Having finished John Steinbeck’s delightful Travels with Charley, I’ve now started reading Michael Chabon’s latest novel, Gentlemen of the Road, a break from his usual 20th century fare taking us to the Caucasus mountains around the turn of the first millennium, while putting his usual Jewish spin on things - an adventure story set in the Jewish ( Read more... )

    Several months ago, I started reading Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", an alt-history novel about the Jewish state in Alaska, 1999. It's good - Chabon's a wonderful author - but I stopped after about a hundred pages and moved on, telling myself I'd return to it soon. It was just too full of... schtick, if you'll pardon the ( Read more... )

I bought a lot of concert tickets this week. Blondie. Ian Brown. Artists I'm not too familiar with, but that's no excuse. I wasn't too familiar with Mercury Rev or dEUS either, when they showed up. I enjoyed them anyway, and have since gotten to know dEUS, at least, very well.

"You never regret the concerts you go to", says my mother. "Only the ( Read more... )

15 pages into Dylan's Chronicles and the prose is dense, like poetry. Lively as a newly-written narrative, not 40-year-old memories. You can find echoes of his lyrics, from Joey to Ballad of Thin Man. That's how he writes, that's how he lives. Good start.

I've just finished reading Nick Hornby's "31 Songs", kindly given to me by hattie. It's been lying on my shelf for long enough (Oh, who am I kidding? It's been lying on anything horizontal enough not to slip off of. My shelf-space is practically non-existent, my storage ubiquitous ( Read more... )