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January 29, 2010
Shorties (J.D. Salinger, Joey Ramone, and more)
R.I.P. J.D. Salinger.
The Guardian Books Blog and 3:AM Magazine gather tributes to the author of The Catcher in the Rye and Franny & Zooey (my personal favorite), while the New Yorker makes all his stories from the magazine available online.
NPR's All Things Considered reviews Mickey Leigh's new book, I Slept with Joey Ramone: A Family Memoir.
Leigh watches the birth of punk rock from the sidelines. As his brother ascends to fame, Mickey puts band after band together, only to see each one fall apart. Joey hires his brother as a roadie, a backup singer, a musical collaborator. But while The Ramones' legend grows, Mickey works odd jobs, from cab driver to bartender to marijuana dealer. Mickey asks for royalties, for contacts, for help with his own music projects. Joey says no. For the most part, the family sides with Joey, who is at once more powerful and more needy than his little brother.
The A.V. Club interviews Joshua Ferris about his new novel, The Unnamed.
The Buffalo News profiles singer-songwriter A.A Bondy.
What Bondy appears to be after throughout "Devil" is some sort of redemption, but like a male lead character in a Cormac McCarthy novel, he seems fully prepared to never be granted as much. The album is the sound of whiskey and cigarettes and dusty roads that lead to nowhere, but it’s also the sound of an auto-didact with a tendency toward the bookish who left home a long while back and, at long last, has finally run out of highway to drive and books to read.
The Louisville Courier-Journal interviews Joey Burns of Calexico about the band's orchestral performances.
The Telegraph shares that British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy is an Arctic Monkeys fan.
The 54-year-old Scottish writer said the award-winning group had managed to bridge the gap between pop and poetry just like Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Leonard Cohen did in the Sixties.
The Independent examines how faith is changing indie rock.
The lyrical stakes in Christian-rooted rock are higher, Mountain Goats' John Darnielle, a largely lapsed Catholic, believes. "This pass-key of The Bible and the church can open up doors to weighty themes," he says. "If I'm suffering in a Godless universe – which I am! – then my suffering is trivial, a drop in an endless ocean of it. But in a cosmology in which there's gravity to individual suffering, then that suffering is richer. The other thing is, it's a doorway out of the narcissism where you always write about yourself."
JamBase interviews John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats.
The New York Press interviews Jami Attenberg about her new novel, The Melting Season.
On sale at Amazon MP3: Adele's 12-track 19 album for $2.99.
NPR is streaming the Knife's new album, Tomorrow, In a Year (a 90-minute "electro-opera") in its entirety.
AbeBooks lists 20 books about drinking.
Time interviews Ozzy Osbourne about his new book, I Am Ozzy.
A BookPage, Dolen Perkins-Valdez shares the inspiration behind her new novel, Wench.
Amazon has released its Kindle for PC
By the Numbers shares a 60-song History of Chicago Music 1908-1980 compilation.
3:AM Magazine shares a list of imaginary tribute band names.
Granta shares the tale of a former Buenos Aires book thief.
The nominees for the BBC Radio 2 2010 Folk Awards have been named.
Win a Threadless + Griffin iPhone case and a $50 Threadless gift certificate in this week's Largehearted Boy contest.
Follow me on Twitter for links that don't make the daily "Shorties" columns.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Atomic Books Comics Preview (highlights of the week's comics & graphic novel releases)
daily mp3 downloads
Largehearted Word (highlights of the week's book releases)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists
