Baby Got Books

NYT Notable Books: 2008

The New York Times has released its annual collection of the 100 Notable Books of the past year. BGB has reviewed three (3) of the books on this year’s list:

Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen (BGB’s interview with the author)
Black Flies by Shannon Burke
The Blue Star by Tony Earley (1, 2, and 3)

For better or worse, I check out this list each year to see if I’ve at least heard of most of the books on the list. As I noted in a post from last year, the list has become…:

…a touchstone of sorts for this blog, since the annual notable books list is semi-responsible for our beginnings. After reading the 2004 list, I was surprised at how few of the books on the list I had ever heard of. I e-mailed the list to a few friends that were also avid readers with similar results. We collectively resolved to start paying better attention to printed reviews, to this new-fangled blogosphere that the kids were all talking about back then, and to the recommendations of our local independent booksellers. Two months later, the idea had somehow morphed into this blog, which will soon begin its [fifth] year.

Books | Tim | November 28, 2008 9:06 am | Comments (1)

Classics scholar Charlotte Higgins (It’s All Greek to Me) compares the oratory style of Barack Obama to that of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It’s a fascinating article that discusses specific classic oratory/literary devices with examples. (A few weeks ago a friend and I were trying to remember the name of the device through which you discuss something by not discussing it – it’s “praeteritio.”) Higgins closes with this oberservation about words and action:

Can Obama’s words translate into deeds? The presidency of George Bush provided plenty of evidence that a man who has problems with his prepositions may also struggle to govern well. We can only hope that Obama’s presidency proves that opposite.

Books | Tim | November 26, 2008 1:49 pm | Comments (0)

And they’re off…

The intrepid explorers from the Wren’s Nest House Museum have begun their cross-country trip (well at least as far as Denver) with the aim to visit as many house museums as possible. You can read about the trip here. Be sure to check out the Google map of the planned stops, which includes commentary like this:

Lain promises updates from the road, so keep checking in with the Wren’s Nest blog.

Happenings | Tim | 9:49 am | Comments (0)

Obama is the new Oprah

The Guardian describes the positive effect that Obama’s election is having in the book aisles. The President-Elect is having a visible impact on the sales of books that me mentions, not just his own. In a surprising note, the article credits John F. Kennedy for Ian Fleming’s success.

For comparison, here’s one of my favorite clips of our outgoing President talking about books:

And don’t forget about the great Bush/Rove reading contest of ’06.

Books | Tim | November 25, 2008 9:59 am | Comments (0)

Poe Continues to Frighten

What does the Edgar Allen Poe House museum in Baltimore have in common with the TV show The Wire? The Wren’s Nest blog reports from the mean streets in a scary/hilarious post.

Speaking of the Wren’s Nest, which is the house museum for the author Joel Chandler Harris, their intrepid Director has embarked on a trip from Atlanta to Denver. He plans to visit as many author house museums as he can find between the two cities. I hope that tehy are all as eventful as Poe’s.

Authors, Books | Tim | November 24, 2008 8:33 am | Comments (2)

What was that?

Earlier this week BGB was briefly hacked, and I thought everything was cool. But then…we spent the last two days existing in cyberspace as only an error message. I was a little freaked out, but I think that we’re back and in one piece. Let me know if something isn’t working or looks funny. Don’t forget your backups, kids. WordPress users – install this security feature in your blogs now.

News | Tim | November 23, 2008 12:45 pm | Comments (0)

Ceci n’est pas une poste de blog

Google let me know that today is René Magritte’s 110th birthday. Cool.

Atlanta Weekend Planner

I’ve already mentioned the excellent Amanda Petrusich music/books extravaganza at Wordsmiths that’s going down tomorrow. All the cool kids will be there.

Don’t forget to get your picture taken with A**hole Santa at Criminal Records tomorrow which supports PAWS Atlanta (1-6PM). (See last year’s Flickr set to get the proper feel for the occasion.) At 6PM The Eagles of Death Metal (Motto: we don’t sound like the Eagles or Death Metal) will be performing live in-store at 6PM for free.

If you plan it right, you’ve got day-long fun tomorrow. Govern yourself accordingly.

Books, Happenings | Tim | November 21, 2008 11:23 am | Comments (2)

It Still Moves

I first heard of Amanda Petrusich’s book It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music from Largehearted Boy’s Book Notes. I was intrigued by the author’s musical selections. I like music. I’m interested in finding out more about the “next American music.” I picked up the book.

Petrusich mentions early in the book:

It is my perpetual and unmistakable failure as a music critic that I am infinitely more interested in personal details than in studio settings or guitar pedals or synthesizer type or whether or not something has been recorded in 3/4 time.

What this means in practice is that the book is half the size of those by music writers like Peter Guralnick and Michael Azerrad who document their subjects in painstaking detail. She could have also added that she is more willing to offer her own impressions than the more academically-minded music writers. Of course, when the narrative strays from the strictly factual, the author opens herself up to debate. Which is fine by me. Music is one of the few things that I’m willing to cheerfully debate over a cold one.

Petrusich’s book is a good starting point for arguing about what has been truly important in the history oftraditional American music and where our music may be headed. For clarity, when “American” music is discussed in the book, we’re mostly talking about music that could also be described as “Americana.” The blues figures into this definition but Motown largely does not. It’s a definitional problem that Patrusich acknowledges.

Having established a working definition of American music, Patrusich notes:

Periodically, in interviews or conversations about American music, my counterparts will shift their eyes, lean close to my face, and whisper–voices deep, conspiratorial, hushed–a curt proclimation: ”All great music comes from the South.” If they are feeling particularly plucky, they will fold down their hands and add: “And literature, too.”

Some might quibble on this point, but Petrusich notes that the opinion is “mostly true.” So she loads up her car and leaves Brooklyn for a musical tour of the South. She visits the usual musical touchstones: the Mississippi Delta, Nashville (music row), Memphis (Beale Street and Sun Records), and the Appalachian mountains.

The travelogue portion of the book mostly serves as a backdrop for discussions of the history of American music. Petrusich does a nice job expounding on the work of Alan Lomax, famous of his field recordings of American Folk Music for the Library of Congress in the 30s and 40s. The author also provides a nice overview of the importance of the Carter Family and their role in preserving American music. Both Lomax and the Carter Family have been criticized for cashing in on music created by other people, but without them a large portion of our musical heritage would have been lost.

Back in Brooklyn, Petrusich interviewed touring bands and musicians for their thoughts on the current American music scene, their part in it, and where American music is headed. To their credit, most of those interviewed wanted little to do with being labeled as alt-country, freak folk, or “Americana” bands. As Ray Raposa of the free-folk band Castanets opines:

“Are R. Kelly or Eminem of Hillary Duff any less American than [alt-country acts like] Dock Boggs or Whiskeytown or Old Crow Medicine Show?”

The interviews highlight that the vanguard of the new American music borrow from the time honored traditions of American music but infuse it with the “new,” reflecting the changes in their country. (See the last four or five artists at the bottom of the post for examples.)

It Still Moves is a thoughtful book about a difficult topic. My first stab at writing this review was twice as long and detailed all of the points where my opinion and Petrusich’s differ – or how I would have tackled the subject differently. The problem with that first draft is that it hid how much I liked and admired the book. Several times I had to put the book down to hunt down a thread on Wikipedia or go searching for mp3s of bands, old and new, that I needed to hear RIGHT THAT MINUTE. I’m looking forward to discussing the book and music with the author soon. (Did you like that awesome segue to…)

Added bonus: Amanda Petrusich will be reading from her book here in Atlanta this Saturday night at Wordsmiths Books. The event is co-sponsored by Wordsmiths and Paste Magazine. Music will be provided by The Georgia Fireflies (listen to their music here) who fit nicely with the book’s ethos. (That’s right. I said ethos.) FREE BEER will be provided by the Oskar Blues Brewery. The event starts at 7:30 and is free. I expect the place will be packed with music nerds discerning enthusiasts like me, so you may want to get there early. And, you know, FREE BEER.

Of course, a music book is always a great excuse to sneak some streaming audio into the blog. Here’s a sampling of some songs by artists that get a shout out in the book:

Johnny Cash – Cocaine Blues (live)