Month: December 2011

Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life by Douglas Kenrick (Audiobook)

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I should, before reviewing, disclaim that this was a free book from Librarything, which I got on the condition that I review it. Douglas Kenrick’s Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life: A Psychologist Investigates How Evolution, Cognition, and Complexity Are Revolutionizing Our View of Human Nature was, on the whole, a very enjoyable audiobook. Generally, Kenrick does a good job of bringing together his personal experiences and the research he and others have done — both pointing towards very interesting insights into human nature. This is especially interesting given Kenrick’s unusual background (at least, unusual for an academic): his …

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Coltrane on Coltrane: The John Coltrane Interviews, ed. Chris de Vito

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Probably one of the last books I’ll read in 2011, I actually worked my way through this book slowly. Not because it’s not interesting — though, if you’ve done any research on Trane before, you’ve seen some of it already, and there is a certain amount of unavoidable repetition — but because I was busy, and wanted to take the book slow. The impression it gives of Coltrane as an adult is somewhat vague in some ways, but it’s a wonderful look at how others reacted to him… which I suppose is partly because of how Coltrane presented himself to …

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Happy Newtonmass

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So it’s Newtonmass. I hope it is (or was, depending on your time zone and when you read this) fun for you all. We had dinner last night with Miss Jiwaku’s cousin and her family, a gathering to which we brought a little of my beer, and cookies and smoked almonds we’d made that day. Today had a couple of friends over. The food included all kinds of wonderful things. (For my part, I made the caramelized carrot soup and smoked peppers stuffed with rice and cheese. Miss Jiwaku made braised spinach and maki — Japanese-styled sushi rolls. We collaborated …

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John Coltrane and the Pulp Connection

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Arguably one of the most significant musicians in American history (and unarguably one of the most significant saxophonists and jazz musicians ever), John Coltrane grew up in High Point, North Carolina. It might be a weird thing to bring up —  where he grew up, that is — except that, when we think about major artists, we so often imagine them having sprung into being fully-formed, if not in technique or approach, then at least in their essential selfhood. This is also often how we tell their stories: for example, in Coltrane: Story of a Sound (a book I’ve just …

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Is it Too Much to Ask For…

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… that, despite the nonexistence of an afterlife, despite all odds, somewhere out there a bunch of recently-departed souls are caught in a lineup, the processing of the world’s dead being backlogged, and Christopher Hitchens has just looked back and noticed that, lo and behold, amid many bedraggled, starved people stands the ghost of Kim Jong Il, in full North Korean military-leisure suit regalia, and that Hitchens turns around and strides up to him confidently, and bitchslaps the unliving crap out of Kim until his ghostly body collapses in the pile of useless feces that the man always truly was? …

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