Archive for December, 2006
Thursday, December 28th, 2006
Barry Zito to the Giants
According to Sports Illustrated, the Giants have signed free-agent pitcher Bary Zito to a seven-year deal worth $126 million. From the Times:
In pursuing Zito, the Giants took the same route as the Chicago Cubs did with signing Alfonso Soriano to a $136 million deal. They offered a contract worth so much more money than what [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Baseball, General by Rick
Wednesday, December 27th, 2006
Orhan Pamuk’s father and his suitcase
For weeks, the New Yorkers in my mail stack pile up and I read nothing in them more than a couple Talk of the Town pieces and a book review or two by John Updike or Louis Menand. Then, all of a sudden, an issue comes along that demands to be read in near entirety. [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Books, General by Rick
Saturday, December 23rd, 2006
The week that was
Zinédine Zidane spent the week in Algeria and attended a soccer match on Thursday.
Setanta Sports has, unfortunately, discontinued its Setanta on Demand service for ITVN.
Dan Halpern has an article on Boris Vian in this week’s New Yorker. Vian was a French author, musician, artist, champion of jazz among other things, and Halpern’s essay prompted me [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Books, General by Rick
Saturday, December 23rd, 2006
Francine Prose on the new Eggers novel
Francine Prose reviews, with glowing praise, What is the What, the new novel by Dave Eggers in this weekend’s New York Times Book Review.
The lyricism, the detail and, most important, the absolute specificity of these sentences are what make “What Is the What” so persuasive. It’s a real high-wire act, yet Eggers manages to maintain [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General by Rick
Sunday, December 10th, 2006
Sarah Bettens concert, or six years ago in France
In the fall of 2000, while shopping at FNAC in Toulouse, one of the listening stations was playing the new CD, Almost Happy, from a band called K’s Choice. I’m normally not one for listening stations, but the retro style of the album’s cover caught my eye, and so I put on the headphones and [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in General, Music by Rick
Monday, December 4th, 2006
Bibliographies in novels?
The Times has an interesting story about how some recent novels by authors including Martin Amis, Norman Mailer, and William Vollmann contain bibliographies.
“It’s terribly off-putting,” said James Wood, the literary critic for The New Republic. “It would be very odd if Thomas Hardy had put at the end of all his books, ‘I’m thankful to [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Books, General by Rick
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
Weekend tidbits
I missed a recent story in the NYT about the Finnegans Wake Society, which used to meet at Gotham Book Mart, until my favorite store store closed its doors a couple months ago.
The excellent NPR show Marketplace did a segment last month on Kepler’s membership program, which has raised over $200,000 from shoppers, who, ahem, [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Books, General by Rick
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
Nintendo: a third-place winner
James Surowiecki writes in the New Yorker about Nintendo’s recent success with its WII and portable DS systems while Sony and Microsoft have engaged in an “arms race” for video game supremacy. Surowiecki uses the Nintendo example to debunk the theory that not being the first or second largest player in a market is inevitably [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General by Rick
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
The Times 10 best books of 2006
The New York Times Book Review has picked its 10 best books of the year. There aren’t really any surprises here, though I was pleased to see both Gary Shteyngart’s Absurdistan and Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics on the list. Pessl was the only first-time novelist to be included. As usual, I’m planning [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Books, General by Rick
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
What to do about America’s education gap
I’m admittedly a week behind on my reading of the New York Times Magazine, so it was only last night that I read last Sunday’s excellent cover story by Paul Tough, “How to Make a Student,” which surveys the current conflict over how to address America’s education gap. Tough’s piece’s at once echoes the point [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in General by Rick
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006
Sachs and Easterly at it again
Jeffrey Sachs and Bill Easterly are sparring once again. This time, in response to an article by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Review of Books that mentioned Easterly’s view of Sachs, Sachs has written a comment to the NYRB:
When we overlook the success that is possible, we become our own worst enemies. We stand [...]
