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Recent Posts
- What’s New for the 26th of July:
- A Kinrowan Estate story: chicken pot pieces
- What’s New for the 19th of July: Charles de Lint’s Ottawa novels with a quote from Drink Down the Moon, Gary’s review of Nordic fiddle music, It’s Michele Walther and Irina Behrendt playing Aaron Copland’s ‘Hoe Down’ from his Rodeo album
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Midsomer Odd Things
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Library and Its Librarian
- What’s New for the Fifth of July: Remembering Jane Yolen; some new Americana and jazz music; Fishing Blues
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: Recursive Loops
- What’s New for June 21: Jennifer Stevenson’s ‘Solstice’
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Turkish Coffee
- What’s New for the 7th of June: Foxes in literature, live Balkan music, comforting jazz, Americana jazz, and wonderfully weird fusion jazz; and John Fogerty live
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Bloodied Kings
- What’s New for the 24th of May: Gary’s Review of Elizabeth Bear’s White Space novels, iain’s review of the Lonely Signal Burns novellas by her, she reading her own story, ‘The Chains That You Refuse’, and I see Gary has some tasty music reviews fir us as well
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Our Greensward
- What’s New for the 10th of May: books reviewed by Jennifer Stevenson, music by Teddy Thompson, Americana music from all over, and some live music from John Fogerty
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Walk
- What’s New for the 26th of April: the nature of Stories; some new and newish SF, plus new world, jazz, folk and Americana music
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Spring Day
- What’s New for the 12th of April: Some new and recent SF; new Americana, Norwegian folk rock and jazz; and thoughts on War For The Oaks
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Unified Theory of Libraries (A Letter to Anna)
- What’s New for the 29th of March: Beer and spirits, in song and text, some new Scandinavian fiddle music and jazz flute music, and more
- A Kinrowan Estate story: A Ghostly Librarian
- What’s New for the 15th of March: some DeLint stories for early spring; lots of polskas, Serbian folk rock, progressive jazz, and Nordic music from the archives
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Hedge Witches
- What’s New for the 1st of March: Emma Bull’s War for The Oaks, Rosanne Cash’s ‘Runaway Train’, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, plus new Americana and jazz music
- A Kinrorwan Estate story: Cranachanh
- What’s New for the 15th of February: Some Seanan McGuire fantasy, Alison Bechdel’s latest, Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin; Nordic sounds, old time, Americana and Tex-Mex music
- What’s New for the 1st of February: Kage Baker retrospective; new Americana, Buddhist chants and Finnish songs, new and reissued jazz, and more
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Fireplaces in Kinrowan Hall
- What’s New for the 18th of January: World music and fiction by Amal El-Mohtar
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Bridges and Paths plus a Troll
Tag Archives: biography
Four books about Bob Dylan, reviewed in free verse
Carl Benson’s The Bob Dylan Companion: Four Decades Of Commentary Clinton Heylin’s Bob Dylan: A Life In Stolen Moments, Day By Day 1941-1995 Paul Williams’s Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, The Early Years 1960-1973 Paul Williams’s Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, The … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Music
Tagged Americana music, biography, Bob Dylan, rock and roll
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Evan I. Schwartz’s Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story
Faith J. Cormier wrote this review. Finding Oz is a biography of L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books. Rather than being one of those ghastly concoctions that look at their subjects’ public lives in total isolation from the … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Americana, biography, L. Frank Baum, nonfiction
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Giorgia Grilli’s Myth, Symbol and Meaning in Mary Poppins: the Governess as Provacteur; and Valerie Lawson’s Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers
Faced with two books on a similar theme, where one is a critical analysis and the other a biography, I am generally inclined to the critical analysis. As an academic historian, I regard biography with a certain amount of suspicion. … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged biography, fantasy, literary criticism, literary fiction
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Jack Vance’s This Is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is I)
Jack Vance has been one of the most continuously productive and popular and arguably one of the most influential writers of science-fiction. He’s also a mystery writer of note. (His is a name that I see popping up again and … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged autobiography, biography, non-fiction
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Luis Ortiz’ Emshwiller: Infinity x Two — The Art and Life of Ed and Carol Emshwiller
“I like the idea of going through different careers. It’s like being reborn a number of times.” That is probably the best summation of Ed Emshwiller’s life, from the horse’s mouth. Known to science-fiction fans of the 1950s, ’60s and … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged biography, illustration, nonfiction, science fiction
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Colin McPhee’s A House in Bali
Colin McPhee, a Canadian-American composer who had much more influence on American music than the body of his music might indicate (see Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds by Carol J. Oja), left behind two books that were as influential, … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged autobiography, biography, music
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Carol J. Oja’s Colin McPhee: Composer in Two Worlds
The music of the East, particularly the gamelan of Indonesia, and even more particularly that of Bali, has a longer history of interaction with the music of the West than many might imagine. Claude Debussy first encountered the gamelan in … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged American music, biography, music, world music
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Jean-Marie Déguignet’s Memoirs of a Breton Peasant [ed. Bernez Rouz; English trans. Linda Asher]
It is not often that one gets to read the memoirs of a peasant, because it’s not often that a peasant writes a memoir. This particular peasant was Breton, which is, for those fascinated by a part of the world … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged autobiography, biography, history
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Joseph Bristow, ed.: Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend
From the vantage of a century later, it’s hard for us to understand the last years of Oscar Wilde’s life and those immediately after his death. His disgrace after his conviction for committing acts of “gross indecency” with another man … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged biography, critical studies
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Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey
I’ve been reading Joseph Campbell’s books for decades, beginning with the massive, four volume The Masks of God in the late 1960s or 1970s. (I’m not sure what it says about me that I would jump right into a 2,000 … Continue reading