an anti-climax (though their cause wasn't helped by the evening cold - it was getting past 11 by now - and the discomfort of having been sitting down for so long). I think they would've been quite good, and would probably served as a nice come down from the energy of the preceding acts, but by then I'd basically lost all feeling in my extremities and really was just waiting for it to be over.

Finale was a piece composed by Australian composer Graeme Leak which involved getting all of the performers up on stage at once to bang and clatter their way through a sprawling (but, all things considered, relatively restrained) suite, taking it in turns to come to prominence from out of the vastness of sound, which brought things to a suitable close. (Leak also composed and conducted three perplexingly minimalistic and difficult to hear - and grasp - pieces which were performed by Australian percussion students (who also appeared on stage with some of the acts) at intervals, causing me to wonder if he was having many existential moments up there with his baton that night.) So altogether, the considerable discomfort occasioned by not having prepared adequately for the night chill notwithstanding, a tops affair.

Serenity

Goes straight on to my list of funnest sci-fi films (well, there isn't actually any such list, but if I had one, it'd be short - The Fifth Element is the only other that leaps to mind...and I think I enjoyed Lost In Space at the time that it came out). It's cinematic bubblegum but quite meta with it - most notably as evinced by the series of perspective shifts/partial breakings of the fourth wall which go on in the first 20 minutes or so - and unfailingly fast-paced, bright, and snappy. Some of the dialogue and characterisation is very 'tv show' but I didn't mind because it goes with the whole package (although the girl - engineer? - love interest for River's brother irritated me a bit, coming across as a kind of less self-actualised Willow), and it's all briskly and effectively done. And, of course, who could get tired of the spectacle of a slight, diffident, outsider girl type laying waste to a roomful of aggressors with her bare hands?

"Anti Hero"

Another nice state-of-the-moment-indie mix cd from David. Notable songs:
* "This Isn't Farm Life" - The Essex Green. Quirky forthright literate melodic indie girl pop (with neat backing vocals). Ticks all the boxes (plus it works in a bit of a sunny psychedelic thing); and yep, I like it.
* "Sea of Love" - Tom Waits. Almost as good as the Cat Power version. Hell, maybe even better, though of course without the benefit of years to sulking along with it, I'm less utterly enamoured of Waits' version as yet.
* "The Woods" (live) - Stars. I wonder if the way I'm starting to feel about Stars is how I would have felt about the Shins had Garden State never happened. They're just so...so nice. In a good way.
* "Heartbeats" - The Knife. I still don't buy into this 'the Knife are great' business (I think that Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content got it right when he commented that the current tastemaker approval of the Knife was a sign that hipster culture has lapped itself) but "Heartbeats" is definitely the best of their songs that I've heard, and has convinced me to hold off on fully writing them off.
* "Black Eyed Dog" - Nick Drake. Not much to say except that it's very good.
* "Spider Monkey" - Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man. I'd heard that this album was v.g., but have never been inspired enough to track it down (Portishead are very much an outfit from my past). This song, though, spooky and scratched, like Portishead but different, is cool.
* "Lover's Spit" - Feist. I've frequently derided the original version of this song as being exactly on a level with Richard Ashcroft's solo work, but a part of me has always liked it anyway. I think it's the cod grandeur of it all - something which Feist strips away in order to give it the Cat Power treatment (though without the awe-inspiringness)...not as dreary as I initially thought, but the original is better.

Has a nice flow to it and a consistency of tone which makes it work as a mix cd as a whole. Nice.

Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit

Didn't know whether I wanted to like this one or not. On the one hand, the songs that I'd heard from it hadn't been doing much for me despite plenty of plays in recent weeks; The Life Pursuit seemed likely to be another step in the direction indicated by Dear Catastrophe Waitress, and while that album has its moments - most particularly the "You Don't Send Me"/"Wrapped Up In Books"/"Lord Anthony" run that opens the second half, and closer "Stay Loose" - and eventually grew on me, it can't hold a candle to any of the early lps/eps, nor probably even the flawed but still rather wonderful Peasant. But on the other hand, it's Belle and Sebastian, damnit! It wasn't so long ago that they were almost my favourite band! And all that other stuff! In other words, j'étais déchiré.

Well, I didn't think that I'd be able to check my expectations at the door and listen to the album without the baggage of my previous exposure to B&S; in fact, however, about halfway through my second listen, I stopped hearing The Life Pursuit as 'the new and probably rather too glossy for my liking album by a band whose earlier stuff I loved at one point and still like a great deal, etc' and started to come to terms with it on its own ground, both as a latter-day Belle and Sebastian record and simply as a record of music that I was listening to.

Anyway, on that ground, The Life Pursuit is a decent enough album, but it really ain't all that great. Starts well with its best song, "Act of the Apostle", which seems to promise more of what both "Stay Loose", at the very end of DCW, and "Your Cover's Blown", on the subsequent Books ep, hinted at - interestingly off-kilter, tuneful, quasi-anthemic indie-funk - and then steps forward with its most successful Bright Sprightly Moment in "Another Sunny Day"...things are looking good at this point, even if it seems we need to reconcile ourselves to the melancholy days being over. But the rest of the album...well, it's not that it's bad exactly, but more that it's a wee bit undistinguished; the more upbeat, muscular direction they're taking isn't inherently bad, but I really feel that the band is so, so much better when that old sweet sadness makes itself felt. As things stand now, there's just nothing special about the music that Belle and Sebastian are making, more's the pity. Well, all things change...

Capote

Succumbed to the allure of the Nova late show again, newly-imposed work hours be damned. (Well, probably wouldn't have done it if Swee Leng hadn't been keen to do the late screening thing, but even so...) --

Actually, I'm not sure how much of this was down to the lateness, but I found Capote a bit of a slog, even though I also thought that it was a good film. Mainly, I think, the thing is that the film engages much more of an intellectual than an emotional response...afterwards, I found myself thinking about Capote's character and choices as depicted in the film, and wondering how true to life that depiction was, and there's no doubt that it engaged me on that level, but Capote didn't really make me feel while it was actually running - there are no visceral payoffs or genuinely moving moments - and while that absence doesn't make it a lesser film, it does make it less enjoyable. As written by Dan Futterman (based on a book by Gerald Clarke) and played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote emerges as a complex figure - not sympathetic exactly, but recognisable and perhaps even almost understandable in his brilliant eccentricity, cold-blooded traits, and incremental disintegration. We rarely feel confident that we know whether he's being sincere, or even whether he knows whether he's being sincere, at any given moment, and this keeps us (as audience members) in a state of semi-suspended judgement at the same time that it gives an insight into the way in which Capote's inner and outer lives might have intersected and diverged as well as into the society and circles within which he moved.

It's a well-composed film; living or dying by the strength of its characterisations, it's weighted and balanced in such a way as to throw the most possible light (and, where appropriate, shade) on the personalities and motivations of the central protagonist, Capote, by way of his interactions with the others. The most notable of these, of course, is his relationship with Perry Smith, but the way he deals with and is dealt with by Jack and (Nelle) Harper Lee is also revealing (and likewise the way in which Capote and Lee interact with others while together...Catherine Keener v.g.); in a similar fashion, the trajectory of Lee's success with Mockingbird throws Capote's own tortuous progress towards the end of In Cold Blood into contrast. And wrapped up with the focus on character is a concern with understanding how people come to be what they are - if In Cold Blood is famous in part for the light it sheds on how and why people kill, then Capote is as much concerned with how its titular subject came to be the kind of person who can commit the sins against his subject that he does as it is with his attempts to unravel how Smith came to be the kind of man who could commit his sins (just one of several levels on which the film draws parallels between the two men, so apparently dissimilar).

So there's a lot to think about in this film. I think that I'm unused to films which go so deeply into a character as does this one (probably because very few of them are made) and then deals with its subject in such a complex fashion; as I said before, I didn't actively enjoy Capote all that much (some pleasingly barbed wit notwithstanding), but I don't think that it'll be easily shaken off, either.

The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics

I've never really been fully on board with the Flaming Lips (maybe in part because I've never managed to catch one of their famously great live shows) - Transmissions is mostly good and occasionally great, Soft Bulletin is very good but hardly a classic, Yoshimi has its moments but ultimately I think it's too messy to amount to anything much as a whole, and that's about as far as I've got with the band, albums-wise.

Still, they do have the ability to produce some pretty great moments, and I was hopeful that At War With The Mystics might have at least a handful of those...opener "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" annoys me a bit - though it seems to've been picked up by the radio - but the next couple, the sharp-edged/catchy "Free Radicals" and the disco-turns-to-prog "The Sound of Failure/It's Dark...Is It Always This Dark??" are cool, and things go along pretty well thereafter ("Mr Ambulance Driver" makes a lot more sense in the context of the album), wandering similar byways to those trodden in their last couple of albums (airy keyboards, crashing percussion, quasi/actually epic verses, etc), though maybe with a bit more emphasis on the guitar heroics, Lips-style...

It seems like a denser album than Yoshimi or Soft Bulletin, and there are a fair number of resonances between songs - shared or similar chord progressions and so on...all up, in keeping with that complexity/ambition, it's quite proggy, right down to the occasionally epic song lengths and progressions ("The Wizard Turns On..." in particular, while relatively short, could've come right off a record like Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and not just because of its title); also, it's a bit more chaotic and in that respect more in lie with their earlier stuff (though with the latter-day glossiness). I'll need to live with it for a while longer before coming to a final conclusion (I've already had it for a few weeks, maybe a whole month, but not listened to it that much) but it seems pretty good.

Terry Pratchett - The Fifth Elephant / Dreams of secondhand bookstores

Early afternoon, last Sunday - last day before the start of work. It wouldn't be accurate to say that I was feeling apprehensive or oppressed or anything like that, but the imminent commencement was definitely on my mind, and, not wanting to spend all day subliminally frettin' about it all (and having previously decided not to see people that day), I scooted out to Box Hill for a quick browse in the library (hoping for the Stephanie Plum novel that I'm up to) and a longer browse in McLeod's, a rabbit-warren of a secondhand bookstore in the area. The latter browsing turned up a Lurie and a Fowles, both v. cheap (and neither of which I've read), so I was well satisfied with the excursion; on my way out, I spotted a bunch of the distinctive Pratchett covers (well, spines actually) and grabbed The Fifth Elephant too, turning to it for distraction for the rest of the day.

I'm not sure, but I think I've only read it once before (maybe twice at most); truth be told, it's not especially memorable as far as Discworld novels go, but even relatively minor entries in the series are plenty enjoyable.

Actually, there was another factor at work, somewhere in the background, in my buying the book; see, some of my earliest book-buying memories, dating to late primary or very early high school, involve doing exactly that - buying Discworld novels from McLeod's - and I liked the sense that, in some respects at least, things haven't changed. In fact, I've wondered before if those early experiences were the root of the frequency with which secondhand bookstores appear in my dreams - with the possible exceptions of home- and school-analogues, they're probably the most frequently recurring settings...it's not as if I haven't spent more than my share of time in the things in the years since then, but somehow the ones in my dreams often have a flavour of that first exposure to them (especially since there was a hiatus of a few years between the visits to McLeod's and the subsequent picking-up of the habit via the usual city, Fitzroy, etc haunts).

Possibly, too, they represent the hope of finding something new or previously unheard-of - including but maybe not limited to books - for a recurring figure in those dreams involves my wandering into such a shop and stumbling upon a whole bunch of books by a favourite author that I hadn't been aware of (sometimes the author is unspecified in the dream; on at least a couple of occasions it's been Pratchett)...rather tragically - in both senses of the word - sometimes I wake up from those dreams and actually feel a sort of befuddled joy and anticipation at having picked up the books in question and put them on my shelf, ready to be read, before I catch up with events and realise that the discoveries were only dreamt...

Victoria Williams - Water To Drink

I first heard the name Victoria Williams in connexion with Pearl Jam's cover of her song "Crazy Mary" (still probably my fave Pearl Jam cut, not that I've really listened to any of their stuff any time recently), recorded for a benefit cd in her aid; last year, I came across a few more references to her as I drifted in the folk/roots direction. Water To Drink is the first of her albums that I've listened to and, I have to say, it doesn't really sound the way that I imagined a Victoria Williams album would sound.

I'd expected her take on folk to be idiosyncratic - which it is, in spades - but what I hadn't realised is that said idiosyncrasy would involve mining not only folk and country seams and those which are generally considered to be adjacent to them, but also taking substantial cues from jazz, torch, and old time soul (not to mention, on final song "A Little Bit Of Love", copping some licks from Pachelbel's Canon). Williams' quavery little-girl voice is a bit of an acquired taste (even for someone like myself, who's obviously no stranger to that kind of thing) but has a certain charm; the songs are a mixed bag but generally strong. I like it.

bookslut.com

First book club meeting today, and in honour of the occasion herewith a blog that has recently provided me with much diversion, entertainment and edification.

"Mirror of the World: Books & Ideas" @ State Library of Victoria

Checking this out was Swee Leng's idea, and it was a good one. The exhibition's a bit of a hodge-podge of, in the words of the website, "many of the rare, beautiful and historically significant books held in the Library's collections" - it's a bit of a no-brainer, I guess, for a library to curate an exhibition based around the theme of books - but I didn't mind that its constituent parts were only loosely related to one another...I always get a kick out of looking at old books - I love the idea of those monks in the Dark Ages, laboriously but lovingly transcribing page upon page, and thereby Keeping The Flick'ring Torch Of Knowledge Alight, plus they're just beautiful to look at and it's amazing to think about the endurance of books and words (two different things, but both probably equally amazing) - and there were some pretty famous ones here: a Gutenberg Bible, works by folks like Virgil, Euclid, Chaucer, Shakespeare...plus there was some really old sheet music, maps, encyclopediae, general religious books, and so on...all rather cool.

Moving forward, there were first editions, etc, of stuff by people like Pope, Dickens, Woolf, Joyce, and also of books like Mao's Little Red Book. And, further in, things became thoroughly contemporary with cases dedicated to Carey's True History, 50s pulp fiction, graphic novels, and other such sub-areas. The final chamber (it's on level four, and extends all the way around on a balcony encircling the domed reading room) focused on the 'book itself', as idea and physical artifact, covering things like book binding, design, illustration, and so on, with quite a strong contemporary focus.

We must have spent something like an hour and a half in there, but it didn't feel nearly as long. A different way in which to be wrapped up in books, but a pleasant one - taken as a whole, being immersed in the exhibition was quite a sensuous experience (even if not all of the books were what you might call beautiful, they exert a powerful pull just by virtue of what they are and what they stand for) and also a rather thought-provoking one...I can't entirely express why, but seeing all those books, and reflecting on what they represent about humanity and its history, somehow made me feel that, history and the current state of the world notwithstanding, the human race is basically getting it right - or at least that it has the potential to, one of these days...I don't know; it just left me feeling happy and a little bit inspired.

Donna Tartt - The Secret History

Well, Proust-reading resolutions are made to be broken...

Actually, I didn't intend to read The Secret History all the way through - I picked it up with the intention of just refreshing my memory as to how the novel starts, but before I knew it, I was well into the thick of things (in part due to those super-long chapters!) and ended up reading all the way through it, because, well, why not? This was either the third or the fourth time that I've read the novel, and it still has an effect on me. Ah, it's good...moreover, having read the thing so many times (and responded to it so strongly) has resulted in each of its scenes and characters, as well as its overall trajectory, being ingrained in my mind and assuming a kind of heightened, totemic nature - so that re-reading it involves receiving/experiencing the novel as a kind of series of hyper-significant and hyper-familiar figures, closely following one upon the other...or something like that, anyway.