Collaborations

Collaborations by Ravi Shankar & George Harrison

George Harrison was first wowed by the sitar, a traditional Indian stringed instrument, on the set of the Beatles film Help!.  The young pop star was intrigued and transfixed by the music he heard.  He later went out and bought his own sitar at a shop in London and found his way round the neck enough to dub a part onto "Norwegian Wood" on the Rubber Soul album.  Harrison then wanted to go beyond his rudimentary plucking on the instrument and properly learn.  Well, why not get lessons from the master Ravi Shankar?

The two studied together in Los Angeles, California and later in India.  Though the Beatle did not pursue a career with the sitar after discovering the amount of years, intense training and discipline it takes to play classical Indian music, he and Shankar became life long friends.  This boxed set Collaborations celebrates the two musicians' friendship, spiritual connection and recorded musical partnerships.  Harrison was involved as a producer (and sometimes a musician) on three of Shankar's albums ranging from 1974-1997 and they all appear here along with a live concert dvd and a beautiful hardcover book.

Widow's War

Widow's War by Sally Gunning

Set on Cape Cod (in the area which is now Brewster), in the year 1761 we meet Lyddie Berry, whose husband drowns while whaling. She defies convention and chooses not to live with her son-in-law (and who could blame her), and holds onto the law of being able to use (but not own) 1/3 of her husband's property. She defies social, legal and religious strictures of her time, and makes her way through a world that is not made for independent women. Throw in some romance and intrigue with the details of daily life and you have a very captivating story. The author was led to the subject by her own historical research into her family, and her familiarity with the area is clear in the book.

Bread and Jam for Frances

Bread and jam for Frances by Russell Hoban. Pictures by Lillian Hoban.

I love picture books, but I generally refrain from posting children's materials to this blog. When I heard that the author of Bread and Jam for Frances had died, however, I wanted to share this book from my childhood. Bread and Jam for Frances tells the story of a young child (who happens to be a badger) who loves bread and jam and doesn't want to eat anything else. With memorable characters, and great illustrations, I the Frances books will be enjoyed by children and adults alike.

(Interestingly, the Wikipedia page on Russell Hoban reveals that he wrote books for adults as well. I didn't know that! Forbes Library has one of them, Riddley Walker, and many more are available through interlibrary loan!)

Tap [DVD]

Tap

Have you ever seen the Nicholas Brothers dance? If you haven't, take a look at some of their clips on YouTube. You might want to start with their famous performance in Stormy Weather (of course, you can borrow Stormy Weather from the library and watch the whole film). I'm also quite fond of Lucky Number, a charming song and dance routine performed by a younger Fayard and Harold. That's some fine dancing.

Tap is a 1989 film that celebrates the kind of syncopated, jazz dancing practiced by the Nicholas Brothers. Gregory Hines stars as Max Washington, a talented tap dancer who gave up dance for what he saw as a more profitable life as a burglar, got caught and went to prison, and then rediscovered dancing as a way to cope with his solitary confinement. The story follows Max after his release, and as he is reunited with old friends, all of whom seem to have an opinion on how he should live his life.

There is some great dancing in Tap. This is hardly surprising given the cast. In addition to the talented Gregory Hines, we also find a number of old tap greats, including Harold Nicholas (of the Nicholas Brothers!), Jimmy Slyde (of the Slyde Brothers), and most recognizably, Sammy Davis Junior of Rat Pack fame, in his last film role. Representing a younger generation, we also see a young Savion Glover. (Glover would eventually do the choreography for the the dancing penguins in Happy Feet, a fact that is hard to forget, though it is insignificant compared to his other accomplishments.)

Tap isn't a great film. It too often falls into cinematic cliches, and its final scene, which is supposed to be an inspiring combination of rock and tap, is a disappointment. Still, it is an enjoyable film, worth watching if you love dance, and a wonderful reminder of the great tradition of jazz tap, which has, sadly, fallen out of cinematic favor.

Rags & tangos [CD]

Rags & tangos by Ernesto Nazareth, James Scott, Joseph F. Lamb performed by Joshua Rifkin, piano

Put this in the CD player, close your eyes (assuming you're not driving) and be transported to turn-of-the-20th-century piano heaven. Ernesto Nazareth is the greatest composer you've never heard of. His music is descended from Brazilian choro, Frédéric Chopin, and the soul of dance hall piano. In between the Nazareth "tangos" --which aren't really tangos in any conventional sense-- are works by my two favorite ragtime composers: James Scott, the bridge from Joplin to jazz, and Joseph Lamb, who can make the romantic tradition sound like striptease music and fill your heart with nostalgia for places and times that never were. One listen is worth ten thousand words.

That is All

That is All by John Hodgman

Previously I reviewed John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise, his first volume of complete world knowledge.  Now, I'll take a moment to give more of the same praise to the third and final installment, That is All.  Again, Hodgman provides fake historical information and hysterically terrible advice (including the necessary tools to become a deranged millionaire).  In addition, he continues the page after page factoid calendar that appeared in More Information Than You Require; only this time he decides to predict the FUTURE right up to the coming apocalypse scheduled for December 21, 2012.

That is All is a magnificent read... and it even has its own trailer:

THAT IS ALL from John Hodgman     

Wild Flag [Music CD]

Wild Flag by Wild Flag

Dear Reader,

I would never lie to you.  And when I say to you that I like to rock, I hope you understand that what I am saying is an absolute truth.  Wild Flag's self-titled debut album is what rock n' roll ought to be: loud, fast, played live and without a lot of fuss.  This supergroup features ex-members of Sleater-Kinney, The Minders and Helium.  What stands out most to me musically is Carrie Brownstein's (of Portlandia fame) blistering riffs, the spirited drums fills of Janet Weiss and the harmony sound the four vocalists create.  The stellar musicianship of this bassless, garage rock quartet often propels these excellent songs into uncharted territory. 

Just a couple examples for you... The lead off track "Romance" has some reverbed out surf overtones and a chorus that can't help getting stuck in your head.  On "Glass Tambourine", the group certainly draws from the Nuggets archives, but then moves into a spaced out heavy jam that the late Jimi Hendrix would certainly appreciate.

I love this album and that's a fact!

Sincerely,

-JSM

P.S. Please enjoy this music video directed by Tom Scharpling.

Wild Flag - Romance from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Winter in Wartime [DVD]

Winter in Wartime

This beautifully shot period film follows 13 year old Michiel, a small town boy in Nazi-occupied Holland in the Winter of 1945.  Michiel’s childhood innocence and restless desire for adventure lead him into increasingly dark and morally ambiguous territories when the realities of war,  resistance and adulthood collide and converge upon his small town life. He is apprehensive about his father’s uneasy cooperation with their German occupiers and looks up to his uncle Ben, a resistance fighter whose connections, gifts and attitude intrigue Michiel. When an allied fighter pilot crashes near the village, Michiel and his sister, a young nurse, are drawn into the search for the pilot and must debate whether to take action or remain silent, and question who they can truly trust. The film, while somewhat conventional in some of its WWII era plotlines, offers enough twists and intrigue to keep the viewer’s attention, but its real appeal is grounded heavily in the films setting. The scenes are filmed beautifully and the village, woods, snow, bicycles, knitwear and natural light combine to give the film an enchanting sense of place, and ground the viewer in Michiel’s conflicted world, caught between action and fear, occupation and resistance and childhood innocence and the risks of adult responsibilities. This film is one of several Forbes films now added in Blu-Ray and DVD (both discs are included in one case, so patrons will not mistakenly get home and find the film unplayable), and the Blu-Ray is especially recommended for its crisp picture, which captures the film’s setting wonderfully.

Submarine [DVD]

Submarine

 Olivier Tate (played by young actor Craig Roberts), the protagonist in Richard Adoaye’s quiet, quirky, charming, dark and thoroughly enjoyable film Submarine is a likeable precocious Welsh boy searching for an identity and direction in the stifling climate of small town coastal Southern Wales.  He tries on affectations: "I've tried smoking a pipe, flipping coins – listening exclusively to French crooners, I've even had a hat phase". This quote is immediately followed of course, with a shot of him at the family dinner table, wearing a Blue Stetson, looking fairly ridiculous. His teenage flailing about for identity finds its focus when he discovers the dark and indifferent charms of classmate Jordana (Yasmin Paige), who lures him into more and more morally reprehensible schoolyard acts. She is outwardly resistant to his charms except when he is misbehaving, and seems most allured by his taking part in the bullying of a fellow school girl. The cast is fantastic, both Paige and Roberts inhabit their roles fully and believably, while the adult characters (Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor as Olivier’s parents), are comically stuck in their own lazy unspoken despair, too wrapped up in their own ridiculous melodramas to offer guidance to Olivier. Paddy Considine appears as an almost incongruously broad comic foil and rival to both Olivier Tate and his father. Adoaye, most famous for his work on the UK sitcom “The IT Crowd”, who adapted the script from a novel by Joe Dunthorne, directs the film with care and fills it with beautiful shots of the beaches, woods and amusement parks of the Welsh Coast. There are aspects of the film’s plot, details and cinematic style which will appeal to fans of many other refreshingly offbeat comic films (Wes Anderson’s films in particular) but the unique characters, acting performances and Welsh character give it a charm all its own. 

Talking Tabla [CD]

Talking Tabla by Bikram Ghosh

Talking Tabla is an exciting recording showing off the work of a masterful tabla player. The tabla is a popular Indian percussion instrument, and is ubiquitous in the classical music of Northern India. The tabla consists of two hand drums of contrasting designs: on the left is a kettle drum with a deep sound and variable pitch; on the right is smaller conical drum with a high, fixed pitch. The drums are struck with the fingers and palms of the hands to create the sounds known as bols, these are the syllables of North Indian drumming and can be spoken as well as played; well performed, they sound very much like language, hence the title of this album, Talking Tabla.

On Talking Tabla Bikram Ghosh plays a variety of compositions, fixed and improvised, in a variety of styles, including a piece in the less familiar Carnatic style of South India. Although Bikram Ghosh's tabla is the focus of these recordings we are not deprived of melody—Ramesh Mishra does a beautiful job playing the sarangi (a kind of elaborate fiddle) on several tracks and on the third track Ghosh accompanies Tarun Bhattacharya's santoor (hammered dulcimer). In addition, Ghosh's beautiful baya (left hand drum) application creates a kind of melody of its own. (To fully appreciate this a pair of good speakers or headphones are recommended—don't listen to this one through your laptop speakers!) Even those who are bored by the idea of an album devoted to the drums should consider listening to Talking Tabla.

Maphead

I like maps, I like geography and I mostly liked this book. Ken Jennings' book had many interesting stories to tell; my favorites being the sections on early cartography, the London Map Fair and the National Geographic Bee. He lost me however with the couple of chapters devoted to GPS (games and navigation) and geocaching. I was disappointed that I did not love this book in its entirety but would recommend it nevertheless because of the author's informative and witty writing.

The Glasgow School [CD]

The Glasgow School by Orange Juice

File this one under "neglected".

Due to odd sizes of items, value, age, et cetera, we sometimes have material here at Forbes that lacks a certain "browseability" or just isn't given an ideal sight line.  The Glasgow School certainly falls somewher under this category.  This cd, filed with our boxed sets because of its book bound style case, may be a little off the radar for our casual music browser.

Orange Juice, fronted by Edwyn Collins, was a group that successfully meshed clever, highly literary lyrics with danceable musical accompaniment.  The songs on The Glasgow School collects the band's first singles and outtakes.  These sessions sound more rough around the edges than the slicker produced records that followed.  Collins' romantic, baritone voice handles the majority of the lead singing with James Kirk interjecting some gems here and there (Kirk would leave OJ after the release of the classic full length debut You Can't Hide Your Love Forever).

Here we have inspired music from Scotland at the start of the 80's representing the lighter side of the post-punk era.  Lyrically, they match wits with the best.  Collins laments in Blue Boy "Oh curse and bless him with the gabardine which surrounds him/See him writhe at the sight of your eyes which repel him".  Their lasting influence is easily heard throughout the catalogs of the Smiths, Belle & Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand and hopefully, if people can find Orange Juice, many more musicians to come.

Doctor Who: The Awakening [DVD]

Doctor Who: The Awakening

Peter Davison stars as the Doctor with the cricket inspired get up and celery stalk fastened to his lapel. You'll have to wait until Davison's last appearance however to learn the purpose of the mysterious vegetable! Regarding this particular shorter story, the Doctor promises to reunite his companion Tegan with her grandfather in her present time of 1984.

If it were only that simple...

When they arrive at the quaint village of Little Hodcombe, they are greeted by people with long flowing beards in suited armor on horseback. The Doctor and his companions are led to believe the townspeople are taking part in some sort of reenactment of a famous civil war battle from 1643.

We soon discover that they have actually landed in a time parallel between the years 1643 and 1984 due to an underground beast who is also warping the minds of Little Hodcombe's citizens and projecting humans from the 17th century in their reality. Confused yet? Check it out for yourself and enjoy this entertaining two-part Doctor Who adventure.

Bach Unaccompanied Cello Suites [CD]

Bach unaccompanied cello suites performed on double bass by Edgar Meyer

This is one of the most amazing CDs I have ever heard.  Edgar Meyer is a musician's musician who is in high demand in the classical, folk and bluegrass worlds.  He has partnered with the likes of Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell,  Bela Fleck and Mark O'Connor, and he composed a violin concerto for Hilary Hahn.  Here he partners with Johann Sebastian Bach in a new interpretation of the suites for solo cello with a much deeper voice.  He solves the technical problems of the bass -- larger reach and slower-speaking strings, for example -- with a technical mastery that is just mind-boggling. But this is not just virtuosic fireworks.  The bass sings under his fingers.  And you can hear the 30 years of practice and love for the repertoire in this recording.  Meyer is right up there with Casals on my shelf.

The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Evocative. Descriptive. Atmospheric. The Night Circus is a good story, but its the atmosphere that will keep you turning the pages. Set in the late Victorian era, The Night Circus tells the story of two students, Celia and Marco, forced by their individual teachers to compete against each other in a game they don't understand. Their playing field is an unusual circus, which becomes more and more fantastic as the two young magicians populate the circus with their increasingly elaborate creations. A carousel with strikingly realistic animals. A tree without leaves or flowers, but covered with candles which never go out or melt away. A hall in which hundreds of mirrors each show something unexpected. A garden made of perpetually unmelting of ice.

Everything about Le Cirque des Rêves is improbable, and much of the book is devoted to describing the circus and the experience of visiting it. The narrative shifts in time, place, and voice, but always describes the circus or the people connected to it. Some chapters are written in the second person, and while most of the book is written in the third person some chapters are completely without characters (unless you count the circus itself); these chapters especially create a feeling of immersion and they felt to me as if they were in the second person, even if they did not use the word "you".

The level of detail is appropriately, but sometimes startlingly, varied. Morgenstern often writes at length about minutia such the smell of the popcorn, or the costume of a particular performer, only to gloss over the details of a conversation in the most general language. These glosses may, perhaps, represent some lost opportunities on Morgenstern's part, where she could have further fleshed out her story, but on the whole I found them unobjectionable and even welcome; not only did they help keep the story focused, but they contributed to the tone of the novel, which I found unusual but very much enjoyed.

The Night Circus is a fantasy, and a romance of sorts, and will be enjoyed by many open-minded readers of both genres.

Chasing Fire

Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts

Rowan Tripp has been fighting fires since she was 18, and is the daughter of a retired forest fire fighting legend. We meet the new crop of rookies, and get to see the intense ways they train, as well as meet the surviving crew from the previous season when they lost one of their own. The fire season is difficult enough on its own, but we find that someone hasn't let go of last year's tragedy. The suspense is more in the people vs. fire, with a lot of details including training, equipment and on the line fire fighting. Although this definitely qualifies as a romance, I didn't find it too over the top, and felt the steam came more from the water vs. fire than the relationships. There is a secondary romance that adds an interesting element.

Let's Spend the Night Together [DVD]

Let's Spend the Night Together a film by Hal Ashby

I remember watching the Rolling Stones in Let's Spend the Night Together a few times on television when I was in high school.  I know this sounds unbelievable, but VH1 used to show concert films and was actually a music station back in the day.  Maybe I couldn't get behind the 1981 renditions of the classic 60's tunes at the time or was distracted by Mick Jagger's football tights ... truth is, I didn't really dig the concert film when I first watched it.

Fast forward to last night.  I popped in this dvd for nostalgia sake and wound up really enjoying myself.  The performances are unbelievable!  In addition, I made the statement to my friend who was sitting next to me on the sofa that "this just might be the best Stones concert film ever." 

The boys barrel through 24 songs in under 90 minutes with the right blend of machismo and camp that we expect from the band.  Despite playing a huge stadium, they're very, very loose with unexpected bendy guitar riffs distributed throughout by Ron and Keith , jazzy drum fills care of Mr. Watts and Mick's wild singing.  If you look close enough, you may even see a smile on Bill Wyman's face, too.  Some of the older songs appear to be unrehearsed to a certain extent while more recent cuts from Tattoo You, Emotional Rescue and Some Girls are played tight like a classic rhythm and blues review.  We're also treated to a bonus keyboard section featuring Ian McLagan (of the Small Faces & Faces fame) sitting behind the organ and classic stones session man Ian Stewart on piano.

It's also important to note that a serious filmmaker was on staff for Let's Spend the Night Together.  Hal Ashby, whose credits include Harold & Maude, The Last Detail, Being There and many other fantastic titles, directed the film.  It's always interesting to see the difference between a standard concert film and one that was overseen by a true artist.  Martin Scorsese's work on the Last Waltz and D.A. Pennebaker's Montery Pop are other excellent examples.  They tend to spend more time with the performers and not make pointless quick cuts.  There is something to be said in what these filmmakers find interesting and insist the audience see on stage. 

The real lesson learned however is that it doesn't hurt to revisit films you may not have enjoyed at one stage in your life.  You never know in what direction your taste may take you.

Kansas City [DVD]

Kansas City a film by Robert Altman

It's 1934 and on the eve of a local election in Kansas City, Missouri.

Jennifer Jason Leigh stars as Blondie, a comically fast talking wife of a petty thief. When her husband gets picked up by an intimidating local jazz and gambling club owner stroke gangster named Seldom Seen (played by the great musician and activist Harry Belafonte), Blondie hatches a kidnapping scheme of her own. At gunpoint she drags Carolyn Stilton, the opium addicted wife of a local senator, along through the city in an attempt to free her husband. Miranda Richardson and Altman mainstay Michael Murphy are cast as the seemingly loveless Stilton couple.

Tension enters the film only moments after it begins and it continues to build and build throughout. The backdrop of this chilling drama is the soulful and swinging jazz music that pulsates from Seldom Seen's Hey Hey Club. In addition, Steve Buscemi, in a role that seems to have served as a warm up for his stint on Boardwalk Empire, is one of the many actors who appear in memorable smaller parts.

Kansas City, though not as loose and off the cuff as many classic Altman movies of the 1970's, is possibly the director's most suspenseful.

Nook [e-book reader]

Nook

The Barnes & Noble Nook is one of ten e-book readers you can check out from the Arts & Music desk at Forbes. Each one has over a hundred books pre-loaded on it. I recently borrowed the Kobo to read a Sherlock Holmes story I needed for a class. It was my first time taking one of these little gadgets home to bed. Despite being devoted to the printed page since 1963, I confess to a certain attraction. Imagine my wild surmise when I saw that I could read over a hundred classics in any type size I wanted, while only carrying one little tablet. Next I'm going to check out a Kindle to get a jump on the waiting list for the bestsellers that are already on it. All the e-book readers can be used with free Overdrive library e-books, too, but I didn't have time to try that feature in my two allotted weeks. My bookshelf is already getting jealous.

Here's a little sample of the authors on the Nook in my hand:

Jane Austen, two Brontës, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Hardy, Aldous Huxley, Henry James, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Sinclair Lewis, Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy (world's lightest copy of War and Peace!), Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, P.G. Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, Frederick Douglass, Henry Thoreau, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and W.B. Yeats. There's also a whole (virtual) shelf of books on local history in and around Northampton.

Day For Night [DVD]

Day For Night

La Nuit Américaine, or Day for Night, is one of my favorite films. This 1973 film by French director François Truffaut shows the cast and crew of a dramatic film on and off the set. In addition to the obvious work necessarily to make a film—selecting costumes and props, learning lines, building sets, performing for the camera, adjusting lights, etc.—we also see these men and women as they make friends, suffer nervous breakdowns, fall in love, gossip, run away, return, and otherwise live rather complicated lives.

The film stars Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Léaud as the film within the film's young stars, but the film truly has an ensemble cast, with many talented actors portraying a wide array of interesting and memorable characters. Truffaut himself is part of the cast, as he not only directs the film, but also plays the director of film within the film. The music is by Georges Delerue, who also worked with Truffaut on a number of other films.

Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag

This very short memoir of the association between Ingrid Nunez and Susan Sontag recounts their friendship/mentorship during the time that Sontag was writing “On Photography” and New York literary life in the 1970’s. Nunez was hired by Sontag to help sort out her correspondence. She then became involved with Sontag’s son, David Rieff, and for a period of time the three of them lived in the same apartment. There are many glimpses into Sontag’s writing life and habits which I found very interesting. Susan Sontag is often portrayed as a very difficult person and Nunez does show some instances of how that was true but she also rounds out the portrait with other details that showed Sontag as a complicated person with many aspects including vulnerability, conflicted and humorous and loving.

Blood on the Tracks [Music CD]

Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan

Once this guy I knew split up with his girlfriend and then he was gone for a while. I think he went to his uncle's farm out in Kentucky or somewhere. When he came back, he had a beard and seemed a bit more serious. I asked him how he was feeling and he softly replied, "I've been listening to a lot of Blood on the Tracks, man."

Blood on the Tracks? I had heard of that, but I was in the twilight of my teenage years: I was still thinking of and enjoying Dylan with the big curly hair, polka dot shirt, pointy shoes and Al Kooper playing groovy organ riffs. Still, I sought out this folky record.

Dylan at that time was going through the break up of a marriage and though the author denies any trace of autobiographic tendencies, the songs appear to reflect this time of his life. The album opens with "Tangled Up in Blue", a lyrical bombast about two lives crossing. Other highlights include "Idiot Wind", the eight minutes and change "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" and "Shelter From the Storm".

Like the majority of his work, the lyrics read like poetry on Blood on the Tracks and here we find Dylan with his heart on his sleeve and at his most tender and delicate state. When I went through break-ups as a younger lad, I tended to go with early Beach Boy albums. They had those beautiful harmonies that are underlined with melancholy. It's easy to wallow and hold onto sadness like a serpent to the neck with this sort of music. On Blood on the Tracks, Dylan is presenting a more mature and grown up outlet for heartbreak, man.

The Lacuna [Book on CD]

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver reads her ambitious 2009 novel in a soft and expressive voice with deliberate pacing. The story unfolds over three decades in Mexico and the U.S., and each character has a particular voice within the author's reading. It centers on the young man Harrison Shepherd whose parents (American father and Mexican mother) are marginal to the picture, and who keeps diaries in which he is a third-person narrator of his own life. Though he holds himself as a perpetual outsider, his life is in the middle of some serious action: as a teenager he gets a job as a plasterer and then a cook for Diego Rivera, living with the painter, his artist wife Frida Kahlo and the exiled Leon Trotsky for whom Shepherd does clerical work. Later, he moves to South Carolina on his own and becomes a successful novelist, until he is targeted by Joe McCarthy's HUAC. The fictionalized descriptions of these larger-than-life figures and the historical events surrounding them are the focus of the novel, with the main character acting as quiet observer and chronicler, adding his own wry take on the proceedings. It's an unusual device that creates an inside view of epic times through distant eyes that could be your own. Which is not to say there's no emotion in it--there's more than enough passion in the cast of characters, and plenty of historical context to arouse the reader's.

The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian

The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie; art by Ellen Forney.

He is known as Junior on the Spokane Indian reservation he calls home, and Arnold at the all-white school Reardan in the nearby farm-town. Arnold/Junior Spirit leads a split existence once he decides that he needs to change schools in order to give himself the chance of escaping the poverty and alcoholism that he is surrounded by on the reservation. A book filled with tragedy manages to be uplifting and funny, with cartoons drawn by Arnold interspersed throughout. This young adult novel tells a universal coming-of-age story. This was also one of the Top Ten Challenged Books in 2010 according to ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom - a great reason to read it!

Last Train Home [DVD]

Last Train Home

There are 130 million migrant workers in China, many of whom only journey home to see their families once a year on Chinese New Year. Lixin Fan’s 2009 award winning documentary follows the journey, conflict and struggle of one such family and is a film of remarkable impact. To its western audiences, the film is an eye opening look into the arduous lives of the thousands of low wage workers who produce assemble and manufacture many of our imported goods. While the film exposes the insidious impact of globalization and the poor working conditions of Chinese low wage workers, it is equally successful in capturing universal family conflicts and generational differences. The ‘mass exodus’ of Chinese workers home for the Spring Festival is the world’s largest human migration. The arduous journey of the Zhang family from their urban factory and cramped living conditions back to their poor rural village vividly illustrates the dramatic changes Chinese society has undergone as a result of its economic role in the global marketplace. The film is shot in a cinema-verite, fly on the wall style and the viewer is confronted not only by our role and responsibility as the world’s largest consumers, but by our perspective as the viewer of this hauntingly intimate look into the lives of this family. The parents of the family have sacrificed being present to raise their children for the purpose of sending enough money home to allow their children to pursue their education and have a better life than they have. When their rebellious teenage daughter confronts them about their continual absence and the pressure they place on her to succeed, she addresses the camera directly and the viewer can’t help but feel connected to this extraordinarily personal, politically relevant and remarkably timely film.

The Fifty Review Club: An Unconventional Post

Fifty Films

I was glancing at the sidebar on the Forbes Staff Picks Blog and noticed that the number fifty was next to my initials. Fifty reviews. Moments later I was ushered into a secret room in the Forbes Library (of course it was revealed by pulling a book back in the stacks!) and was presented with a spread like no other, a Swedish massage and a gold plated computer mouse. Confetti spilled from the ceiling and Philadelphia's own Todd Rundgren (he really liked my review of A Wizard, A True Star) performed a private concert.

This celebration got me thinking; perhaps I should do something "fifty" related now that I'm a member of the Fifty Review Club. A detailed synopsis of 50 First Dates ? Haven't seen it. An overview of 50 Cent's discography? I'm unfamiliar. Then I thought perhaps I ought to make a list. People who work at libraries love lists! I've come up with fifty films that mean something to me that are in our collection (just click on the titles to see the record in the catalog) and have decided to quickly free associate. I've limited myself to stay under ten words and type the first thing that pops into my head. See you at the 100th party. -JSM

8 1/2 -I've had dreams like this

24 Hour Party People -the Manchester scene as told by Tony Wilson

2001: A Space Odyssey -the effects are still unrivaled
Arthur -a drunken love story
Atlantic City -lemons
After Hours -one of those really bad nights out
Badlands - "Love is Strange"
Blue Velvet -wha!!!????
The Blues Brothers -My first favorite film
Breathless -jump cuts
California Split -Gould & Segal roll the dice
Le Cercle Rouge -reds & blues
Claire’s Knee -yup, this has got to be French
Do The Right Thing -crazy thought provoking potboiler
Don’t Look Now -I still can't believe that ending

Down By Law -"I scream you scream, we all scream for ice cream!"
Duck Soup -comedy 101
F For Fake -magic tricks
The Fearless Vampire Killers -gory/funny
Gosford Park -Stephen Fry as Inspector Thompson in the third act
Hannah and Her Sisters -Woody at his best
A Hard Day’s Night -black & white Beatlemania
The Householder -a loving film about arranged marriage
The Jerk -"he hates cans!"
Joe Versus The Volcano -listen to this
Key Largo -Bogey & Bacall & Robinson
The Long Goodbye -the sleepy Philip Marlowe
The Lost Weekend -writer's block anyone?
Meek’s Cutoff -remember "the Oregon Trail" video game?
Nosferatu the Vampyre -spooky Kinski
Opening Night -going off the script
Paper Moon -cute grifter's tale
Playtime -Hulot tries to get a job
Rosemary’s Baby -"tannis anyone?"
Rushmore -a coming of age story like no other
The Rutles: All You Need is Cash -the best telling of the Beatles
The Science of Sleep -arts and crafts
A Serious Man -Jefferson Airplane
Simon of the Desert -the funniest religious film
Small Change -one of the few realistic portrayals of children
Smiles of a Summer Night -wait, Bergman's funny??
The Squid and the Whale -Pink Floyd plagiarism
Straw Dogs -a violent film that strongly advocates nonviolence
Sullivan’s Travels -Sturges makes a road movie
They All Laughed -an ingredient in the Wes Anderson formula
The Thin Man -my favorite detective couple
Time Bandits -a must see for all young adults
The Two of Us -here come the waterworks
Vertigo -the old switcheroo
Walkabout -Roeg in the outback

Incognito : the secret lives of the brain

Incognito : the secret lives of the brain by David M. Eagleman

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain is a fun and informal look at the subconscious, and often surprising, workings of the human brain. Consciousness, Eagleman says, only sheds light on a tiny portion of the way our minds work. Most of what goes into our decisions, our preferences, our very thoughts, is invisible to us. The inner workings of the brain are revealed not by introspection; instead, we learn the most about our own thoughts by considering behavioral studies, the perceptions of illusions, and the revealing actions of those suffering from brain damage or cognitive disorders. From such observations we learn that the perception of motion does not require movement, that the acquisition of skills does not require conscious memory, and that certain types of logical problems are easy for us only when they are given meaning in a social context.

This book is meant to entertain. It is not the place to go if you are looking for a good understanding of the science of the human mind. But if you want an enjoyable read which provides some surprising insights into human behavior, you may enjoy Ingcognito.

A Book of Secrets

A Book of Secrets : illegitimate daughters, absent fathers by Michael Holroyd.

A fascinating combined biography of a place, the Villa Cimbrone on a hill above the Italian village of Ravello, and the people connected to it throughout different time periods. The work of biographer Michael Holyrod reads like a detective story and features such characters as Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; to Eve Fairfax, a muse of Auguste Rodin; to the novelist Violet Trefusis, the lover of Vita Sackville-West and daughter of Alice Keppel. Having read extensively about some of these people already because of my interest in Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, this book was a wonderful way to fill in some of the missing gaps and to add to my interest of this subject.

New Morning [Music CD]

New Morning by Bob Dylan

The late 1960's early/ 70's happens to be a great period for Bob Dylan, thank you for asking. Nashville Skyline, the Basement Tapes, Self Portrait (though many have said I'm crazy for admitting I like this one), Pat Garret & Billy the Kid are the albums I return to the most within this artist's prolific catalog. 1970's New Morning may be the most enjoyable listen from this period.

The album kicks off with the pining romance gesture that is "If Not For You". The song has an almost Velvet Underground pulse juxtaposed with bouncy organ and country guitar picking. George Harrison would record his version the following year on his album All Things Must Pass. The bluesy and rock n' roll sounds predictably find their way onto this record. There's also lighthearted moments in "Winterlude" where Bob croons "this dude thinks your fine" and in the silly jazz rap "If Dogs Run Free" featuring a barrelhouse piano send up at the top of the song.

Dylan's voice and delivery began to shift around 1968. He lost a bit of the raspy quality that his earlier recordings possessed and started leaning a bit on the softer side in his vocals. This is not to say he's taking a casual approach to his singing; Dylan is most noticeably passionate on the title track, "Day of the Locusts" and "the Man in Me" (featured in the soundtrack of the Big Lebowski).

New Morning is just another one of those perfect Bob Dylan records.

Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang [DVD]

Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang

As a Doctor Who nerd and an admirer of several of the lead actors in this long running science-fiction series, it is difficult to come up with a favorite episode or story. One finds much of what is discussed on various websites, television programs, magazines, blogs... or real life conversations for that matter tend to fall under the categorizing or ranking of books, films, music, athletes, politicians, restaurants, etc. Is this need for placement really all that necessary? Must our filing cabinets extend throughout all of space and time?

Let's just say, that the The Talons of Weng-Chiang from the Tom Baker era is a story that I really, really enjoy.

Robert Holmes, who was one of the more prolific and humorous writers of the Doctor Who enterprise, scripts an exciting adventure taking place in Victorian London. Our time traveling protagonist called "the Doctor" and his assistant Leela find themselves mixed up an other worldly, underground cult, battling a giant sewer rat and dealing with a scary looking puppet (I know, right?!!). The episode has a Sherlock Holmes motife: the vested Doctor is fully equipped with a long herringbone overcoat, a deerstalker hat and cravat. Furthermore, Holmes (this time I'm talking about Robert) playfully throws in several references to Conan Doyle's writings.

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is an excellent introduction to Doctor Who if you're unfamiliar with the series. The script is dynamite, there are memorable, comedic supporting roles and it ABSOLUTELY STARS THE GREATEST ACTOR TO PLAY THE DOCTOR. Busted... caught ranking, categorizing and picking favorites. I guess it's just what we do.

The Magicians

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

What if Harry Potter and his friends were older and lived in New York instead of England? Despite its references to Narnia and other fantasy classics, The Magicians is not a children's book. The protagonist is neither hero nor anti-hero -- he's more like an actual human being (granted, with magical gifts) looking for meaning in the world and generally failing to find it. He and his classmates graduate from a secret, elite college for wizards and don't know what to do with the rest of their lives. (Here's where the existential literary fiction comes in.) Everything is open to question -- was that a quest we were given, or are we just projecting? -- and the lines between good and evil are often unclear, or beside the point. The plot is twisty enough and the prose captivating and spiced with humor. There are occasional disappointments, but The Magicians is still an adventure that's hard to put down. It's going to make a great movie someday.

Girl Groups [DVD]

Girl Groups

This rare, long out of print copy of Steve Alpert and Stephanie Bennett’s 1982 film provides a joyous glimpse into the history and development of the girl group sound. In addition to candid interviews with key figures like Darlene Love, Mary Wilson, Ronnie Spector, Arlene Smith and Ellie Greenwich, the film includes rare performance footage discovered by the filmmakers in the damp basement of a local TV affiliate in Windsor, Canada. These clips and performances by seminal groups of the era were originally aired on Teen Town, Detroit’s local version of American Bandstand. The film traces the history of the girl group sound from song writers in the Brill Building in New York to Motown and beyond, and includes clips of the Ronettes, Martha and the Vandellas, the Shangri-Las, the Marvelettes, the Angels, the Dixie Cups, the Shirelles, Dee Dee Sharp and a rare short color film of the Exciters bizarrely miming “Tell Her” in the general direction of lions and bears in a zoo. The film quality is certainly dated and shows it’s age in places, and a segment on the Supremes runs perhaps a bit too long (Motown required a minimum of ten songs to be featured for the rights to the Supremes) while other important groups are barely mentioned. All things considered, the interview segments and performances more than make up for these faults and the film stands as a valuable artifact of the times, and must viewing for fans of the Girl Group Sound.

Wicked Autumn: A Max Tudor Novel

Wicked Autumn: A Max Tudor Novel by G. M. Mailliet

First in a new series, this book is an homage to the traditional English village mystery. Max Tudor is the village priest, settling into his peaceful existence in the peaceful village of Nether Monkslip - a far cry from his previous life as an MI5 agent. Wanda Batton-Smythe is the self-styled head of the village, and head of the Nether Monkslip Women's Institute, organizing the fall Harvest Fayre, and creating ill-feelings and enemies in her wake. She had no close friends, but did anyone really hate her enough to kill her? Max Tudor finds himself in the middle of the investigation, and we can look forward to visiting the other villages that he is also responsible for in future books. I believe that this is the type of mystery that provides all the clues for you to be able to figure out the culprit, although I was just happy to go along for the ride.

Two things that endeared this book to me from the (near) beginning:

1. Cast of Characters list (when I was writing my great mystery novel as a preteen, this was as far as I got)
2. Wanda is reading a Booker-prize winner, and says, "In no year, in fact, had she enjoyed reading any of the Booker winners, but she felt honor-bound to read them, and to drop into conversation the fact that she was reading them." I read this before the short list for the Booker prize came out this year, and was surprised that were actually several books that I am interested in reading, including The Sisters Brothers.