free stuff

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Here are some CDs:

Bowery Electric, Vertigo. Like electronica remixes of My Bloody Valentine.
Nicholas Payton, Payton's Place. Young Lion jazz. Promo copy.
Sandy Denny and the Strawbs, s/t. Folk-rock.
Björk, Homogenic. Uh, weird electronic pop music? You know, Björk.
Allette Brooks, Silicon Valley Rebel. Bay Area (surprise) singer-songwriter. Environment, love songs, modern life.
Sharon Bousquet, Mirror, Mirror. Another one. Rootsier.
Gary Burton and Makoto Ozone, Virtuosi. Vibraphone and piano jazz arrangements of classical pieces.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book. Arrangements by Nelson Riddle.
Kenny Barron, Wanton Spirit. Great pianist, with Roy Haynes and Charlie Haden.
Pet Shop Boys, Disco 2. Remixes, mostly from Very and Behavior, plus "Absolutely Fabulous".
Pet Shop Boys, Bilingual. I like "A Red Letter Day" a lot, and "Discoteca" and "Single" are catchy.
Pet Shop Boys, Somewhere. I get it, but taking on Leonard Bernstein was probably unwise. Also "A Red Letter Day" again and two bonus tracks.
Pet Shop Boys, Nightlife. Their first album that didn't really want you to dance.
Pet Shop Boys, Release. How did they make a record so dreary? If this is growing up, I hope I never do.
Michael Penn, MP4: Days Since a Lost Time Accident. More Michael Penn.
Arto Lindsay, Prize. Off-kilter electronica-ish obscure samba pop.
The Be Good Tanyas, Chinatown. Old-timey.
Billy Barber, Shades of Gray. Solo piano.
Pierre Favre, Window Steps. ECM jazz. With Kenny Wheeler and Steve Swallow.
Ponga, s/t. Bobby Previte, Wayne Horvitz, Dave Palmer, Skerik; improvisation, with turntables.

I'm not really selling the Pet Shop Boys, huh?

Here are some books I've read recently, or decided not to:

Philip K. Dick, The Variable Man. Pulp SF, including "The Minority Report".
Geoff Dyer, Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It. Dyer is gifted, but his book on travel seems mostly to be about getting high in exotic places.
Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem. Made me want to write poems. That's a recommendation.
I bought the first issue of The Believer in Boston, I think, because it looked interesting, but I couldn't finish the long first article about book reviews, and it took me until now to realize I could just skip it. The rest of it is pretty good, including Jim Shepard on Badlands and machismo, Matthew Derby on Interpol and the '80s, and Salman Rushdie and Terry Gilliam in conversation.

Here are some books I've kept for a long time:

Jane Mendelsohn, Innocence. "A modern gothic coming-of-age story," says the dust jacket. I like the writing.
Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Classc essays from the '60s.
Raymond Carver, Cathedral. To quote marm0t: "Lots of fidgeting with cigarettes and car keys and engaging acquaintances in seemingly banal conversations with heartbreakingly profound undertones."
Nabokov, Lolita. Well, you know. A book about America.
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. I can't help feeling I've read something like this before.
Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg, The Book of J. Bloom argues that one primary author of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers was a supreme ironist, and also a woman. But what's really great is Rosenberg's beautiful translation.
Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful. This is why I say he's gifted. One of maybe two good books about jazz.
The WPA Guide to Massachusetts. New-Deal-funded book about the state circa 1937. Somewhat dated, but very well written.
The WPA Guide to New York City. Likewise.
Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye. The great film editor, on editing. Thoughtful, lucid, well observed.
Sidney Lumet, Making Movies. One of the better books on filmmaking by a practitioner.
Jon Boorstin, The Hollywood Eye. What can I say? Another good one.
McSweeney's #3. I don't remember any of it, but, you know, stuff Dave Eggers likes.
Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York. Short essays on the city he loves. Notable for its POV, which flits from person to person in the crowded streets.
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides. Dreamlike, or maybe I'm thinking of the movie, but I liked this a lot too. Another unusual POV (first-person plural).
Douglas Coupland, Generation X. Clever people adrift. Social observations abound.
Douglas Coupland, Microserfs. Ditto, in the software industry.
Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. As you'd expect, a light-hearted romp.
Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Living on the Great Plains.
James McCain, Double Indemnity. Noir.
Ian Shoales, Not Wet Yet. Humorous social commentary, 1982-1996.
Rebecca Goldstein, Strange Attractors. Intellectuals in love and in other kinds of passion. "Pleasure, for the reader as well as the protagonists, is chiefly cerebral"--that's a diss from Publisher's Weekly. I liked it a lot.

This is probably about it for the giveaways, at least for now. The books are pretty much gone, and I'm sure there are still plenty of CDs I don't need, but it's time to stop listening and deciding, and start packing and shipping.

Comments

[pobig.livejournal.com]

No worries. I already have plenty of others from you!