Rick Steves’ Pocket Travel Journal

Avalon Travel

As a writer and a traveler, I was overjoyed to be getting Rick Steves’ Pocket Travel Journal. When it arrived, I must admit that it looked an awful lot like a Moleskine notebook. It is the same size: approximately six inches by four inches. There is a small pocket in the back cover and a black ribbon attached as a bookmark. It’s navy blue with a hard-bound cover. The clearest differentiation is an imprint of Rick Steves’ signature on the back of the book.

The journal seems to be rather Eurocentric; the color map of Europe inside the front cover is the only map in the book. I realize that if I wanted maps of every country, I’d get an atlas, but it still seemed a bit focused. There is a handy calling chart with country codes and dialing instructions, but they are all for European countries.

I was very excited to see the calendar section for 2009 to 2012. There’s also a cute and handy section titled “Foreign Phrases Cheat Sheet” where travelers are recommended to include their favorite and helpful key words and phrases. The section is blank; travelers have to find their own phrases.

Before the cheat sheet is a message from Rick Steves, and he beautifully sums up the necessity of having a journal nearby when traveling: “Without capturing your thoughts on paper, the lessons of travel are like shooting stars you just missed...and butterflies you thought you saw.” The book has 182 lined pages and ten blank pages for sketching. It fits neatly into a purse or backpack or in the pocket of a hooded sweatshirt. It has a quality to it where I know that it’s not going to fall apart over the years. While perhaps not the most original product, it’s a good deal ($9.95) for something every traveler needs.

Review by Kristin Conard

South – You Are Here

Bluhammock Music

South is a UK-based pop band that aims to stay dedicated to a vision of constant creative collaboration between band members Joel Cadbury, Jamie McDonald, and Brett Shaw. This tie was cemented at London’s Haverstock music school where the boys worked together under the tutelage of musician and teacher David Cross. You Are Here is their fourth album and has received mixed reviews from long-time fans, but I think it stands on its own two feet as an exuberant album with a pleasant range of sounds. 

Though there are diamonds and duds in You Are Here, overall the album makes a great soundtrack for anything from a spontaneous road trip with your buds to a quiet night at home with your honey. However, you’ll probably want to go ahead and skip the introductory track, “Wasted.” It begins innocently enough with broad instrumental tones and a dreamy lyric entrance until it falls into the chorus of “feeling tired, so tired, tired of getting wasted.” These whiny, unimaginative lyrics are repeated over and over again until the song ends.

Luckily, the album immediately picks-up with the subsequent tracks. The second song, “Opened Up,” is a particularly lovely recording that starts simply with some basic guitar riffs before transforming itself with light vocals that roll across the top of the instrumentals in a wistful landscape. Many of the songs on the album are touchingly compassionate such as “The Creeping” where the lyrics declare: “I've been waiting for, waiting for your madness/Could spend with you all night/I been sitting here waiting for your sadness/I’m hoping things are alright/Tell me, tell me, tell me everything is gonna be alright.” In songs like this, the boys of South truly display their sentimental side.

Though some would consider them emo, I think their spirited lyrics and brooding instrumentals are presented as loving and caring instead of whiny or sulky. Overall, South’s folk-pop charm and absorbing creativity will continue to keep me listening to You Are Here. 

Review by Djuna A. Davidson

Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem

By Maya Angelou

Random House

Amazing Peace is visually amazing and beautiful as the colors are muted but still vibrant. The gold lettering in the title stands out and adds a touch of style. This book was a true collaboration between Maya Angelou and illustrators Steve Johnston and Lou Fancher. The poetry and pictures meld together, and the words touch your heart. The pictures are textured, which adds to their magic. This is truly a book to bring people together to forget our petty differences.

This book is a call for peace—no matter where in the world you are, your nationality, or what your beliefs may be. The illustrations, along with being lifelike and detailed, accompany the poem with a realistic yet dreamy and fantasy-like appeal. Along with the book came a CD on which you can hear Angelou herself reading the poem. Her voice is deep, loud, emotional, and meaningful as she expresses every word in the way only a creative soul can. Angelou also read this poem at the 2005 White House tree lighting ceremony.

This is truly a special book with a special message. The fact that it is so straightforward and inspirational will really touch readers. It is meant to shake you up and make you think about some of your unkind actions, and perhaps it can change this world for the better by influencing people to act more kindly to others.

There is always room for change, and the world the world is definitely ready for peace. As the title suggests, a peaceful world would be truly amazing. We can all do our part, just like Maya Angelou, especially during the holiday season.

