Peter Seeger: John Brown's Body

After reading The Good Lord Bird by James McBride, it seems appropriate to post Pete Seeger singing 'John Brown's Body'.

Le Mal du Pays, lazar berman

What was referenced throughout Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami was the Franz Liszt piece called Le Mal du Pays. In particular, Murakami favored the version by Lazar Berman. Here it is on youtube.

2016 Man Booker Prize long list announced

The long list for the 2016 Man Booker Prize has been announced.

José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola) Daniel Hahn, A General Theory of Oblivion (Harvill Secker)

Elena Ferrante (Italy) Ann Goldstein, The Story of the Lost Child (Europa Editions)

Han Kang (South Korea) Deborah Smith, The Vegetarian (Portobello Books)

Maylis de Kerangal (France) Jessica Moore, Mend the Living (Maclehose Press)

Eka Kurniawan (Indonesia) Labodalih Sembiring, Man Tiger (Verso Books)

Yan Lianke (China) Carlos Rojas, The Four Books (Chatto & Windus)

Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Democratic Republic of Congo/Austria) Roland Glasser, Tram 83 (Jacaranda)

Raduan Nassar (Brazil) Stefan Tobler, A Cup of Rage (Penguin Modern Classics)

Marie NDiaye (France) Jordan Stump, Ladivine (Maclehose Press)

Kenzaburō Ōe (Japan) Deborah Boliver Boehm, Death by Water (Atlantic Books)

Aki Ollikainen (Finland) Emily Jeremiah & Fleur Jeremiah, White Hunger (Peirene Press)

Orhan Pamuk (Turkey) Ekin Oklap, A Strangeness in My Mind (Faber & Faber)

Robert Seethaler (Austria) Charlotte Collins, A Whole Life (Picador)

Interviews with Elena Ferrante

Obviously, the world wants to know more about the writer, Elena Ferrante. Compiled just a few interviews with the elusive Elena Ferrante.

Vanity Fair: The Mysterious Anonymous Author Elena Ferrante on the Conclusion of her Neapolitan Novels

Vanity Fair, Part Two: Elena Ferrante Explains Why, for the Last Time, You Don't Need to Know Her Name

The Paris Review on the Art of Fiction

FT.com interviews Elena Ferrante in Women of 2015: Elena Ferrante, Writer

James Wood on Elena Ferrante

James Wood of the New Yorker writes about the fiction of Elena Ferrante, including My Brilliant Friend, in his essay titled Women on the Verge.

Cream puffs in My Brilliant Friend

After just discussing this month's book, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, I see that the Guardian has a post about food in books, complete with a recipe for pistachio cream puffs.

Book trailer for Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart

We read Gary Shteyngart's memoir, Little Failure, last year, but I have neglected to post this youtube trailer.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on TEDx

http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/We-should-all-be-feminists-Chim

Shelley shared with us this TEDx talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called 'We Should All Be Feminists'.

Boy Kings of Texas

https://youtu.be/DjnhGwxQkFk

Domingo Martinez' memoir, Boy Kings of Texas, begins with the song, El Rey, and, yes, it is on Youtube sung by Vicente Fernandez.

On reading fiction

Some thoughts on reading fiction by 'Brecht' at dailykos in his post The Books We Talk About.

Great books, when they enchant our souls, do this and much more. They show us new ways of thinking, they teach our tongues to dance dozens of new steps with language, they blow the roofs off our minds and rain upon us visions of different people and worlds. I remember how, in my childhood, book after book set my mind ablaze with magical adventures, far beyond my own experience: Greek myths, Narnia, Middle Earth, Outer Space, millennia yet to come . . . they showed my imagination new colors to hunger and hope for.

His post is partly inspired by Tim Parks' writing in the New York Review of Books. Here Tim Parks writes about how he reads books.

As I dive into the opening pages, the first question I’m asking is, what are the qualities or values that matter most to this author, or at least in this novel? I start Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and at once it is about a man who has been excluded from a group of friends without knowing why; the mishap has plunged him into a depression that seems disproportionate to the damage suffered. So I begin to look for everything relating to community and belonging, to the individual’s relationship to the community, to loneliness and companionship. I underline any words that fall into this lexical field. Is the community positive or negative or both? Are there advantages to being excluded, even when it is painful? Do loneliness and depression produce strength, creativity? Is the book aligning itself with the position of the person excluded?