1001 Books to Read Before You Die

in Books | May 26th, 2008

As I write, the most emailed arti­cle on The New York Times offers a few reflec­tions on Peter Box­al­l’s book, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. The Times piece makes a cou­ple of log­i­cal points: First, there’s no time to waste if you hope to read every book on the list. Read­ing a book per month, you’ll get through 1000 books in a mere 83 years. So you had bet­ter get start­ed now. Sec­ond, this “best of” list is bound to be con­tro­ver­sial. (Do you real­ly need to read Anne Rice’s “Inter­view With the Vam­pire” before it’s lights out?) The 1001 books on Box­al­l’s list can be pre­viewed here. The book itself, which runs 960 pages, is obvi­ous­ly more than a raw list. Each entry is accom­pa­nied by an “author­i­ta­tive yet opin­ion­at­ed crit­i­cal essay describ­ing the impor­tance and influ­ence of the work in ques­tion.” And also there’s appar­ent­ly some nice illus­tra­tions. If you’re a bib­lio­phile, it’s worth a look.

For more great books, see the col­lec­tion of Life Chang­ing Books cre­at­ed by our read­ers.

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HBO Revisits 2000 Election with “Recount”

in Television | May 26th, 2008

On Sun­day night, HBO aired its new film “Recount,” which delved back into the con­tro­ver­sial Flori­da recount that deter­mined the out­come of Amer­i­ca’s 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Days before the film (watch the trail­er here) hit the air­waves, Char­lie Rose con­duct­ed an inter­view with Kevin Spacey (actor in the film), Jef­frey Toobin (Senior Legal Ana­lyst at CNN) and David Boies (who argued Bush v. Gore on behalf of Al Gore). In watch­ing the film and inter­view, my first reac­tion was to think: yes, it’s been eight long years, but it’s per­haps not been long enough. Per­haps anoth­er eight years is what it takes before polit­i­cal trau­ma can be trans­formed into pure enter­tain­ment. Or maybe it will nev­er quite get there. But that says noth­ing about the mer­its of the film or the inter­view below. If you missed “Recount,” it re-airs tonight on HBO.


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Harvard Law Faculty Votes to Put Articles Online

in Harvard | May 22nd, 2008

The open access move­ment keeps rolling along. See here.

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Jacques Brel Sings “Ne Me Quitte Pas”

in Uncategorized | May 21st, 2008

Ne Me Quitte Pas — It’s Jacques Brel’s clas­sic from 1959. It’s a fix­ture in the French cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion. And it’s been cov­ered left and right, by such singers as Nina Simone (here) and Frank Sina­tra (lis­ten). Now, Jacques, take it away. (PS You can find Brel’s video on our YouTube playlist.) 

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Tobias Wolff Reads From His New Collection

in Books, Literature | May 20th, 2008

Segue­ing from our last post, I want­ed to fea­ture a read­ing giv­en by Tobias Wolff, a mas­ter of the short sto­ry, who also hap­pens to teach cre­ative writ­ing at Stan­ford.

In March, he released a new book, Our Sto­ry Begins: New and Select­ed Sto­ries. And below we have post­ed a clip of him read­ing from a piece called “The Ben­e­fit of the Doubt.” As you’ll see, Wolff knows how to give his sto­ries a very good read. Enjoy.

(PS If you like lit­er­a­ture in audio for­mat, then feel free to peruse our Free Audio Book Col­lec­tion. Also note that if you sign up for Audi­ble, you can down­load two best­selling audio books for free. Get more info on the deal here.)
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Stanford Online Writing Courses

in Stanford | May 20th, 2008

A quick fyi: Yes­ter­day, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies opened up reg­is­tra­tion for its sum­mer line­up of online writ­ing cours­es. Offered in part­ner­ship with the Stan­ford Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram (one of the most dis­tin­guished writ­ing pro­grams in the coun­try), these online cours­es give begin­ning and advanced writ­ers, no mat­ter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gift­ed writ­ing instruc­tors.

