2006: Music

In 2006, I barely updated. I feel crappy about that. I am really, really going to try harder to be a better blogger this year. It was a very busy year, and I frequently found myself prioritizing work over updating this site. I mean, honestly. What was I thinking? So, no more of that. As we speak, I have two classes to teach tomorrow I haven't planned yet here I am.

I thought I'd start 2007 by mentioning some things that I dug in 2006. Some are 2006-specific, but not all. Deal with it. I'll start with music.

Music: I basically listened to two albums on repeat all summer. Taking the Long Way by the Dixie Chicks and How to Save a Life by The Fray. I'm embarrassed by how pedestrian these are, but, hey, whatever. I'm getting old. Also, the Dixie Chicks are now all rebellious and blue state, and that should help me out a little bit.

I realized recently that the Dixie Chicks have one over-arching theme in their music (as an English teacher, I'm always looking for themes). Their theme is get the hell out of your hometown. As someone who's done that, I find them refreshing. For all of you who think Dixie Chicks and think country, well, that's your loss. This most recent album is eclectic and fun, poignant and pissed off. Rick Rubin even produced some of it. Same dude who produced Jay Z's "99 Problems."

The Fray album is derivative, but I loved it anyway. Not earth-shattering, but catchy, and I'm a sucker for anyone who recalls mid-90s college pop, and that they do. I think "Over My Head (Cable Car)" is a really great song. It just grabs you. Plus, the lead singer is cute in a tiny way.

Another album I really enjoyed this year is the self-titled debut by Brandi Carlile. She looks nothing like she sounds. She's got kind of a Lucinda Williams thing happening, but is actually really young and attractive, in spite of her wisened sound. It's a weird album--came out on a major label but sounds like someone who should be starting out on the second stage at Lilith Fair (for me, this is a good thing).

Josh Ritter's album The Animal Years was Stephen King's best album of the year (dude, I really am old), but it's amazing. I think Ritter is probably the best lyricist I have heard in a very long time. The epic "Thin Blue Flame" is amazing--I brought the lyrics to AP English and taught it like a poem. It has everything: motifs, symbolism, similes, allegory. Fantastic.

I thought Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" and Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" were both great summer songs for driving and frolicking.

The Kite Runner

I read The Kite Runner in one sitting, really, as I waited for a delayed flight, took the flight, and rode the train up from NYC. After the first 100 pages, I spoke to someone on the phone and said, "You should read this; it's good." At the end, I wanted to find a rewind button on my own life to retract that statement.

It's not good. The attention it has received is staggering, and especially the approval it received from several sources I would have expected better from (I'm looking at you, New York Times).

Its depiction of life in modern day Afghanistan is striking and well drawn. That is a strength of the novel. That said, much of the rest of it is mired in cliche and predictability. The second two thirds of the novel read not unlike The Da Vinci Code, which, yes, I've read, with lots of "twists" and melodramatic descriptions and moral platitudes meant to amaze. Gack.

I wanted to like it, I did, but as I read it, all I could think of was the fact that this book is already being taught at high schools and colleges, and that student readers of this book would think that the sort of purple prose and "powerful" language is literary and acceptable. I wish I had the book next to me to give you some examples, but I don't. Perhaps I'll save that for another post.

King Leopold's Ghost

King Leopold's Ghost was first read by my father, who gave it to my mother, who then insisted that I read it. It is an incredibly gripping nonfiction account of the colonization of the Western Africa region known now as the Congo.

The book is many things at once: the indictment of a genocide, a profile of a megalomaniac, a short history of life at the turn of the 20th century on several continents, as well as a cautionary tale about greed and manifest destiny. It's a truly excellent book, with twists and turns, and characters that couldn't have been made up. I know I read a lot of nonfiction, but this is a work of nonfiction that even someone who scorns the genre will enjoy.

Bel Canto

After Christmas, I read Truth and Beauty, a memoir by Ann Patchett. I finally got around to reading her most acclaimed novel, Bel Canto. I don't frequently choose books because of authors, and I think I would have been unlikely to have chosen this one otherwise. I think I would describe it as more romantic and ambient than things I usually read. It took me a while to really be drawn in, but once I was, the last 100 pages or so blew by. I have a couple qualms with the ending, but other than that, a quality read. Patchett's style is appealing: somewhat sparse, with few overdrawn missteps.

Life on the Outside

I have not done a good job as of late keeping up on my book postings. Now that I'm finally on vacation, I'm going to try to post about my little backlog of things I've read.

Life on the Outside is the story of Elaine Bartlett, a woman who served sixteen years in prison under New York's Rockefeller drug laws. Bartlett acted as a courier of cocaine one time, had no previous offenses, and received a 15 to life sentence. She was the matriarch of a difficult brood back in Manhattan, who she continued to try and lead from the walls of state prisons. The book itself is a very convincing indictment of the Rockefeller drug laws, and also a well-done portrait of a dynamic, and occasionally tragic, figure. Gonnerman, the author and Village Voice reporter, has a matter-of-fact tone that doesn't necessarily wow, but keeps an appropriate distance. It's not as good as Random Family, but it's a welcome addition to the genre.

The Long Boat

The Long Boat

When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn't matter
which way was home;
as if he didn't know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.

---Stanley Kunitz, twice US Poet Laureate, who died yesterday at age 100

Jesus Land

I finished Jesus Land a few weeks ago. A memoir by Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land chronicles her adolescence, first spent in Indiana in the home of her fundamentalist parents, whose rules and punishments defy logic. To a certain extent, part one of her book is a pretty standard story of the misguided and harmful abuse children can be subjected to in the name of God. Part two, however, is when things get really interesting. Julia and her adopted brother, David (an African-American), are sent to Escuela Caribe, a "therapeutic" Christian school in the Dominican Republic. The facts of the situation are far more dire than the official web site explains, and Escuela Caribe is a true hell for every student sent there, and is still open for business (read testimony from alumni here).

The second half of the book reads like a incredibly twisted Girl, Interrupted, and becomes quite fascinating.

The End of the Affair

I don't really know what made me pick up Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's better in the first half than the second; it gets bogged down a little bit by the religion component in the second half. That said, the characters are imperfect and dynamic, and there's something kind of cathartic about reading about characters who just handle things poorly and emotionally.