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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
What do I have to say about Salinger? Not much really -- I loved reading his books as a young man, they have not stayed with me very much though, except for a couple of his short stories. A great writer certainly, but not someone I have spent very much time thinking about in my adult life. I don't want to let the occasion of his passing go unmentioned though -- the books felt extremely important at the time I was reading them, and they definitely played a role in my growing up as a reader. So I'll link to a couple of other bloggers who have more to say about him than I.
Alvy Singer looks forward to "the upcoming war between New York publishers over thousands of unpublished items for the pleasure of completists (us)."
SEK draws some parallels between reading Salinger and reading Zinn. (...And Hilobrow imagines the History of the United States told by Holden C.)
Michael Sweeney reprints a piece he wrote last year, thanking J.D. for his books.
Also, the New Yorker's archivist John Michaud posts links to every story Salinger published in the magazine. (The stories themselves are, however, only available to subscribers.) And the best obituary comes (of course) from The Onion.
posted evening of January 28th, 2010: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
At The Great Whatsit today, I read S. Godfrey's photoessay about his friend Finley decorating garbage cans with wallpaper, with a link to an NY Timesarticle about it. What a great idea!
Finley has a gorgeous web site of her own, natch, where you can see some more of her junk-themed art.
The Saramago Foundation announces that a new edition of The Stone Raft will be published, with all profits given to the Red Cross's relief efforts in Haïti.
Update: no, I misread that. The foundation is not donating all profits to the Red Cross, but rather "the entire 15€ purchase price of the book" -- rather more substantial a commitment.
Today at Paul Habeeb's Latest Research, I find a link to the site of Jim Kazanjian -- whose otherworldly photography makes me think of nothing so much as of Escher, as if Escher had come back to life and gotten himself a digital camera and a graphics workstation... So, wow; that is nice to know about. But on a whim I follow Mr. Habeeb's via link, to Christopher Higgs' journal bright stupid confetti -- and find myself overwhelmed by the insane quantity of beautiful, interesting pictures -- paintings, photography, posters... surrealistic videos... lectures on poetry (in English) by Borges... I'm pretty much blown away by this site.
Update: More info about Jim Kazanjian at artistaday.com, where he was profiled last month.
From Sundance 2010: In this short doc, T.G. Herrington follows "Mr. Okra" around New Orleans selling vegetables from his truck. Ain't no use in cookin if yo ain't gonna cook wi' fresh food.
(I'm never quite sure how I feel about subtitles for English dialect -- on the one hand they can be really useful, but they can also be distracting and seem patronizing.)
posted evening of January 26th, 2010: Respond ➳ More posts about The Movies
In emails last week, John and I have been talking about how to approach our weekly rehearsals, with the thought in mind that we'd like to have a good enough sound to play some shows before too long, and make recordings. What we eventually came up with was a two-pronged approach: if we start with a small group of songs that we think of as our book, and spend some time on those songs every week trying to get them to sound really polished, then we can also spend some time each week playing new songs, songs we haven't tried and are thinking about, or songs we enjoy that occur to one of us on the spur of the moment... So that's how we did it on Saturday and it worked out pretty well. The songs we are beginning with as our book are:
Jockey Full of Bourbon
Bonaparte medley
Louisville Burglar
Man of Constant Sorrow
California Stars
Meet Me in the Morning
Walk Right In
St. James Infirmary
Angel From Montgomery
This is a nice mix of musical styles and of songs he sings with songs I sing. We played every one of these (except St. James I think) on Saturday, and they are in general really starting to come together. And we had time left over to fool around -- we did a couple of Dylan songs, one by George Harrison, one or two by Neil Young; also "Praying Mantis" by Don Dixon, which we've done before and which might be a candidate for the "book" list...
So my sticking point on "Mack the Knife" is, I keep thinking it should be in D. But the recordings I'm listening to are mostly in C; and it turns out to actually be easier to finger in C than in D. But I need to avoid switching keys in the middle of the song...
I added another video to last night's playlist, a Brazilian performance by Servio Tulio and Glauco Baptista -- a lovely performance and sort of a midpoint between Lenya and Sinatra, or another interpretation with shadings of both. This is the first I ever heard of Tulio and Baptista but there seems to be a lot of great music by them up on YouTube.
Accompanying National Geographic's new article about the chimpanzees of Goualougo Triangle are some great videos, including a hilariously cute tape of one of the chimps discovering the hidden camera. Thanks for the link, Martha!
Ellen and I watched Quiz Show tonight, and among other things it made me want to learn the song "Mack the Knife" which plays (Sinatra's version) over its credits. Here are some versions:
posted evening of January 22nd, 2010: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
✷ Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
—Introibo ad altare Dei.
It would be hugely ambitious, and almost certainly misconceived, to try to render Joyce's Ulysses as a graphic novel. The folks at Throwaway Horse, LLC have taken on a project that strikes me as (a) even more ambitious and (b) far more likely to have a useful, valuable outcome: they are creating a graphic/web companion to the novel, a set of resources for the reader which center around a beautifully composed (by artist Robert Berry) webcomic. There are mouseover translations of foreign phrases; there are context-sensitive links to a reader's guide (written by Mike Barsanti) and dramatis personæ. The 55 pages that are up so far -- covering the first 13 pages of the text, as they are numbered in my Vintage Books edition -- are outstanding. I think if I were part of Throwaway Horse I would be trembling before the size of the task; but I wish them well with it and I hope that they are able to pull it off.
posted evening of January 21st, 2010: Respond ➳ More posts about Comix
At Wired, Ethan Watters examines the push to delineate a symptom pool for the disorders of economic uncertainty.
We are debating as a culture which symptoms and feelings we will collectively recognize as legitimate expressions of distress over this particular problem. The idea is that, while our mental issues are totally real, they are often diffuse and hard to explain. So, as we strive to communicate our internal pain, weâ??re drawn toward describing symptoms that are culturally legitimized.
What do I have to say about Salinger? Not much really -- I loved reading his books as a young man, they have not stayed with me very much though, except for a couple of his short stories. A great writer certainly, but not someone I have spent very much time thinking about in my adult life. I don't want to let the occasion of his passing go unmentioned though -- the books felt extremely important at the time I was reading them, and they definitely played a role in my growing up as a reader. So I'll link to a couple of other bloggers who have more to say about him than I.
I posted a brief note about Carlos Saura's breathtaking movie Fados at 