Book awards revelations

[selenak]

Sunday evening I was at the Corine, which is Germany's attempt to make handing out annual awards for books look glamorous. Was amused that while Kazuo Ishiguro was there (because he got an award for best book for Never Let Me Go), all the photographers predictably ignored this awesome writer in favour of, wait for it, not even Diana Gabaldon (who

Comments

[likeadeuce]

I have to concur on the "Sound of Music" thing -- there was a radio show a few years back when they interviewed New Yorkers to see what they thought of when they thought of Austria, and "Fraulein Maria" was by far the top answer.

Of course, like most Americans of my generation, I saw TSOM when I was far too young to have any critical faculties. And fell in love with Captain Von Trapp at a very early age, so I can't really be rational about that movie--.

Glad you had fun at the awards!

[selenak]

Clearly, New Yorkers deserve every tourist who's looking for the West Side as presented in Westside Story. (That was the better Robert Wise movie anyway.)

[likeadeuce]

Next thing I suppose you are going to say is that Atlanta deserves all the tourists who show up demaning to know where Rhett and Scarlett are buried, and whether they are side by side.

PS to myself

[likeadeuce]

Tony Horwitz's great nonfiction book about the South, Confederates in the Attic, has a marvelous incident of his trying to track down the "real" Tara (which, it turns out, does not exist in the least, despite many claims to the contrary).

Re: PS to myself

[shezan]

Tony Horwitz's great nonfiction book about the South, Confederates in the Attic

Oh, I love the title already. Tell us more? *puppy eyes*

Re: PS to myself

[likeadeuce]

Oh, I love this book so much. I keep meaning to post a full review of my own, but as I haven't, I'll link to a pretty good one.

The short version -- Horwitz, who is a one-time foreign correspondent, and a full time Jewish Yankee from Maryland, revisits his childhood obsession with the Civil War, in a book that's a blend of memoir, history, experiential journalism, and plain old fashioned reporting. There's humorous stuff like the search for Tara, and then he turns around and writes about the scary revisionist history that happens at Andersonville (site of a former civil war prison camp, where the residents seem devoted to whitewashing the war crimes that happened there). It's an absolutely great book.

Re: PS to myself

[shezan]

Brilliant! Have immediately ordered from Alibris, (who had a hardcover for $4.95, too!)

[selenak]

Well, naturally. I mean, at the Chateau d'If you get presented with Edmond Dantes' cell AND the Abbé Faria's cell AND the tunnel connecting them, notwithstanding the fact neither of these gentlemen ever lived, so do you mean to tell me Atlantans haven't come up with graves for Scarlett and Rhett? Though Rhett should be in Charleston, I guess...

[shezan]

The West Side Story West Side used to exist, I swear. Then they built Lincoln Center, and gentrification set in. But I still remember the very early 80s, when the rest of my family worrfied about the cousins who'd bought a townhouse between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue on E89th, "because you do get mugged getting there.". Needless to say that townhouse has become an object of envy.