Review By Amber Whitman-Currier

Listening is an Act of Love: A Celebration of Life from the StoryCorps project

Edited by Dave Isay

Penguin Publishing

StoryCorps is an epic social experiment about Americana that was inaugurated in 2003 at New York’s Grand Central Terminal in order to “celebrate the lives of the uncelebrated,” as Studs Terkel described it. Pairs of people enter a booth where a facilitator helps them have a dialogue about a key moment in their life. One copy of the forty-minute recording goes home with the speakers; the other is saved at the Library of Congress. Listening is an Act of Love is a compilation of forty-nine of the most compelling personal sagas out of the more than ten thousand that have been recorded. It allows readers to savor the narratives and see photos of the tellers.

These dialogues capture conversations between people across North America. From New Town, North Dakota to New York City, friends, relatives, and colleagues discuss history, hardship, survival, love, heartbreak, and perseverance. Reading this book will take you into a blossoming romance between employees in a public school and into a conversation between two prisoners in jail. It will take you into a hospital after Hurricane Katrina, into a burning tower on 9/11, and into the life of a Pentecostal preacher’s son. You’ll read of how much joy a mother brought to her child by making a barn out of paper. You'll feel what it was like for a boy to sit in a car outside of a patient's home, snacking on laxatives, while his doctor father delivered a baby. The characters are male and female, young and old, wealthy and poor, of varied races and backgrounds.

The placement of the speakers’ photos after the tale helps readers listen to the voice before making assumptions about him or her based on appearance alone. It teaches us how inaccurate the snap judgments we make can be. People often forget what can be learned from simply listening.

Listening is an Act of Love not only provides a compelling slice of American history, it also reminds us that we are all more alike than we are different. Everyone has a story. Sometimes you just have to ask for it.

Review by Jessica Jacobson

Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London’s Jazz Age

By D.J. Taylor

Farrar, Strauss and Giroux 

As someone who has always described myself as an "old soul," I have a natural predisposition to understanding and appreciating the past. Though I recognize the implications and naiveté of such a wish, not a day goes by that I still don't pine, yearn, and frankly, tingle at the mere thought of being a young woman alive sometime during the first half of the twentieth century. In my opinion, those first fifty years garnered far more snazzier fashions, thought-provoking art, and interesting people than just about anything in the latter half.

In order to get my history fix, I often watch movies from the silent era and golden age of Hollywood (Bette Davis, Bette Davis, Bette Davis!), incorporate certain classic elements into my wardrobe and make-up choices (e.g., fishnet stockings, loose fitting tops with belts, wedged heels), and constantly read about the people, places, and things of the various decades. My latest conquest in the last department is a book called Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age, which is a thorough recreation and examination of the life and times of the budding British elite in the roaring '20s. The author, D.J. Taylor, not only provided my fix with his wonderful investigative work, but he also supplied me with the inspiration to find out even more about the people he traces, to read some of the books they wrote, and to finally get my hair waved.

The Bright Young People were a large group of London’s rich and famous young men and women. They’ve been immortalized in literature (Evelyn Waugh being the most prominent author of the period), in movies (Bright Young Things), and in various other types of art. In many ways, they’re immortal beings, which is odd considering they only existed for such a short time span in history. For ten or so years, they ruled the celebrity roost with their charming antics, extravagant parties, and bohemian sensibilities. Gin and tonic, bath and bottle parties, and lighthearted feelings were all the rage with this brood. 

In the end, though, their hedonism and the prospect (and eventuality) of war in later years stopped their frolicking and merriment. A number of the Bright Young People failed to escape their hunger for extravagance and succumbed to the effects of alcohol and drugs. Others went to war and perished. Some retired their dancing slippers and hunkered down to a normal life. Many vanished into thin air. 

Taylor artfully traces the origins of the Bright Young People with the same effervescent touch the people themselves possess. His language is sassy, sweet, and intelligent. Though he covers a lot of ground in the roughly twenty years, the text never feels heavy or meandering. Instead, it sucks you in like a great novel, or a great piece of gossip. Bright Young People will make you laugh while learning about a group of carefree individuals who, at one point or another, actually lived the life many of us dream of living. 

Review by Sara Freeman

Frida Hyvönen - Silence is Wild

Secretly Canadian 

Silence is Wild is a pleasant surprise. The music's strange and slightly discomforting atmosphere requires a few intimate listens to digest it fully. The first track on the album is a story, a simple one-on-one retelling of a chance encounter with an old flame. The scenes described are both vivid and visual, and they’re set over a hauntingly flat melody that has a chorus reminiscent of ’50s doo-wop. The effect of this style is unusual, but it works creatively on several levels. Though the tunes on this album are decidedly catchy and melodic, to call it pop music would be a mistake. 

Frida Hyvönen’s voice sounds a lot like Carly Simon’s, but her lyrics and tone are more evocative of Joni Mitchell’s brooding, beguiling style. Lyrically, Hyvönen consistently moves from confessional pieces to abstract portions. I wish she had put the second track, “Enemy Within,” as the last song on the album because it, more than any other song, successfully combines the confessional and abstract sides of the music. Though slightly repetitive with its constant chant of “the body of work is only as strong as its weakest link,” it is an essential track because it also reveals her self-doubt. Hyvönen’s honesty with her listeners allows us to grow intimately close to her as a performer. 

“December” tells the story of an abortion. Without histrionics, it simply and matter-of-factly describes the day the abortion took place. Its plain yet profound mood struck me as quite beautiful. “London” has the fabulous line, “the way you want to get rid of me makes me weak in the knees” and conveys the challenges of living in a city and the desire to "make it" there. The tracks are layered, often with several vocal tracks over pianos, synthesizers, strings, and drums. It constantly shifts from intimate solo settings to grand choirs over sweeping instrumentation. 

This music is best listened to while you’re moving through the world. It has an ethereal quality that could easily make a routine bus ride into a Dancer in the Dark filmic experience. The songs in Silence is Wild aren’t just made of lyrics written to fill-in a song; they’re audio poems that require some consideration and compassion to fully appreciate. 

Review by Jen Wilson Lloyd 

Argentina: Stories for a Nation

By Amy K. Kaminsky

University of Minnesota Press

Argentina: Stories for a Nation is an intriguing portrait of a country, told through author Amy Kaminsky's analysis of Argentina’s presence in literary texts from around the world, and from Argentina itself. Through letters and films, jokes and novels, the country’s tumultuous history is revealed. We learn of Spanish colonialists' uneasy relationship with their adopted country's indigenous past; curious conflations of "Argentina" with "South America" or even "the Americas" that give some credence to Argentina's historical reputation of self-centeredness; efforts at making the country more "European," and then further, seemingly contradictory efforts to make European immigrants more "Argentinean." Exactly what "Argentinean" means though, is an ongoing question—and that's Kaminsky's conclusion.

I greatly enjoyed the book's creative (and feminist!) interpretations of interchanges between historical figures. Letters from the past are dredged up and put into context and, as hokey as it sounds, the past comes alive. Particularly revealing and enjoyable was Kaminsky's retelling of the relationship between the influential Argentinian intellectual and publisher Victoria Ocampo and English novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf. 

Ocampo may have dressed in Chanel and tried her hardest to look European, but she was also only too happy to feed Woolf's fantasies of her country as an exotic and untamed wilderness, because that’s what she knew Woolf wanted from Argentina—and from Ocampo herself. Kaminsky points out that Ocampo also enjoyed shocking her racist, sexist Argentinean peers with shameless allusions to her indigenous roots. Ocampo revealed different aspects of herself—colonizer, colonized, or a proud and troubled mixture of both—depending on her audience. We can't begin to truly understand her without seeing both her own self-image and the interpretations of it preserved through Woolf's writings and letters. Kaminsky shows us that the identity of Ocampo's country is equally complex, a multifaceted cultural meaning that is not determined just by Argentina itself, but by those abroad who, with their references to it in art and film and writing, help create the country's identity and meaning.

Argentina: Stories for a Nation is as dense and thorough as an academic literature review, a walk through history peppered with poetically rambling interpretations and charming parenthetical asides from the author. In the end, not one of the hundreds of sources Kaminsky found can offer us a definitive idea of what Argentina is. She shows us that Argentina’s story is one you must read between the lines, one that emerges from the dialogue of myth and history.

Review by Ari Moore

The Men in My Life

By Vivian Gornick 

Boston Review

A very wise man once said: "Normal love isn’t interesting. I assure you that it’s incredibly boring." Though this person was referring to the type of love that can sometimes exist between two living people, I’ve always thought it could be applied elsewhere as well. Love has no boundaries, after all. 

The bulk of my friends and I find our true love and lust in the seat of a movie house. We immerse ourselves in the minds and bodies of passionate cinematic auteurs of the new, old, and very old. Other people I know sit in museums day after day, hour after hour, and stare at various sculptures, relics, and canvasses in the hope of uncovering their secrets and forming a deeper connection between themselves and the art. We're all connected to different things for different reasons, no matter how crazy it might seem to someone who doesn’t understand that kind of ardor. 

For Vivian Gornick, the author of The Men in My Life, her loyalties have always lain with the written word, the great literature of the past and present whose characters and craftsmanship speak directly to her soul. Gornick's solitary relationship with words coupled with her political sensibilities has reared its beautiful head on more than one occasion in her own work. In her most famous book, The End of the Novel of Love, Gornick analyzed the very essence and idea of love in the form of literature. She is a devout feminist and liberal who places incalculable thought into what she sees, hears, and most importantly, feels. 

As far as literary criticism goes, The Men in My Life feels kind of like a harmonious valentine to many of the world’s most significant male authors—from the likes of H.G. Wells to Allen Ginsberg to Saul Bellow. Through nine different chapters and essays (and an insightful preface), Gornick examines their work and the men themselves in an effort to shine a light on some of the more troublesome traits and tendencies they possess. She looks at Bellow and Phillip Roth through a feminist lens, and exposes the inherent misogyny of their work. My favorite essay, "H.G. Wells: The Beginning of Wisdom," takes a look at the man behind the pen by studying his kooky autobiography, along with the person who wrote it. Like all of the essays, it is both joyful and edifying. 

Though I'm only familiar with half of the authors Gornick analyzes, she skillfully related all of her ideas and theories to me in a way that never felt patronizing. It's clear that this book is a true labor of love, and her enthusiasm shows throughout the text. Gornick may disagree with some of the author’s ideologies, but her earnest appreciation for the work outweighs most of their foibles. Like the many friends Gornick has made with the authors and their characters, I'm sure I'll return to The Men in My Life several times because of its insightful view on life, literature, and humanity. 

Review by Sara Freeman

Nine Inch Nails - Rose Garden Arena: Portland, OR (12/7/2008)

I've never been a diehard Nine Inch Nails fan, but have listened to them on and off since high school. I've never seen frontman Trent Reznor or his music as misogynistic; in fact, "Closer" is one of my all-time favorite songs. And to be fair, the only semi-nude images on visual display in this show were equal opportunity, male and female.

Whatever else you want to say about them, NIN gave fans in Portland, Oregon their money's worth. Playing for more than two hours—with a five-song encore—we were treated to old favorites like "Head Like a Hole" and "Closer," taking us back to a time where materialism was (briefly) very un-hip. Reznor's performance of tracks from NIN's more recent albums (With Teeth, Year Zero, and The Slip) such as "The Collector," "The Hand That Feeds," and others, were equally juiced.

Reznor, who never uses the same band for more than one tour, selected a very talented ensemble for this one; his musicians, dressed to match him in his trademark black muscle T-shirt and jeans, used an unusual variety of instruments that included the lap steel (on "All the Love in the World"), banjo, and cello. While I was warned ahead of time by a longtime fan to bring earplugs, the sound quality at Portland's Rose Garden Arena was so perfectly engineered that they weren't necessary. An amazing light show added to the performance. The one exception was an extended version of "A Warm Place," which, coupled with the serene lily pond setting, nearly put me to sleep. 

The only disappointment—in addition to getting charged $5.75 for a Diet Coke—was NIN's opening act, The Bug. This quasi-reggae singer, paired with loud (versus good) electronica, seemed to do little more than gyrate her hips while repeating the words "crazy motherfuckers" most of the time she was on stage. Tiring, to say the least.

Review by M.L. Madison

The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America

By Susan Faludi

Picador

Many people are rightfully weary of discussing and analyzing 9/11. While it could be labeled insensitivity, it more likely has to do with a stifled national discourse, repugnant media spin, and a lack of in-depth processing. For the past several years, we’ve all been hibernating, trying to escape the aftermath of the terrorist attacks rather than actively deconstruct their meaning. The myth of American national security was shattered in 2001, and our belief that we—both as a nation and as individuals—could protect ourselves has evaporated.

Instead of productively handling this mass psychosis or treating the 9/11 terror attacks like another criminal act, its meaning has been buried under patriotic language, hyper-masculine war costumes, and false reports of our collective return to domesticity. In the face of our personal terrors, the media created a different account of our collective experience, marked by disturbing gender binaries and renewed focus on dismantling feminist achievement. Rather than following what should have been a thorough plan to prosecute the terrorists responsible, the news media pounced on feminism, blaming radical women for the attacks as supposed champions of the “soft” values that made the U.S. a vulnerable target.

The collective inability to make meaning of 9/11, to give the story a voice, is what Susan Faludi attempts to name in The Terror Dream. Mainstream media interpretations—from films like United 93 and Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center to television shows like Rescue Me and the off-Broadway play The Guys—have only served to regurgitate the timeline, replay the events of that day, celebrate the men—and only the men—who served their city and country. No major productions have attempted to dig deeper into what it has meant for American diplomacy, hero myths, or gender.

While the U.S. government temporarily showed an interest in “freeing” the veiled women in the Middle East, American women—specifically female fire fighters and policewomen—might as well have been wearing veils for all the attention they were given in the media. Female writers who called for a collective healing, for deconstruction, for a larger discussion about religion, terror, and diplomacy were silenced. Ignored or publicly belittled before being deemed irrelevant, some of the greatest women in modern journalism, social justice, and literature were thrown under the bus. Katha Pollit, Susan Sontag, Barbara Kingsolver, and Arundhati Roy were among the many once-prominent female commentators that quickly became the media’s proverbial whipping boys. Of course if they had been boys, they would have likely been handed a comic book, asked to show up on Fox News as a talking head, and told to fight like a man. Faludi devotes an entire chapter of The Terror Dream to the story of Jessica Lynch, a U.S. soldier in Iraq who made headlines when the story of her “rescue” was spun into yet another tale of the brave men saving a defenseless women (nevermind the implicit racism that the white soldiers saved Lynch from the Arab savages).

Explaining 9/11 to ourselves is perhaps even trickier when the Bush administration couldn't explain it either. Faludi points out that President Bush’s reaction that the attacks were “unimaginable” could explain his painful blundering and his inability to act with dignified transparency and reasoned authority. Trauma can cause extreme reactions, and many went into hiding, waiting for the nightmare to end. No one was able to rouse us to collectively meet our horror head on, to question what it meant so that we could move forward, because we had a president more focused on cowboy-themed catchphrases than leadership.

Faludi is perhaps the only person who could have written this book. Her thorough understanding of the way in which American culture, gender relations, and politics fuse together makes her one of the greatest living feminist journalists. She is able to tease out truths where the rest of us are still left scratching our heads. While other brilliant female journalists, like Naomi Klein, have dismantled terrorism myths to point to a hidden agenda—in Klein’s case, a disaster capitalist dismantling and rebirth of Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with U.S. profits from the reconstruction plans—it has been difficult to name what has happened to the American psyche and specific gender ideals and relations. Deconstructing comic-book style firefighter hero myths, the return of the cowboy narrative, the Bush administration’s brief flirtation with Muslim women’s rights, and the almost complete vanishing of female voices of dissent (and reason) in the media in the aftermath of 9/11, Faludi explains the global inability to make sense of the media’s response to the trade center attacks, as well as our own inability to understand our personal reactions.

Review by Brittany Shoot

Pelle Carlberg – The Lilac Time

Labrador Records

The first tracks in The Lilac Time set what will be the musical tone for the rest of the album. Pelle Carlberg’s music is fun, melodic and filled with energetic acoustic guitar. The lyrics are honest and simple; Carlsberg doesn’t over complicate his music. The first tracks reminisce about times past and there’s this retro feeling to the first part of the album. However, the second part of the album moves away from its nostalgic lyrics to a full-blown pop culture review. It’s easy to miss the pop culture references when listening to the album since Pelle Calrberg’s pop-folk musical style clashes entirely with lyrics about taking a test on Facebook and downloading music. This adds quirkiness to the album, yet the initial charm of the first songs is lacking.

The Lilac Time can be described as charming and pleasant, but I wouldn’t say it reaches levels of greatness. The music itself is enjoyable enough, yet it’s the theme and subject of the songs that limit this album to a great extent. The whole album is charming on a superficial level—none of the songs feel truly personal. The music is pleasant, yet not extraordinary enough to stand on its own. It’s musicality can carry it only so far. The Lilac Time is the type of album you enjoy listening to every now and then, but don’t particularly crave.

Review by Jessica Sanchez

All The King's Horses

By Michèle Bernstein

Translated by John Kelsey

MIT Press

Bernstein's novel is an intriguing roman à clef that takes a satirical look at avant-garde artistic and literary life in 1950’s Paris. The first-person narrator, Geneviève, is a thinly-disguised version of the author herself. In the "Translator's Introduction," Kelsey points out that this technique allows Bernstein to become "both star and spectator of her own story." Readers get to accompany Geneviève on her social rounds, to a gallery opening, dinner at an artist’s home, a crowded Left Bank party, numerous cafés about town, and to enjoy her clever, brittle observations: "The few ex-friends I met there were precisely the ones I would have preferred never to see again." 

The plot is reminiscent of Choderlos de Laclos’s eighteenth-century novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, much as it was interpreted by Roger Vadim's movie adaptation featuring Jeanne Moreau: Geneviève is a modern Madame de Merteuil, with a charming, libertine husband, Gilles, in Valmont's role. This nonconformist wife amuses herself by aiding her husband’s romantic conquest of a vulnerable girl—a painter, Carole, just 20 years old. Shortly thereafter Geneviève herself takes a new lover, 19-year-old Bertrand, an aspiring poet. The interlocking pair of love triangles structures the rest of the story, with lovers’ quarrels, fits of jealousy, old friends and new seductions, drunken conversations, in-jokes and cultural allusions. Francophiles will appreciate references to dining at a restaurant in the rue Mouffetard, vacationing in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, reading Racine or Rimbaud. It is probably only in a French novel that one woman might compliment another by saying, "You have a pretty syntax," without being ironic. 

Odile Passot's Afterword, "Portrait of Guy Debord as a Young Libertine," is almost more interesting than the novel itself, as it compares the Situationist writer/filmmaker with his depiction as Gilles, as well as discussing the influence that classic films have had on Bernstein’s writing. What Kelsey calls Bernstein’s "ambiguous quasi-feminism" rings a little hollow to my ear, yet her account does raise provocative questions about how male and female intellectuals relate to each other in contemporary society—which may not have changed much, in some ways, since the mid-twentieth century.

Review by Kittye Delle Robbins-Herring

Land of Talk – Some Are Lakes

Saddle Creek Records

There are a number of reasons that Land of Talk's full-length debut, Some Are Lakes, stands out from the same-sameness of the generic indie rock band rabble. One is the probing melodies that you find echoing in your head days later. The lyrics, too, are haunting. Though mumbled between fuzzy guitar, feedback, and clattering drums, these aren't that easy to make out.

There is also something about the way the music comes together as a whole. On the surface, Land of Talk are a pretty solid, yet standard rock trio, getting some good sounds out of guitar, bass, and drums. But they possess a quality that transcends the genre that they do so well.

Much of this is owed to the unmistakable soul of this band, frontwoman Elizabeth Powell, whose languid vocals warm the music's often morbid tone. From the vaguely recognisable chorus on the opening track, "Yuppy Flu" ("Are you singing your own death and selling it to me?") to the torch song bent of the title track ("I'll love you like I love you then I'll die"), Powell's voice and poignant phrasing manage to carry lyrics that might otherwise come across half-baked.

Powell could be (perhaps inadequately) described as a grungier version of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Karen O. With bassist Chris McCarron and drummer Andrew Barr, she has found a formidable rhythm section and the ideal accompanists to her dynamic lead. Together, these musicians straddle a tone that is both edgy and lyrical, light and dark.

Even if moody guitar isn't really your thing, this album's worth a listen. And thanks to its indie rock diva, you might even give it a few repeated plays.

Review by Rachel Liebhaber

Islamicate Sexualities: Translations Across Temporal Geographies of Desire

Edited by Kathryn Babayan and Afsaneh Najmabadi

Harvard University Press 

On choosing Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire from a sprawling list of review items, I was hoping to find some answers to my questions about the diverse manifestations of sexualities and gender identities outside of the overwhelming focus on the Western LGBTQ experience. After reading this book, I've found that I came out of it more bewildered and questioning than ever. 

As a reader far from the doctorate level of the academic hierarchy, I found it very difficult to navigate the abstruse language and the general emphasis on the journey of Islamicate LGBTQ identities into the limelight of historiography and queer scholarship. In this anthology, various scholars and researchers investigate particular aspects of Islamicate sexual history in eight articles. 

As a proud overanalyzer of popular history and the ways in which the past has been recorded in a hierarchical fashion, one of my favorite pieces in the entire collection was "The Past is a Foreign Country? The Times and Spaces of Islamicate Sexuality Studies." In the article, Valerie Traub discusses the tendency of Westernized scholarship to place other cultures, namely those in contrast to Western norms, on a separate temporal plane due to their "foreign" nature. In the piece, she enlightens readers on a common habit that recorders of history indulge in, which is the "first in Europe and then elsewhere" structure of time. She explains how this practice constructs a value system, which places European traditions and practices as the main lens with which to approach history, leaving all other cultures to act as subordinates in comparison. 

The pieces "A Handsome Boy Among Those Barbarous Turks: Cervantes's Muslims and the Art and Science of Desire" and "Cross-Dressing and Female Same-Sex Marriage in Medieval French and Arabic Literatures" explore the origins and manifestations of nontraditional sexual and social practices between members of already nontraditional cultural groups through influential sources of literature. The anthology, in general, provides meticulous investigation into the often subtle exhibitions of sexuality and gender variations in multiple time periods and locations such as Iran, Egypt, Syria, and Spain. The book weaves together intricate unspoken histories that illuminate the errors and blind spots of dominant assumptions on the realities of the "Muslim world," both past and present.

Although the Islamicate Sexualities may incite a sense of intellectual inadequacy for those not well-versed on the pedagogic representation of the Islamicate queer experience through the ages, I’d recommend it to anyone having done prior reading or research on the subject. Personally, my next step after tackling this mammoth compilation of intricate theoretical postulations is to retroactively seek out information on the topic that is layperson-friendly in preparation for a revelatory second stab at this collection.

Reviewed by Renee Leonowicz

Deerhoof – Offend Maggie

Kill Rock Stars

Some people find Deerhoof unlistenable, with sometimes manic, screeching vocals over strange instrumentation. Some critics think they're twee, and some think they’re the best of noise rock. Most cannot slap a genre label on this expectation-bending band. There is occasional yelling and human-made sound effects, "Beep beep!" You have no idea where the songs will go, or when they will end. The lyrics may not sound like English, and while they are, it is not guaranteed that they will make sense.

On Offend Maggie, Deerhoof are in their typical bizarre, hyperactive form. The production quality is through the roof, making this album perhaps more accessible than their earlier releases, though the madness of their style is retained. “Fresh Born” is a series of words associated with baby animals, repeated. "Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back" also has a repetitive chorus of, "Rebound! Rebound!" "This Is God Speaking," which can hardly be classified as a song, is a series of distorted, Charlie Brown adult-type sounds with some clanky piano notes covering the incomprehensible groans. Only one of the fourteen songs clocks in over four minutes, and the album artwork–a cover image of a faceless man wearing headphones, parallel black and white lines inside–is disturbing and wonderful.

Yet some of the tracks here are almost ballads, melodic at times, consistently beautiful if consistently weird. Opener "The Tears of Music and Love" lives somewhere in between avant-garde awkwardness and loving harmonies. "Purple Past" sounds like it could be found on any number of other indie rock records, save the stylings of Deerhoof's signature vocalist, Satomi Matsuzaki. "Family Of Others" is reminiscent of Animal Collective with its woodsy appeal and quick switches between crooning and staccato onomatopoeia. The title track is perhaps the most appealing song and even amid its goofy lyrics of "Ring ring! I hang up!" it remains almost quaint, switching between something lyre-like tinkling and heavy electric guitar.

If you suffer from migraines, hate strobe lights, and think noise rock is for annoying hipsters, you will likely hate Deerhoof. Offend Maggie is nevertheless their most enjoyable record to date, and it is some of the most approachable noise pop on the scene. 

Review by Brittany Shoot

Pearl Earrings with Mother of Pearl Accent

Designs by K at Etsy

One of the best fashion tips that I’ve ever received is: "Don’t waste money on real pearls. They are easily destroyed by perfume and makeup and the average person can’t tell the difference between fakes and the real thing." That’s one of the reasons that I selected a pair of inexpensive, handmade pearl drop earrings crafted by Designs by K. I was yearning for a classic pearl look, and the price was right. 

When you think of handmade, you may think, "Expensive!" Although the handmade pearl earrings looked great on the website, I cynically figured that I’d probably receive some cheesy looking pearl earrings that would make a Target special look like Saks Fifth Avenue. After all, what could I realistically expect from a pair of earrings that cost less than an average visit to the neighborhood Starbucks? Well, I was wrong! It really is possible to purchase adorable handmade jewelry without breaking the bank.

When I received my order, I was delighted to find a handsigned (!) thank you note from the designer along with the lovely (not cheap looking) pearls. Of course, the oversized white pearls aren’t real—but who is going to know? The $6.99 earrings are not too large or too small; they add a dash of stylish elegance to casual blouses and are an ideal accent for a basic black dress. They work as well with a funky blouse as they do with more mature fashions, and their classic design will never go out of style. 

K—also known as Kristin—offers a gorgeous two-strand matching pearl bracelet for $19.99 as well, which means that if you buy the earrings and bracelet together you’ll get lots of stylish mileage for less than $30. Designs by K convinced me that it really is possible to buy affordable handmade and stylish jewelry that won’t fall apart after one wearing. 

Review by Rachelle Nones

Timecrimes (Los Cronocrímenes)

Directed by Nacho Vigalondo

Magnolia Pictures

The novelty of the time bender film has more than worn off in the years following Memento. Countless copycats of the backwards thriller have come and gone without a fraction of its success, an indication that perhaps even the most innovative narrative device cannot woo audiences twice. But Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo, with his tale of a man who exists in four different places at once, may give what's now considered an outdated concept new life.

Timecrimes follows Hector (Karra Elejalde), a happily married man who has just moved into a new house with his wife Clara (Candela Fernández). The couple’s mid-renovation home is nestled in the country with an expansive wood as its backyard, a typical setting for a thriller. We are almost conditioned to expect any supernatural activity to come from within the house itself, but Vigalondo dodges such tropes early on. It is not until after Hector ventures into the woods that he stumbles upon a compound with a time machine and relives the same strange altercation four times, from four different perspectives.

With its themes of scattered identity and role playing, Timecrimes undoubtedly belongs to the Internet age. It is easy to see Hector’s repeated journey as a kind of video game where the player gets multiple lives and several chances at the same stage. The film also speaks to some of the film theory that began in the ‘60s and ‘70s, specifically that of the feminists; what first brings Hector into the woods is a naked woman he spies through the trees with a pair of binoculars. In his search for her, he is approached by a masked man who essentially punishes him for looking at her by stabbing him with a very phallic pair of scissors.

To reveal anymore about this encounter would give away too much, and it seems that what happens isn’t so important as the fact that it happens, over and over. Though Timecrimes is a genre film, Vigalondo’s argument for inevitability is universal. Even when Hector knows what’s about to happen and tries to stop it, he somehow ends up helping it occur. And when he intentionally tries to recreate it and screws up, it still ends up happening the exact same way. Although we get to see Hector’s surreal journey from four different angles, his destiny always persists. The film is, as a result, more than predictable, but it still manages to be quite compelling as both a sci-fi thriller and an allegory for something more mundane.

Review by Caitlin Graham

The Sea and Cake – Car Alarm

Thrill Jockey

The Sea and Cake are much as their name suggests: soothing and a bit sugary. On their eighth release, Car Alarm, I am reminded of the reasons for their longevity as a band and the many reasons they are dear to my ocean-loving, dessert-eating heart.

Perhaps you have experience with The Sea and Cake, snagging a copy of The Biz, Oui, or One Bedroom along the way. If you did, you no doubt know the comfortable truth about this band. After listening to a few tracks, it can be remarkably easy to grow accustomed to the S&C style, if for no other reason than their music all tends to sound very similar. This is due in large part to their consistent lineup; together since their beginning, a crowd of fellas (Prekop, Prewitt, McEntire, and Claridge, respectively) who run around Chicago with band members from Tortoise and other post-rock greats. The Sea and Cake men may not be wildly inventive as their collective career passes the fifteen-year mark, but they never were. They make solidly listenable records for a college radio crowd that got a little too old for Mogwai, a little too impatient for Guided By Voices.

Car Alarm is not a wailing, irritating screech in the night, but a soothing record for an adult dinner party. Much like their other albums, there are occasional standout tracks (“Car Alarm,” “On A Letter,” and “Weekend”) within the more mellow confines of another pop-jazz album.

I ended up at an Archer Prewitt solo show in Indianapolis in 2002, there on an invite from a music store manager who was hoping I’d attend to share his enthusiasm for the opening band, The Impossible Shapes. I hung with my frenetically leaping friend for a while and then sat down with a soda while Prewitt strummed and crooned. After the show, I worked my way up front and told Prewitt he hadn’t been the main draw for me, but that I was glad to have heard his new work. He seemed peeved by my honesty and stalked away with some groupies, but given the chance, I’d catch a full ensemble Sea and Cake show. I just wouldn’t bother trying to make small talk.

Review by Brittany Shoot

1st International Body Music Festival – Theatre Artaud: San Francisco (12/05/2008)

I love step teams, hand-clapping games, and beat-boxing. I even once had a plan to create a band out of fat people playing drumbeats on our stomachs (it was going to be called “Bongo Jam”), but I never thought of this as falling into a specific category of music. Body music, of course. I was lucky enough to attend the opening night performance of the first International Body Music Festival, an extravaganza of performances and workshops, which took place over a weekend in the Bay Area. The event covered a wide range of musical and dance styles and traditions, and was truly international with performers from the US, Brazil, Turkey, Bali, and Canada.

The immediacy of the body as an instrument means there is nothing to hide behind, for performers or audience members. The whole event was so visceral. I loved the way it interrupted the tendency of audience members to resign themselves to simply being spectators; the audience became involved, sometimes being called upon to breathe or snap in time, erupting into whoops and thunderous foot-stomping at the end of acts that moved us to really feel ourselves and our connection to our environment.

The soft, watery movements of the Turkish duo Kekeca played out over long cycles that don’t fit into 4/4 or other recognizable time signatures, offering a sinking in rather than a showing. The solid beats and goofy antics of French clowning duo Loop It, who made the kids in the audience shriek with laughter, elicited my delight when showcasing the various sounds made by hitting belly fat (Bongo Jam!). The Hambone tradition was revived and revitalized by Derique McGee. His hands moved so fast they were literally a blur, but never missed a beat. Interweaving melodies, jungle sounds, warrior games, and dazzling visual patterns were highlighted in a piece created specifically for this show by Dewa Putu Berata, a Balinese artist. And these are just some of the possibilities of body-as-instrument.