Reading and Listening

Reading...

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano. An excellent and very long book. Some will find it worth it (I did), but many will not. The story that moves so well in sections 1 and 3 meanders in section 2. However, the meandering nature of section 2 is intentional. The section is set up as a series of interviews with an endless cast of characters, some of whom can spin a yarn and others who seem to be talking just to hear themselves talk. Bolano can write sentences that take up half a page. Sometimes it's brilliant, other times endless. I thought the book was great, but could have been edited from its almost 600 pages down to about 400.

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. Wow. The setup sounds like a Memento ripoff (man wakes up to discover his memory is gone, but notes have been left by himself in order to help guide him), but that's where the plot similarities end. This book is like an amazing mix of Nick Hornby and Murakami (heavy on the Murakami). Neil Gaiman, but better. A sort of "regular bloke" 1st person voice in the most fantastic of magical realism circumstances. Check it out.

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor. I cannot count how many times I have read this novel. In my top 5 novels of the 20th Century. O'Connor writes the freaks of the "Christ haunted South" in a way that few others could and no others did. I recommend anything by O'Connor, but Wise Blood is my favorite.

Listening to...

Halos and Lassos by Half-Handed Cloud. Mates of State meets Tilly and the Wall meets Sufjan Stevens. Everything you'd expect from a band on the Asthmatic Kitty label (Danielson, Sufjan, etc.) and more. Psalms for the 21st Century.

Woke On A Whaleheart by Bill Callahan. Not as good as the best Smog stuff, but better than a lot of it. A natural follow up to A River Ain't Too Much To Love.