Avatar will win a bunch of Oscars, although not enough to suit James Cameron. The first time I saw the film I thought it was a pretty faithful remake of Ferngully, a 1992 animated film about fairies whose forest is under assault by humans, one of whom winds up living among them and ultimately rescuing [...]

J.D. Salinger has finally got rid of his followers by dying at the age of 91. Here’s the most creative remembrance I’ve found so far. “For all you ‘Catcher’ fans out there, I’m sorry the elusive giant of your memory has at last escaped your grasps for good.”
I guess I like that one because that’s [...]

Stuff worth reading:
The Columbia Journalism Review’s story on the Russian press and Russian journalists. The story cites the Committee to Protect Journalists ranking of Russia as the third most dangerous country for journalists, behind second-place Algeria and the US-created democratic capitalist paradise of Iraq, and describes the gyrations that reporters and writers for independent newspapers [...]

I’m not a competent photographer but I received a very nice digital camera as a holiday gift and I’ve been taking it with me pretty much everywhere I go. One of the things I struggle with is recognizing what will make a good picture; for whatever reason I can’t seem to visualize what a [...]

Avatar director James Cameron’s previous films have grossed more than a billion dollars, and his most recent effort may well push him past the $2 billion mark when all the dust has settled. Say what one may about the guy, he knows where the “on” button is (somewhere in the universally shared limbic system of [...]

I hardly ever watch Chris Matthews on MSNBC but recently I’ve made an effort to inoculate myself against the madness by watching him and some of the other ADD media types who populate the various aethereal passages. Much of today’s episode was focused upon Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance lecture—assessments of which varied wildly across the [...]

I didn’t actually watch or read Obama’s Afghanistan speech but I gather it was similar to but less coherent than his campaign speeches about Afghanistan, which I did read, so I feel comfortable commenting on his announced alleged policy.
But you know, screw it. Who cares? This is not my beautiful house. I will mention [...]

Alien vs. Predator, Rocky vs. Whoever, Godzilla vs. Mothra, Kramer vs. Kramer … the cinema world is replete with films about the conflicts between archetypal enemies. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad, but one thing they generally share is a run time between 80 and 180 minutes.
Not so with my dream film. Buffy vs. Bella [...]

The New York Times, in a story with one of those headlines containing words one never expects to see in relation to one another, is reporting that the director of a La Scala opera based on the Al Gore film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” has resigned over creative differences with the American poet writing the libretto. [...]

The news is all around that George W. Bush will be writing a memoir focused on 12 difficult personal and policy decisions in his life. It cannot be an accident that the format so closely apes that of John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Profiles in Courage,” which featured the stories of eight U.S. senators who [...]

The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money (the U.S.A. trilogy) by John Dos Passos
The turn of the twentieth century is an interesting time in American history, as the public and political mind finally caught up with the reality of the industrial revolution. It is, I’m [...]

Naked Economics, by Charles Wheelan
The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli
This month takes us to a couple of tell-it-like it is versions of socio-economics, from Machiavelli’s stark discussion of what no one wanted to say about politics in 1512, to Wheelan’s comforting discussion of what everyone wanted to say about Capitalism in 2002. The Prince is [...]

The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
Since Weldon just mentioned Hunter Thompson, it looks like I’d better act quickly. This month’s book review features the man’s opus, which I’ve casually paired against one of the novels of an earlier, and equally famous, seeker of refuge (and, [...]

This series of CD compilations started with an encounter with the Los Angeles Junior League and has since Frankensteined its way into an independent being from another planet. The first and the second CDs consisted entirely (I think) of music acquired through the good offices of the Santa Monica Library and its music buyer, about [...]

Both regular readers of BTC News know that of late I’ve been putting together some more or less thematic rock/pop compilations assembled of necessity from albums acquired at the Santa Monica library. This is because my laptop with all of my music-by-choice was stolen. I learn daily some new thing that’s missing because of the [...]

Well that was interesting. The Junior League treated us to dinner at the Buca di Beppo store in Santa Monica. If you’ve not eaten at Buca di Beppo, it’s a mid-scale Italian-themed chain that hasn’t succumbed to the please everyone imperative, or at least not on each dish. We had a nice salad, penne pasta, [...]

A Bridge of Years, by Robert Charles Wilson
Life During Wartime, by Lucius Shepard
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Science fiction, almost by definition, takes place in the realm of the odd, using any number of tricks and speculations with the setting. And it’s enjoyable enough, but it’s only part of the story. Action [...]

