Ipod on shuffle mode
The Drive-By Truckers – A Blessing And A Curse from A Blessing And A Curse
This is around the time that I sort of stopped following the Drive-By Truckers material. But this is great, real great.
Richard Buckner – Picture Day from Dents & Shells
Richard Buckner’s more recent stuff isn’t as good as those great first few albums. This is no exception.
Los Lobos – La Playa from This Time
Los Lobos two nights in a row is always welcome. It’s experimental stuff like this that I want to play for people who only know Los Lobos from La Bamba.
Prince – Let’s Get Satisfied from This Is My Night (bootleg)
Very, very funky version of this track. I wish Prince would release more live albums.
Ugly Casanova – Spilled Milk Factory from Sharpen Your Teeth
I wish there were more Ugly Casanova music out there than there is. I like this Modest Mouse side project better than Modest Mouse. I love the clunky feeling of this track.
Jimi Hendrix – The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice from South Saturn Delta
This recently released Hendrix stuff is uninformly quite excellent.
Moonshine Willy – Turn The Lights Down Low from Down to Promised Land: 5 Yrs of Bloodshot Records
A fantastic track from a fantastic compilation. Seriously, this is worth every penny.
Ryan Adams – It Wasn’t from Bedhead Vol 1 (bootleg)
Wish I could find copies of all this stuff again since the only one I have is on the Ipod.We keep hearing about all this unreleased material Adams has. How about a box set of live cuts like this.
Laurie Anderson – The End Of The World from Talk Normal: A Laurie Anderson Anthology
Imagine how great the world would be if Laurie Anderson was a radio staple.
Okkervil River – John Allyn Smith Sails from Stage Names
This band deserves to be huge.
American Music Club – I Broke My Promise from San Francisco
This takes me back. American Music Club was my soundtrack about fifteen years agi when I was going through a bought of debilitating insomnia and only sleeping an hour a day. I used to listen to this album and it would give me a little bit of peace.
The Smiths – Sweet And Tender Hooligans from Louder Than Bombs
One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands.
Uncle Tupelo – Back Eye from March 16-20 1992
This is the one Uncle Tupelo album that I don’t really care for.
Tahiti 80 – Fun Fair from Wallpaper for the Soul
Pure yummy pop deliciousness. Second night in a row that the best song comes last.
David Mitchell’s 
is a re-read for me. I first read it a few years ago, was blown away, and wanted to share it with my reading group. Like many of Mitchell’s other books, the structure is based on a gimmick. Cloud Atlas is more of a series of nested, inter-connected novellas than a proper novel. Each story ends abruptly, leading into the next story, where it is eventually revealed to be connected to the previous story, until the middle story ends and each story is completed in reverse order. It’s a gimmick, but it works wonderfully. One of the members of my group wasn’t as taken with the book as I was and asked me why i liked it. I told him that I liked to live in a world where such creative endeavors existed. The book is certainly a showcase for Mitchell’s dazzling skill. The first story takes place in the mid 1800s and they proceed forward in time to a dystiopian future. The style of each story is also as different from the next, ranging from pulp to science fiction. It’s currently being made into a movie by the Wachowski’s and Tom Tkywer (Run Lola Run). Apparently the Wachowski’s are handling the futuristic parts and Tkywer the historical ones. Upon my origianal reading I had felt the novel would be unfilmable, but now having read it again, I’m looking forward to seeing it. Highest possible recommendation.
Not wanting the high of Infinite Jest to end, I picked up the awkwardly titled 
by David Lipsky. This is essentially a transcription of audio tapes made by Lipsky as he traveled with Wallace for five days on the Infinite Jest book tour. The trip was to be documented as an article for Rolling Stone but was never published. Which is probably a good thing. I was expecting a book intending to cash in on the death of Wallace. I was pleasantly surprised that it was a candid and illuminating look at Wallace and the way he worked. The fact that its a 350 page book and not edited down to 20 pages for magazine publication is abig plus. It’s a quick, fun read, if a little clunky, due to the nature of transcribed conversations. Highly recommended for fans of Wallace’s work and for people interested in how writers work.
My workplace reading group recently tackled the mammoth 
by David Foster Wallace. Twice before I had attempted a reading of IJ and was unsuccessful. The first time I had put it aside for a few weeks and upon returning to it I found it too difficult to jump back in. The second time was during the Infinite Summer internet reading a couple of summers ago. I was attempting the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge that year and it was probably a bad idea to try to include a 1,000+ page book. After about 350 pages I decided if I wanted to stay on track with my goals I would need to put it aside. The third time turned out to be the charm. This was the first book that I read on a Kindle and it made me a believer. First, I didn’t have to lug a brick back and forth to work. Second,the hyperlinks made it very easy to flip back and forth between the text and the footnotes. The experience made me fall in love with my Kindle and I’ve done more reading in the time since I got it than at any other time since grad school.
. I didn’t want the experience to end and I am sue I will be returning to it. There’s a lot more here than can be absorbed in one reading. At times it made my head swim and at other times it left me breathless. I give it my highest possible recommendation.
I’ve been a big fan of Neal Stephenson since I first read Snow Crash back in the mid 90′s. Since that time, Stephenson has evolved from a cyberpunk pioneer to a master of the modern conspiracy novel. 
is a prequel of sorts to his Cryptonomicon. To call Quicksilver sprawling would be to do it an injustice. It actually comprises three novels and is part of the larger three volume Baroque cycle. Mostly set in the late 1600′s, it deals with the period when humans were really starting to figure things out.With a cast of dozens, if not hundreds, it is often dizzying. Like Cryptonomicon, it deals with codes and ciphers, but also such diverse subjects as optics, architecture, calculus, and currency. The first three hundred or so pages are breathtaking. The the problems start. The second novel completely resets the action, and for the next three hundred pages you get a entirely new cast of characters. All the narrative flow is disrupted It isn’t until the final three hundred pages that the two narratives begin to intersect. By that point I had already lost interest, as I found the middle third a bit of a chore to get through. I’m not the only one. Reading this along with co-workers, I’m the only one that stuck with it until the end.Most of my reading these days is done during my lunch hour, so everything is done in ten to twenty page chunks, and the middle third of the book isn’t conducive to this type of reading. All of that said, the longer my distance from the book (I finished it several weeks ago), the more I keep thinking about it, second guessing my original thoughts on the novel.
My co-workers and I are going to tackle another monstrous work. We are going to do all of Proust’ Remembrance Of Things Part, separating each volume with a contemporary work. First up is the recent Lydia Davis translation of the first volume, 
. Other than long, often very, very long, sentences, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Fortunately, after the first volume, we’re all still ready to go through the rest. The first volume has a very lyrical quality. I often found myself having to re-read passages, certain I had missed something, only to find out that yes, the narrator is still going on about the same thing for the tenth page. But when Swann’s Way is good, it is incomparable. For example, the several pages where Swann is frantically traveling all over Paris, trying to find Odette are amazing. The writing on Swann’s jealousy is likewise breathtaking. I’m looking forward to the next volume.
sure is fat. Another winnter from McSweeneys.
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