Reg­is­tra­tion opened yes­ter­day, and some of the class­es are almost full. Class­es will start dur­ing the last week of June. For more infor­ma­tion, click here, or sep­a­rate­ly check out the FAQ.

Caveat emp­tor: These class­es are not free, and I helped set them up. So while I whole­heart­ed­ly believe in these cours­es, you can take my views with a grain of salt.

Sum­mer Cours­es:

By the way, if you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area and want to keep the mind engaged, give some thought to Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. Our full sum­mer cat­a­logue is here.

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Learn to Play Instruments (and Also Some Music Theory) Online

in Music | May 19th, 2008

The always handy Life­hack­er has pulled togeth­er resources that will teach you to play gui­tar, drums and piano. Some of these lessons are taught via video, oth­ers with pod­casts. And if you’re look­ing to teach your­self music the­o­ry, then head over to Musictheory.net. They’ve got you cov­ered.

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The Smithsonian Channel on the Vietnam War Memorial

in Current Affairs | May 19th, 2008

As a quick fol­low up to our post ear­li­er today, I want­ed to high­light the Smith­son­ian Chan­nel’s first broad­cast on BlogTalkRa­dio, which aired tonight. Right in time for Memo­r­i­al Day, the pro­gram fea­tures an involved con­ver­sa­tion with Jan Scrug­gs, the founder and pres­i­dent of the Viet­nam Vet­er­ans Memo­r­i­al Fund, who con­ceived the idea of build­ing the memo­r­i­al in Wash­ing­ton. It also com­ple­ments a Smith­son­ian Chan­nel doc­u­men­tary ‘Remem­ber­ing Viet­nam: The Wall at 25′ (click link to see trail­er). You can lis­ten in on the con­ver­sa­tion right below.

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Smart Culture on BlogTalkRadio

in Media | May 18th, 2008

Here’s a lit­tle some­thing for con­sumers and pro­duc­ers of good cul­tur­al media.

BlogTalkRa­dio gives any­one with a com­put­er and tele­phone the abil­i­ty to cre­ate their own live radio show, and then lat­er turn the broad­cast into a pod­cast. So far, about 82,000 shows have aired on this free ser­vice, and about 2.4 mil­lion lis­ten­ers tune in each month. Among the broad­casts, you’ll find inter­views with Bri­an DePal­ma, Yoko Ono, Chris Ander­son (author of The Long Tail), Jodi Picoult (author of 14 nov­els), Jim­my Wales (founder of Wikipedia), Frank Rich (New York Times colum­nist), Phil Don­ahue (direc­tor of the new film “Body of War”), and David Mamet (famous screen­writer and play­wright). Some note­wor­thy shows host­ed by BlogTalkRa­dio include: the Smith­son­ian Chan­nel, Mr. Media, Movie Geeks Unit­ed, ZNE’s Cir­ca Arte, BC Radio Live, The Poor Chef, and 3 Chicks on Lit.

Last­ly, let me under­score some­thing that’s prob­a­bly already clear. This ser­vice seems par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful for any­one who wants to cre­ate a broadcast/podcast but does­n’t want to grap­ple with the tech­ni­cal side of things. For exam­ple, me. Now if I could only find the time to pull one togeth­er. Get more info on BlogTalkRa­dio here, and check out their “Best of” sec­tion here.

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Rare Recording of Walt Whitman Reading From His Poem “America”

in Literature, Poetry | May 17th, 2008

Appar­ent­ly, this is “an authen­tic wax cylin­der record­ing of Whit­man read­ing from his late poem ‘Amer­i­ca’ that appeared in 1888 …”

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Earliest Recording of the Human Voice

in Music | May 17th, 2008

FirstSounds.org has gath­ered some of the ear­li­est sound record­ings. This clip, dat­ing back to 1860, fea­tures some­one singing the French folk­song “Au Clair de la Lune” on April 9, 1860, and it “is the ear­li­est audi­bly rec­og­niz­able record of the human voice yet recov­ered.”

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