It’s a story that would easily fit on these pages, so I won’t call it long, just private. The conclusion to it is me making a CD for someone I met through the Junior League of Los Angeles. If you know me, and you know the Junior League, you will know as well how utterly [...]

I’ve been browsing the somewhat peculiar music collection at the main branch of the Santa Monica public library. I’ve come to trust, more or less, the music buyer’s taste in popular music, but have noted a number of quirks, a la the Girls. There’s a group called the Beta Band which is represented by four [...]

This was an exercise in killing time; while I’m happy if you want to read it, I’d prefer you read this effort if you’re to pick only one.
The coffee shop I’ve been frequenting when my morning schedule allows probably isn’t really owned by Bob Dylan’s granddaughter, so there’s no need you flocking here to gawk. [...]

I’ve written a lot about the alleged financial crisis afflicting the country, by which is meant Wall Street and investors, but I don’t really care about it beyond the very considerable entertainment value. Some real pain attaches to it, but by the time we hear about that the revolution will be here and the authors [...]

The New York Times business desk reporters and editors work hard to be objective and calm in their coverage of events. That’s why they’ve been consistently behind the curve lately, and why readers who mistake what amounts to Charge of the Light Brigade bravado as cutting edge financial journalism are similarly dragging ass behind events.
To [...]

A People’s History of American Empire, by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, and Paul Buhle
The Quiet American, by Graham Greene
My reading theme this month has been the American imperial project, which seems appropriate enough this season as I consider a vote for whether or not I want my foreign bombing done to the heady harmonies of [...]

True to his prosecutorial roots, Vincent Bugliosi gave a concise summation on Thursday of his case against George W. Bush. Bush, says Bugliosi in his new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, is responsible for the death of each US soldier killed in Iraq because he lied to Congress and the nation [...]

Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut
The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth
This month’s selection is a pair of books that plot out future American dystopias as envisioned in 1952. I think it’s an interesting time, in that even in heyday of the American capitalist mythology, a few authors were still frustrated enough [...]

The Honorary Consul, by Graham Greene
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (or Notre-Dame de Paris), by Victor Hugo
“He imagined that in this history there was much more of magic than of love, probably a sorceress, perhaps the devil; in short, a comedy, or to use the language of those days, a mystery, of a very disagreeable nature…”
I [...]

Slake’s Limbo, by Felice Holman
Mr Pye, by Mervyn Peake
The Gospel According to the Simpsons, by Mark I. Pinsky
This month takes us on three spiritual quests, ranging from an unsubtle thematic exploration on the rocks and under the tracks, to a sort of allegorical cocktail, to–screw it–non-fiction straight from the bottle. Slake’s Limbo, although it’s [...]

A Primer on CO2 and Climate, by Howard C. Hayden
Shadows of the Mind, by Roger Penrose
These are two science-oriented books that that I paired for their controversial viewpoints. Each looks at their respective field from somewhere opposite the consensus, and I’ve found it interesting to contrast their styles and content. In particular, I [...]

Political junkies in this campaign season will probably recognize that quote as emanating from Ross Perot’s vice-presidential candidate, the late Admiral James Stockdale, during the vice presidential debate of 1992 between him, Dan Quayle and Al Gore.
I bring this up because not long ago I found myself at televangelist Robert Shuler’s Crystal Cathedral in Garden [...]

Happy now?

My own Obama speech moment: as I was walking home late on the night of the speech, I ran across four black teenagers, probably 15 or 16 years old. They started to cross the street as I approached. As we passed in opposite directions I heard one of them say, “You see that Charlie Manson-looking [...]

A few days ago, New York University journalism professor and press critic Jay Rosen flagged an essay on the perils of journalistic neutrality by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus. The essay was published in Frank: Academics for the Real World, a product of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. Frank [...]

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, by Tom Robbins
The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka
Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
The unifying theme of these three novels is the embodiment of contradictions. It’s not exactly a rare theme in literature, and I’m no doubt committing certain literary sins by sitting Franz Kafka down at the same table [...]

Continuing on my quest to close enough browser tabs for my computer to regain some self-respect and nimbleness, here’s the second installment of stuff I either meant to write but never quite did, or did write but for some reason couldn’t bring myself to part with the web page I used for material. See here [...]

The Great Democracies, by Winston Churchill
Our Kind, by Marvin Harris
Here, as the title suggests, are two very different takes on historical non-fiction. It’s a stretch to pair them, but I suppose they can be united thematically as something other than the usual American style of political mythology or narrative, and both books aim for [...]

Claudine in School, by Colette
Sandbag Shuffle, by Kevin Marc Fournier
Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov
Two months ago, I hosted a game of Diplomacy. I am sure I wasn’t the ideal moderator in a lot of respects (especially for letting the whole game lapse when players disappeared), but I tried to provide [...]

I Don’t Know How She Does It, by Allison Pearson (A-)
No Place Like Home, by Barbara Samuel (B)
In A Lonely Place, by Dorothy Hughes (B+)
It always makes sense to expand your horizons, and this month (this month and then some–sorry) I thought I’d look at contemporary women authors. Not talking canonical stuff here, but [...]

Earth: An Intimate History, by Richard Fortey
Punctuated Equilibrium, by Stephen Jay Gould
Here are two long discursions on natural history, reviewed for the local koraxophiles. They are more “books for buds”: I’d originally planned to read three or four non-fiction monsters in a row, but these took me a long enough as it was. [...]

one night I dreamed about the waterfalls – in reality they were a mile away, visible from my yard – as they had been in real life for many weeks, the dream falls were just narrow threads of white falling three thousand feet down the vertical face of the mountain, their usual summertime state, barely [...]

Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathon Swift: B
Candide, by Voltaire: B+
Here are two classic satires, both good, both from the eighteenth century, and both inspired by two of my favorite bloggers, both of whom deserved better than my first drafts of these reviews. (You can find out more about my ‘project’ at my own blog, but [...]

The Iron Dragon’s Daughter by Michael Swanwick: A
The Story of the Stone by Barry Hughart: A
The King Must Die by Mary Renault: B
Here are three novels that satisfied, more or less, this month’s eagerness for re-imagined myths. The settings range from creepily realistic version of a human trapped in a fairy world to a [...]

There Are Doors by Gene Wolfe: A+
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock: B+
Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay: B-
Ægypt by John Crowley: A
The aim of every storyteller, even those who purport to write non-fiction, is to transport the reader to another world. There’s a lot to be said about putting them together believably, and even the [...]

Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: B
David Kamp, The United States of Arugula: B+
Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: B
Growing up, I lived, without grasping its significance, in a foodie’s paradise of local produce and meat and poultry, an abundance of natural goodness supplied by an ecological- and health-conscious family. Lately, I’ve been reminiscing on that, and [...]

“Daddyyyyy.”
Oh, crap.
“Daddy, can I use the computer?”
“Not right now, sweetie. You need to do your homework. And I’m using it right this minute anyway.”
“Daddy?”
“Homework.”
“Daddy, did you write your book report on The Wee Free Men yet?

The Rebel Angels, by Robertson Davies: A
The Face in the Frost, by John Bellairs: B+

You have to love those Renaissance-era scholars. I mean they were just so cute. They had all the brains, but (saving Aristotle and his buds, a Roman or two, and a double handful of carefully ignored Arab luminaries) a [...]

Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys (A)
Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume (B+)
Sean Stewart, The Night Watch (B+)
J. M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello (A)
Adam and Eve frolicked free and easy in the garden, knowing God, but not knowing what he knew. “Eat this fruit,” said Eve, “and we’ll be animals no more.” Gilgamesh took Enkidu aside, shaved his shaggy ass [...]

Three highways through their own separate hells.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road: A
Paul Park, Celestis: B+
Roger Zelazny, Damnation Alley: C-
The atomic post-apocalypse, as a warning or as a story unto itself, originated roughly in September, 1945 and has been flogged so mercilessly since that time, it’s become a field of cliché so barren of fruit that authors [...]

This was going to be a pair of historical fiction novels from classical Greece, but the geography’s off by a hair. Gates of Fire is certainly in Greece, but Soldier of Sidon, unknown at the time I planned this, took a right turn to the heart of the Nile. But the time is [...]

I was in a mood this month to take a bitter but comical view of theology and humanity. Here are two books that scratched the itch.
James Morrow, Towing Jehovah (B+)
I was going to open this review with “what this author lacks in writing ability he makes up for in big brass ones,” but as [...]

This week, it’s two non-genre-specific used bookstore finds. Given what you find in used bookstores, this is pretty well represented in my library. I’ll try to get more up to date one of these days, but these are both good ones if you missed ‘em.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird (A)
When I read Sirens of Titan [...]