Largehearted Boy: Shorties (Excerpt from Nick Cave's New Novel, Jeffrey Eugenides, and more)

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July 23, 2009

Shorties (Excerpt from Nick Cave's New Novel, Jeffrey Eugenides, and more)

The Quietus excerpts the first chapter from Nick Cave's new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro.

At the Daily Beast, Jeffrey Eugenides discusses his debut novel, The Virgin Suicides (published 16 years ago).

Impossible as it may be to believe, Jeffrey Eugenides had so little faith in his ability to get The Virgin Suicides published that he filled it with the names of people he knew. “I was a virtually unpublished writer just playing around,” he says on the phone from Berlin, where he is spending the summer with his wife, the photographer and sculptor Karen Yamauchi and their 10-year-old daughter. “I had no ostensible hopes for it. My writing was a private exercise to please myself.”

AOL Autos lists the 10 best songs about cars.

NOW lists 10 soundtracks that changed the world.

Doctor Rosen Rosen has remixed Lily Allen's entire It's Not Me, It's You album, and is offering it for free on his website.

Lightspeed Champion has launched a new website, complete with a preview of his forthcoming sophomore album.

The Quietus interviews Siouxsie Sioux.

The Colorado Springs Independent profiles Betty LaVette.

Part of what makes LaVette's 47-year overnight success so gratifying is that it comes as a much-needed corrective to an embarrassing legacy of over-the-top melismatic singing that's endured since the dawn of Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. In a world where American Idol contestants compete to see who can sing the most elongated, hyper-acrobatic and utterly pointless vocal contortions this side of a dying alley cat, LaVette understands the power of holding back, of knowing when less is more.

The Quietus excerpts the first chapter from Nick Cave's new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro.

PopMatters profiles Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.

NPR's Books We Like recommends (and excerpts from) Novella Carpenter's memoir Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer.

The Walrus posted some previously unreleased My Bloody Valentine songs.

Sonic Youth visits The Current studios for an interveiw and performance.

Author Aleksandar Hemon shares a music playlist with the New York Times' Paper Cuts blog.

The St. Petersburg Times profiles the women of the Warped Tour.

StrummerGuitar.com is a website tribute to Joe Strummer's Fender Telecaster.

MuzeSpot is a social network built around live music venues.

NPR's Monkey See blog offers an annotated guide to webcomics.

Win 8 t-shirts (including 3 music shirts from Threadless) in this week's Largehearted Boy contest.

Follow me on Twitter for links that don't make the daily "Shorties" columns.