"Davidoff Could Speak of Nothing But Himself For Long and Rarely Strayed Far from the Subject.

But Baddeley had always taken comfort in being led from his troubles by a mind that acknowledged no troubles but its own. Whenever he grew tired of himself, spending time with Davidoff allowed Baddeley to grow tired of someone else. It allowed him to return refreshed to his own company."

From André Alexis' newest novella A (BookThug, September 2013). I really like this idea, but unfortunately, under no circumstance can I endure people who talk about themselves incessantly. Perhaps my troubles aren't great enough.

Read an excerpt from A at BookThug.

Maybe It's Time To Get a Book Shelf.

The Riot Grrrl Collection, edited by Lisa Darms, collects seven years of Riot Grrrl journals, posters, zines, artwork, correspondence and essays between 1989 and 1996. Read about the NYU-Library-collection-turned-book at the Feminist Press' website.

Hey, Other Language/Semantics Nerds

Maybe I'll actually get around to reading this one:

An old joke goes like this: What's the difference between a good girl and a nice girl?

Answer: The good girl goes to a party, goes home then goes to bed, whereas the nice girl goes to the party, goes to bed, then goes home. The distinction made between the two types of young ladies would probably have been appreciated by Shakespeare. While we think of "nice" nowadays as being a synonym for pleasant it wasn't always so; originally the word’s meaning conveyed the naughtiness implied in the joke. It wasn't until the middle of the 18th century that this word conveyed the sense of pleasantness that we now associate with the word.

In his book How Happy Became Homosexual, and Other Mysterious Semantic Shifts, Richler educates and entertains us while explaining how words such as "nice" and "gay" have changed meanings. Surprisingly, we discover that even many of our nouns and verbs have been in a constant state of flux. For example, originally "jeopardy" was a term used in chess and "to fizzle" meant "to break wind silently." This morphing of meanings is ever-present, and Richler explains how, even in the last twenty years or so, words such as "fulsome" are in the midst of a reversal of meaning. So whether you are gay (happy), gay (homosexual) or a melancholy heterosexual, Richler will lead you into a word-world of entertaining change.

 - Ronsdale Press

"It's Only Just Beginning To Occur To Me That It's Important To Have Something Going on Somewhere,

at work or at home, otherwise you're just clinging on. ... You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then?"

- Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (Victoria Gollancz Ltd., 1995)

"Then Vote Hezbollah Did a Pro-Bush Song That Pissed Everyone Off

but that was the whole point and even when the crowd booed, they had a great time doing it because they got the joke. You have to stop trying to make sense of Punk - what it's for, what it's against. It's against everything. The singer from Vote Hezbollah pissed on the Qur'an. Everyone loved it. Then he picked up the kitab, shook some drips off, carefully turned the frail wet pages and recited Ya Sin with absolute sincerity. Somehow, the whole thing made sense."

"They're a Different Bunch," Replied Jehangir,

his eyes stuck on the closed door.

"They're a buncha cocks," said Muzammil.

"They're decent guys," said Jehangir. "They'll give you anything. If all they have to give you is a fuckin' Bic pen, they'll fork it over. But they're a little rough to deal with sometimes-"

"Hatemongers, Jehangir. Fuckin' bigots. If they had their way I'd be tossed from a minaret." Jehangir paused for a moment.

"Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah, Muzammil. They hate you. And they hate me too. They hate all of us for something. Me for the beer in my hand, you for the cock in your mouth, Rabeya for having her clitoris intact. We're all going something haram. Look at us. We're the ones that have always been fuckin' excluded, ostracized, afraid to be ourselves around our fuckin' brothers. They don't build masjids for us. We have to get our own. A fuckin' fag mosque in Toronto, you know I'm all for it. Female imams, God bless 'em. Whatever. You know I don't give a shit. But let's not play that bullshit game where once we get our own scene we can push people to the sidelines, to the fuckin' fringe like they did us. Do you only want a community so you can make someone else feel like the Outsider?" His voice gradually raised. "Fuck that, he said sharply. "Fuck being as small as they are. I say be big. Be bigger. Kill 'em with kindness. How the fuck are they going to hate you when you love them?"

"Why Don't You Have Any Taqwacore Bands?" I Asked.

"Because the fuckers put all their shit out on vinyl."

"What? Why?"

"They just do," he answered shrugging.

"But who even has a record player anymore?"

"I do," said Jehangir. "But just so I can listen to those guys. And it fuckin' sucks because it can't record from vinyl to a cassette, the shit's so old."

"I don't get the vinyl thing," I said. "Is there some kind of ideological point behind that?"

"Maybe. A lot of punks turn out to be sentimental suckers."

"Like Amazing Ayyub last night," Fasiq interjected, "when he said that there hasn't been any real punk since 1980."

"What does that have to do with vinyl?" I asked. "Do they think that they're closer to the Lost Golden Age by rejecting CDs? What does that have to do with anything?"

Mountains

“… mountains proclaim a message that is easy to understand when you have seen their steep walls and layers upon layers of rock, twisted, cracked, filled with gaping wounds. ‘We have suffered most brutally,’ they announce, ‘and we are suffering still.’ But they say it proudly, sternly, and with clenched teeth, like ancient, indomitable warriors.”

 - Hermann Hesse, Peter Camenzind

Nirvana All Day, Every Day

For all of August so far, thanks to this book. A little light summer reading:

"To Me, Making a [Mix-]Tape Is Like Writing a Letter

- there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, ... A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention ... and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, ... and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs, and ... oh, there are loads of rules."

 - Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (Victoria Gollancz Ltd., 1995)

I Have Never Been So Excited For a Book-Release

"Whether you're a fan of Beat Happening, Bikini Kill, or Nirvana, this book will help you understand a scene that changed music history."

 - Charles R. Cross, author of Heavier Than Heaven 

Not even when it was announced last month that a book chronicling Yo La Tengo and the rise of indie rock was going to be released, and I was pretty damned excited about that.

Love Rock Revolution: K Records and the Rise of Independent Music, out July 10, details the history of the seminal Olympia, WA-based label co-founded by Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson in 1982. Featuring interviews with figures associated with the label over its thirty-year-existence, there's a good chance artists including Beck, Mirah and members of Modest Mouse, Built To Spill and Bikini Kill will make appearances. Here's hoping.  

Love Rock Revolution will also be accompanied by a soundtrack that will be available from the author's website here between July 10 and July 17.

"Is It So Wrong, Wanting To Be Home with Your Record Collection?

It's not like collecting records is like collecting stamps, or beermats, or antique thimbles. There's a whole world in here, a nicer, dirtier, more violent, more peaceful, more colorful, sleazier, more dangerous, more loving world than the world I live in; there is history, and geography, and poetry, and countless other things I should have studied at school, including music."

 - Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (Victoria Gollancz Ltd., 1995)

Wrapped Up in Books (I Wish I Was)

I've never been a big reader. No, I'm not too cool for books; I just prefer to spend my down-time writing and drawing. I started reading again, yesterday, though, starting with Chris Jericho's A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex and Greg Milner's Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (a full post on Perfecting Sound Forever to come after I finish reading that book). As I gave my bleary eyes a rest, I thought about how little I actually read - and enjoy. I thought, "I've read so little, I can probably list every book I've ever enjoyed." A few short minutes later, I whipped up that list. In even fewer minutes, I whipped up another list: a to-read list. But that wasn't enough. I wanted more - books of which I've never heard or that may have slipped my mind. And that's where you come in.

I'm open to all recommendations, but books related to music, fine/visual arts, American and Canadian history, black history, the American South, middle America, suburbia, frontier times, North American expansionism, modernism and philosophy are particularly welcome.

Whacked:
Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake
David Browne - Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Charles R. Cross - Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
Deborah Curtis - Touching from a Distance
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
Fannie Flagg - Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Mick Foley - Have A Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks
Bret Hart - Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling 
Hermann Hesse - Peter Camenzind
Nick Hornby - High Fidelity
Naomi Klein - No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 
Michael Muhammed Knight - The Taqwacores
Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird
Armistead Maupin - Tales of the City 
Armistead Maupin - More Tales of the City 
Armistead Maupin - Further Tales of the City
Alan Moore - The Watchmen
Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife 
Michael Pollan - The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals 
Wilson Rawls - Where the Red Fern Grows 
J. D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye 
Susan Sontag - On Photography
John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men
Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
John Updike - Rabbit, Run 
John Updike - Rabbit Redux 
John Updike - Rabbit Is Rich 
Voltaire - Candide 
Kurt Vonnegut - Bluebeard
Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions 
Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night 
Kurt Vonnegut - Slapstick
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five
Rusty Young - Marching Powder

Hitlist: 
Margaret Atwood - The Edible Woman 
Margaret Atwood - Survival: A Thematic Guide To Canadian Literature 
L. Frank Baum -the Oz series
William S. Burroughs - various
Douglas Coupland - various
Bret Easton Ellis - various
Jonathan Franzen - How To Be Alone
Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections
Susan Freinkel - Plastic: A Toxic Love Story
Allen Ginsberg - various
Books on which movies I like and movies I dislike were based
Jack Kerouac - various
Anthony Kiedis - Scar Tissue
Chuck Klosterman - various
Jack London - various
The Marquis des Sade - Justine, or Good Conduct Well Chastised
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being 
Jack London - various
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita 
Michael Pollan - In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto 
Michael Pollan - Food Rules: An Eater's Manual 
Motley Crue - The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
Henry Rollins - Get in the Van
John Steinbeck - various
Mark Twain - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 
Philip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly

Every Time I Read Something Related To World War II, I Have To Listen To Joy Division.

Specifically "Warsaw." But anything by them usually does the trick. They definitely make Mother Midnight by Kurt Vonnegut more enjoyable: