Absolutely On Music is a series of conversations between novelist Haruki Murakami and conductor Seiji Ozawa. I was too young to remember when Seiji Ozawa was conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1965-1969).
Tag: Review
Talking To Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is a public intellectual for people who don’t feel any pressing compunction to think.
Playing with MacPhun Software
I recently bought a suite of photo “enhancement” apps from MacPhun. I use the word enhancement in quotes because I feel conflicted about such tools. They make it easy to inflict an endless array of cheesy effects on unsuspecting photos.
Synaesthesia and The Ongoing Moment
Geoff Dyer’s The Ongoing Moment is a continuous cover-to-cover meditation upon the art of photography. I say “continuous cover-to-cover” because the book has no breaks, no arbitrary chapter divisions. Instead, it’s a series of riffs that follow one another in an associative way. He writes about Stieglitz and his relationship with his wife, Georgia O’Keefe…
Nine and a Half Weeks (Of Shopping)
Elizabeth McNeill’s erotic memoir of a love affair is celebrated for the fact that it’s told from the submissive’s perspective in an SM relationship. The unnamed man slaps, cuffs, spanks, whips, beats, humiliates the narrator who leverages the pain to a heightened desire. At least that’s how the novella-length memoir is celebrated. My take on the book is that it has less to do with sex than with shopping.
The Cult of the Amateur
When cultural commentary turns its gaze to online technologies, it grows dated in the blink of an eye. It’s like watching Joan Rivers and the accelerating pace of her plastic surgeries. The minute one thing gets tacked in place, something else droops.
Stay, by Jennifer Michael Hecht
Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It by Jennifer Michael Hecht (Yale University Press, 2013) is an odd book. It’s odd in that there seems to be a divide between what it claims to be and what it is. Note that I didn’t say it’s a bad book. It’s a good book. But it’s not the book it thinks it is.
Two More from Bookthug
At this year’s Toronto Word On The Street, I picked up two chapbooks from Bookthug, one titled My Vagina, by André Alexis, and the other titled Deep Too, by Stan Dragland.
A by Andre Alexis
Since David Gilmour’s idiotic remarks of last week, there have been many clever responses, but the cleverest by far comes from a source that predates Gilmourgate by a few weeks: the novella, A, by André Alexis, published earlier in September by Bookthug.
Tired of David Gilmour? Read Michael Crummey instead
Yesterday, David Gilmour got himself caught up in an internet shitstorm. Unlike most of his detractors, I chose to let my opinions ferment overnight. I hope that leads to something more considered than much of the self-righteous anger I’ve read. Here are a couple things that might differentiate my opinion from others. First, I’ve actually…
I still don’t like Haruki Murakami
And by “Haruki Murakami” I use the name metonymically to mean “the body of writing produced by Haruki Murakami”; I’m sure that the man, Haruki Murakami, is a fine person and all, entirely worthy of my respect and admiration. I just don’t like his writing.
Who Owns The Future, by Jaron Lanier
Following Jaron Lanier’s advice, I’ve taken a summer sabbatical from social media. His advice comes from his latest book, Who Owns The Future? I’m pleased to report that, as promised in his book, the curtailing of my social media habits has not resulted in any nasty consequences.
Regreen: New Canadian Ecological Poetry
It would be easy to select poetry that assumes a prophetic/righteous/angry tone, especially in light of the Harper government’s policies around exploitation of the Alberta tar sands and dismantling of environmental controls. However, Anand and Dickinson have made selections that frame things in positive terms.
The Poem Goes To Prison, ed. by Kate Hendry
The last time I was in Edinburgh, I dropped in to the Scottish Poetry Library and picked up a copy of The Poem Goes To Prison, edited by Kate Hendry. This is an anthology of poems selected by prisoners for prisoners. It was curated by Kate Hendry while she was teaching at HMP Barlinnie, Scotland’s largest prison, located just outside Glasgow.
Ossuaries, by Dionne Brand
Dionne Brand’s volume of poetry, Ossuaries, is my 22nd book of 2013 & the 3rd book of my February reading list to mark Black History Month. In light of recent reports that the remains of Richard III have been discovered beneath a Leicester car park, a reading of Ossuaries seems timely.