Recently Mentioned Books

2. Gangster movie : Should I go with Sonatine ?  I don’t know them all.

1. Kurosawa movie : Ran is the most impressive on the big screen, but Ikiru is a profound study of the psychology of bureaucracy.  There are many many others, including the noir masterpieces and the criminally underrated late period, most of all Dreams .

1. Kurosawa movie : Ran is the most impressive on the big screen, but Ikiru is a profound study of the psychology of bureaucracy.  There are many many others, including the noir masterpieces and the criminally underrated late period, most of all Dreams .

That is from David A. Price’s very interesting The Pixar Touch .  Here is Jason Kottke on The Uncanny Valley .

That is from David Singh Grewal’s Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization , one of the most interesting books on cultural globalization in recent years.  He uses the ideas of social networks and peer effects to argue that widespread cultural convergence is occurring, most of all in ways of life.  Here is the book’s home page .

That is from Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non-Fictions .

That is from David A. Price’s The Pixar Touch , an excellent book.  It is good most of all on all the false fits and starts behind a successful entrepreneurial venture.

Here is a list by David Remnick , via Jason Kottke.  It is good, albeit a bit mainstream for my tastes.  I’m glad to see he likes Ascension .  I would add more late Miles Davis ( Live at Fillmore and In a Silent Way , among others), Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz , more Cecil Taylor, the Blakey/Monk album , Solo Monk (my favorite jazz album?), and some Stan Kenton as well.  I’m due to cover a reader request for contemporary jazz soon, so I’ll leave the moderns out of it for the time being.

Here is a list by David Remnick , via Jason Kottke.  It is good, albeit a bit mainstream for my tastes.  I’m glad to see he likes Ascension .  I would add more late Miles Davis ( Live at Fillmore and In a Silent Way , among others), Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz , more Cecil Taylor, the Blakey/Monk album , Solo Monk (my favorite jazz album?), and some Stan Kenton as well.  I’m due to cover a reader request for contemporary jazz soon, so I’ll leave the moderns out of it for the time being.

Here is a list by David Remnick , via Jason Kottke.  It is good, albeit a bit mainstream for my tastes.  I’m glad to see he likes Ascension .  I would add more late Miles Davis ( Live at Fillmore and In a Silent Way , among others), Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz , more Cecil Taylor, the Blakey/Monk album , Solo Monk (my favorite jazz album?), and some Stan Kenton as well.  I’m due to cover a reader request for contemporary jazz soon, so I’ll leave the moderns out of it for the time being.

Here is a list by David Remnick , via Jason Kottke.  It is good, albeit a bit mainstream for my tastes.  I’m glad to see he likes Ascension .  I would add more late Miles Davis ( Live at Fillmore and In a Silent Way , among others), Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz , more Cecil Taylor, the Blakey/Monk album , Solo Monk (my favorite jazz album?), and some Stan Kenton as well.  I’m due to cover a reader request for contemporary jazz soon, so I’ll leave the moderns out of it for the time being.

Here is a list by David Remnick , via Jason Kottke.  It is good, albeit a bit mainstream for my tastes.  I’m glad to see he likes Ascension .  I would add more late Miles Davis ( Live at Fillmore and In a Silent Way , among others), Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz , more Cecil Taylor, the Blakey/Monk album , Solo Monk (my favorite jazz album?), and some Stan Kenton as well.  I’m due to cover a reader request for contemporary jazz soon, so I’ll leave the moderns out of it for the time being.

Here is a list by David Remnick , via Jason Kottke.  It is good, albeit a bit mainstream for my tastes.  I’m glad to see he likes Ascension .  I would add more late Miles Davis ( Live at Fillmore and In a Silent Way , among others), Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz , more Cecil Taylor, the Blakey/Monk album , Solo Monk (my favorite jazz album?), and some Stan Kenton as well.  I’m due to cover a reader request for contemporary jazz soon, so I’ll leave the moderns out of it for the time being.

That is from Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World , a book remarkably full of common sense.  It’s #7 on Amazon and a good overall guide to globalization and why it matters that America no longer dominates the world, either economically or culturally.

That’s the new Simon Winchester book and it concerns Joseph Needham , who wrote the famous series on the history of science in China and focused the attention of the scholarly world on the question: why no capitalism in China?  This books offers a love story, a story of a quest, a story of science, a tale of politics, and did you know that Needham (unwittingly) was the guy who taught the Unabomber to use explosives?

I really, really do.  All perfume, and yes that means yours too.  But I loved the book Perfumes: The Guide , by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez.  If you are rating this book along the single dimension of how skillfully it informs the reader, it is one of the best non-fiction books I have read, ever.

5. 1001 Buildings You Must See Before You Die .  One of the best books for browsing I have seen, though don’t expect much from the index.  I was most surprised by the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia, have any of you been there ?

4. Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century .  A lengthy and thoughtful volume on how WMD are *the* problem of the future, though I found it didn’t get me further to thinking through my views.  A good start, however, for those who don’t buy the premise.

3. The Monetary Policy of the Federal Reserve: A History , by Robert L. Hetzel.  This is a very serious treatment of what is, from a historical point of view, an understudied topic.  Recommended; note that while the monetarist point of view is not heavy-handed, it may not appeal to everybody.

2. Apples are from Kazakhstan: The Land that Disappeared , by Christopher Robbins.  A substantive travel book about you-know-where; it is both fun and full of substance.  Recommended.

1. Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights , by Bill Ivey.  The concrete discussions of cultural issues are consistently interesting and thoughtful; the overall talk of cultural rights which frames the book is not even well-developed enough to be called absurd.  The book is best on copyright and least interesting on the NEA, which Ivey once ran.  Most of all the book reflects a creeping horror that the internet will make its entire series of debates irrelevant.

Alternatively, the best collections from the 20s and 30s are mind-blowingly good; for instance try American Primitive on John Fahey’s Revenant label, or the Harry Smith collections .  That’s some of the best American music period though in some ways the blues shouts are closer to rock and roll than to country.

Alternatively, the best collections from the 20s and 30s are mind-blowingly good; for instance try American Primitive on John Fahey’s Revenant label, or the Harry Smith collections .  That’s some of the best American music period though in some ways the blues shouts are closer to rock and roll than to country.

Arguably the best songs of Ryan Adams (alas they are scattered but "Amy" and "La Cienega Just Smiled" are two places to start; does anyone know a more general sourcing?) are as good as anything in the genre.  I like Lucinda Williams as well plus Shelby Lynne, most of all I Am Shelby Lynne .

3. Louvin Brothers, Tragic Songs of Life (some call it bluegrass), Dolly Parton, Dock Boggs, Patsy Cline, the essential Johnny Cash (there’s lots of it), and the country/gospel of Elvis Presley.  Dylan’s country music is good but is not his strongest suit.