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Happy together (Sept. 8, 2001)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

One never stops reading, though books come to an end, just as one never stops living, even though death is a certainty.

Roberto Bolaño


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Saturday, September 5th, 2009

🦋 Comme Toujours Here I Stand

This is kind of exciting to hear about: Big Dance Theater is presenting a new show called "Comme Toujours Here I Stand" based on Cléo de 5 à 7, featuring an original title song by Robyn Hitchcock -- a confluence of two of my very favorite artists! (And of an art form I'm not familiar with at all...) It will be premiering next month at The Kitchen in NYC; I'll certainly be there.

Speaking of Hitchcock, here are a couple of things I've seen in the last few days and been meaning to link to:

  • See him singing a lovely new song, "Dragonfly Me", on BBC4 Today -- he performed this song yesterday at Pestival, I'm not sure whether it was written for the occasion or just a happy coincidence...
  • On Jennifer Robbins' show "Cooking With Rockstars", he discusses how to make Food Pie:
    "Dead pheasant would be hung in the pantry or something for maybe a week after it dies, getting high... 'getting high' means -- as I suppose it often does in human terms -- slowly turning green..."

    I'm a little surprised to find Hitchcock not liking parsnips -- this guy who has always struck me as being the height of good taste!

posted morning of September 5th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Cléo from 5 to 7

Wednesday, September second, 2009

🦋 Notebook hiatus

Saramago is hanging up his blogging hat for the time being. The good news is, he needs the time to work on a new novel he will be publishing this winter, Cain, about sibling rivalry in Genesis. And he leaves the option open -- "If sometime I should feel the need to comment or opine about something, I'll knock on the door of the Notebook, the place where I like best to express myself."

posted evening of September second, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Saramago's Notebook

🦋 Monk in Union Square

By way of the Wooster Collective I see that street artist Elbow-Toe has a new painting in Union Square, based on Rembrandt's drawing "Monk in a Cornfield" -- beautiful, I hope it is still there next time I am in the city! The Rembrandt drawing really captured my imagination when I saw it a few years ago at the Pierrepont-Morgan Library.

posted evening of September second, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Pretty Pictures

Tuesday, September first, 2009

🦋 Vacation photos

A whole bunch of images from our vacation are up at the READIN Family Album -- here are a couple of my favorites:

This trip featured a bit of time on the water, which I really enjoyed -- this is me and Sylvia on the ferry to Province­town on Tuesday.

And here we are swim­ming in the ocean, at Herring Cove beach on the north tip of Cape Cod; one of the most pleasant beaches I've ever visited.

Another really nice beach is the one at Hull, just a few miles from where we were staying in Scituate.

Ellen got this lovely photo of the sun setting over Hull.

posted evening of September first, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about the Family Album

Saturday, August 29th, 2009

🦋 ...Inherent Vice playlist

I was able to find a lot of the titles from the soundtrack at YouTube. Not complete, but respectable... Index here.

...And I just noticed, these songs are in alpha order rather than in the order they appear in the book. That seems like something that ought to be corrected.

posted evening of August 29th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Inherent Vice

🦋 Inherent Vice soundtrack

Amazon is really doing some cool stuff with promoting Inherent Vice -- I'm not sure exactly what the business structure of this is, it looks like it is coming from Amazon rather than from the publisher, it looks like Pynchon is actively involved. Anyway, today I found a playlist of tunes featured in the book: Soundtrack to Inherent Vice. Not sure why they did not put multimedia players on the page, but there are links to mp3 files for a whole lot of the songs. (Alas, not for the fictional ones... Who's going to record "Just the Lasagna"?)

(Something I ought to do: make a YouTube playlist containing the subset of songs on the list that are freely available... Update: here it is!)

posted morning of August 29th, 2009: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Thomas Pynchon

Friday, August 28th, 2009

🦋 Bike riding, and not

Hmm... today is seeming like a very comfortable day for not taking a long bike ride as I had been thinking -- instead I think I am going to lie in a hammock and read more Alice Munro stories -- these are really grabbing my imagination! Sort of a similar sound to Annie Proulx (enough so that I'm wondering how much of an influence she had on Proulx), but more self-consciously cultured and introspective, I think.

Took a short ride to Norwell this morning -- the countryside around here is beautiful! I saw a flock of birds on the road that I think were wild turkeys -- here in southeastern MA, ground zero for the first Thanksgiving. Will take a short ride to North Scituate later on and get some vegetables at the farm stand there...

posted morning of August 28th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Alice Munro

🦋 Tim's Books

When we took the ferry out to Provincetown on Tuesday, among other fun things (Provincetown had me thoroughly charmed -- it seems like about the nicest beach town/resort town I can imagine, I am searching my brain for ways to make my future include living there some day...), we found Tim's Used Books -- funky little shop with a really interesting selection. We were in a hurry and on our bikes; under different circumstances I would have spent a few hours there and come away with a heavy bag of books.

Other vacationing news... Sylvia and I went to sea yesterday afternoon on a whale-watching ship, we saw many humpback whales and a few minkes. Got some nice photos, I'll post them when we get back home. It was a beautiful day for it. (Weather has been really nice this week, though it looks like a stormy weekend.) I've been taking some moderately long bike rides around the countryside here, to places like Hingham and Hull; this afternoon I will try for Duxbury and Marshfield. Martha is coming over for dinner this evening.

posted morning of August 28th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Book Shops

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

🦋 A Voice

Another unexpected discovery from Deedee's bookshelf is Alice Munro's Selected Stories -- I haven't really heard or read much about this author before but she's really got my ear after a couple of stories. A really distinctive, fully human narrative voice, that reminds me of a lot of different contemporary authors without being any of them.

posted evening of August 27th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Readings

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

🦋 Seeing stars

This is a very clear night and is making me very happy to be here where there is not a lot of light pollution... I haven't gotten a chance to really look at the night sky for years. Also very loud cicada soundtrack to the sky-examining.

posted evening of August 25th, 2009: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Cicadas

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