friday june 02
Hydra and the Bananas of Leonard Cohen, by Roger Green. Definitely some gems in here, because Green lived in a house that overlooked the singer Leonard Cohen's garden. Also, Green speaks Greek and was able to do translations between Cohen's longtime housekeepers and the very beautiful artist Suzanne Elrod.
The Suzanne from the song, by the way, is a different person from Suzanne Elrod, the mother of Leonard's children, Adam and Lorca, and she still lives part-time on Hydra.
Roger Green befriends Cohen's tenants and gets to sit in Cohen's house a lot. Unfortunately for readers who are primarily Leonard Cohen stalkers or fans, Green is as interested in bananas, and the depiction of bananas in poetry, as he is in Leonard Cohen. Leonard's bananas aren't doing that well. Roger Green is an educated person with an extraordinary opportunity (access to Leonard’s house) rather than a huge writing talent. But if you care about Leonard Cohen you should probably read this book.
Spare me The Final Club. Spare me the plagiarized How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life. I'm too old to feel the pain of not having gotten into Princeton or Harvard, but right now I'm in the mood to read about students and teachers stuck for whatever reason in truly awful schools. There's Jane Eyre, but I'm looking for ineptitude, not cruelty.
- One of my favorite books in the world is Bruce Jay Freedman's A Mother's Kisses, where the only school Joseph, a New York City native, gets into is an obscure Kansas agricultural college, where even apparently neutral courses like French, journalism, and chemistry involve much more in the way of farming lore than will be useful to his life's work.
- Evelyn Waugh's equally hilarious Decline and Fall tells of Paul Pennyfeather's brief career as a schoolteacher at the pathetic Llanabba Castle school after he is (unfairly) expelled from Oxford for "indecent behavior."
- Richard Yates's A Good School isn't such a bad school; it's just in bad financial straits and, like Llanabba Castle School, is ready to close for good at the end of the year.
- Jane Smiley's Moo seems roughly based on Iowa State University, which is a very good school, but in the fictionalized version, the students seem to learn little and the administration is corrupt from top to bottom.
According to USA Today, former President Clinton has inked a new deal to write another book. The untitled tome is expected to focus on public service and individual citizen activism. President Clinton hopes his new book will "lift spirits" and "touch hearts."
His last book, the 2004 autobiography My Life, sold over two million copies, despite mixed reviews.
British author Ramsey Campbell has mastered the knack of establishing an unsettling mood that seeps right into everyday life around you. His seemingly normal people and places eventually reveal themselves to be way outside of the ordinary, with tree people peeking over the back fence, ancient evil oozing up out of the stacks in a bookshop, and co-eds' fathers indulging their daughters to death.
Campbell's latest book, The Overnight (2005), centers on a big brand-new chain bookstore in suburban England that is a repository of ancient evil. The story starts out gritty and chilly, and the tone is unrelentingly dark, leading to a satisfyingly inevitable conclusion.
It just might make you think twice about going to the mall at night, alone, in the dark...
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan is the latest in a string of eye opening books about food. Pollan discusses the presence of corn - (ever heard of high fructose corn syrup?) in almost everything we eat. His interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air piqued my curiosity.
More food for thought:
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
Salt by Mark Kurlansky
Don't Eat This Book by Morgan Spurlock (director of the popular documentary Super Size Me)
On April 26, writers, editors, and other luminaries from the mystery community donned their finest party attire for the annual Mystery Writers of America Gala for “outstanding contributions to various categories of mystery, crime, and suspense writing.” The honorees included:
Check out the Mystery Writers of America website for the complete list of nominees and winners (including Best Short Story, Best Fact Crime, and Best Television Feature/Miniseries).
One hundred years ago, one of the strongest earthquakes on record swept through the San Francisco area and left the west coast’s most vibrant city in ruins.To mark the centennial, NPR produced a series of terrific stories about the aftermath of the earthquake and how the Bay Area is preparing for future seismic events. Take a few minutes to listen to them--I thought they were absolutely fascinating. On the companion website, you’ll find photographs, eyewitness account, oral histories, even a silent film from the Library of Congress archives that was shot on April 18, 1906! And don’t miss these recent additions to our collection:
