R.L.'s Book Blog

 I enjoyed this book more than I anticipated, but a giant problem with it that I must get out of the way before proceeding with the rest of the review is that the fictional band within the book is called Kitty's Mustache. I reject this name absolutely. Coming up with decent band names is hard but come on, man! Modern Lovers is a cute, gentle book about a set of Oberlin graduates now approaching middle age, living in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. They have grown-up careers and high-school age children. Prior to the events of the book, three of them were in a band, the aforementioned Kitty's Mustache, with another woman named Lydia, who went on to have a famous solo career, predicated upon her rendition of a song one of the protagonists wrote, and then died young. The book largely deals with the aftermath of their brief fame and the ways in which they have, or have not, adapted to adulthood and middle-class-ness. Some of the better parts deal with this last issue very deftly, as when...

There are, one feels, slightly too many literary Jonathans. The mid-2000s were positively rotten with them, with notable books by Jonathans Franzen, Lethem, and Safran-Foer appearing seemingly every few weeks. From what I remember, I found Lethem to be the least objectionable of them; I haven't re-read any of his books aside from the subject of today's review in several years but I recall thinking that the one that's kind of like Blade Runner but with more talking animals was pretty good. Even when compared to the one that's kind of like Blade Runner but with more talking animals, You Don't Love Me Yet is a weird book. The book takes place in Los Angeles in a vague time period that might be the early 1990s. The main characters are members of a fledgling band and their various bohemian friends. At the outset of the action, the band's singer and bass player have just broken up, while the drummer and guitarist are tentatively getting together. The bass player ha...

Boulder friends will warmly remember The Video Station, a fantastic video rental store that sadly closed a few years ago, having long outlived the local Blockbuster. Video Station was great! They had just about everything you could think of and were willing to try to find anything they didn't, like the long-belated DVD release of the Richard Attenborough Brighton Rock adaptation. The staff were knowledgeable and opinionated and wrote a cool members' newsletter recommending their favorite new and old releases. They got to know regular customers; one time my mom and I were checking out something slightly different than our usual fare and the clerk paused to say "are you aware that this is neither British nor a mystery?" It was so great and I miss it so much and I wish some kind of benevolent nonprofit could've absorbed it, as happened with Portland's beloved Movie Madness.    One of the great things about Video Station were its nightly specials, certain categor...

Despite my overarching cynicism about books about musicians, I was really primed to like Eleanor Henderson's Ten Thousand Saints . The overall concept for the book is compelling: without revealing too much of the plot, it's about some kids outgrowing the Burlington, VT hardcore scene and moving to the East Village in the late 80s where some of them become Hare Krishnas and/or join various straight-edge bands. There ought to be a lot of material to work with in this particular era but unfortunately the book as a whole is, frankly, corny. To start with, one of the main characters is named Jude, which is on one level ironic, because he is a straight-edge punk who rejects the hippie upbringing that led his parents to name him after a Beatles song, and on the other hand apt, because he is charged with keeping the faith in uncertain times. No real person's name operates on so many symbolic levels, and given that the rest of the book isn't a stylized allegory, this decision fe...

Hello chums A few weeks ago, I got a very enlightening clairvoyant reading. This won't be surprising to people broadly familiar with my whole deal–I read tarot at parties, am very superstitious, and have used astrology to bully friends into donating to charitable causes (it's a great Saturn remediation!). I scheduled this particular reading largely out of curiosity as to what a clairvoyant reading would really look like and partly because I did have some genuine questions that perhaps psychic forces might be able to answer. I have spent a fair amount of quarantine dipping in and out of feeling very down on my contributions to society as a whole and the various creative arts in particular. Familiar refrains: I am a fake activist, I ceased having good ideas for paintings seven or eight years ago, every decent song I have ever written was a pleasant accident that will never happen again, my career is unhelpful to the good of civilization, etc. It's especially easy to feel dire...

Highlights from the weird and/or very specific things I have been researching while working on my current project, in roughly the order in which they are relevant to the plot of the thing I am working on, either as specific google search terms or more general names or titles, to be updated until the thing is done: cu languages cu french department list of universities on quarter system united states magickal childe boulder high school boulder high school secret service talent show bob dylan masters of war lyrics Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum portuguese cafe cambridge ma? the dresden dolls savage detectives first us printing Video Station first snow boulder co 2006 Columbia Cemetery al jourgensen cu Albums on the Hill astronauts orbit kampus reissue astronauts orbit kampus discogs tulagi theater boulder sandwich shop when moon phase october 30 2006 Brigitte Mars boulder quaker meeting louisville co street view community gardens boulder co Goss Grove community garden apple season color...