Contra iPad
I must say that this screed contra the iPad largely records my own (admittedly prejudicial) misgivings; and therefore, I'm giving it time here on my blog.
How we feel Is an illusion we choose
Popular posts from this blog
Another Queen of Night
I post this because whenever I recommend to anyone the Queen of Night, I always recommend it in the Lucia Popp rendition. It's a matter of personal taste, but what I love about this is that it is somewhat slower than the other versions and as a result, it would seem to me somewhat more difficult to perform and sustain--those high notes in which the Queen's voice becomes the Magic Flute itself are rounded, full, and deep while remaining light and airy. I have read some rather severe criticism of this ritardando; and while it may or may not reflect Mozart's intent, it is certainly within the options for staging. It creates a real vocal showpiece from what is already a magnificent example of same. It really is an amazing example of a virtuoso composition sung by a virtuoso voice. All of which should not be taken to mean that I do not truly appreciate the version posted earlier by Diana Damrau, it's just nice to see what a difference tempo can make. I think we can take
Angel Time--Anne Rice
Review copy received 11/04/09 From the time of its announcement, I had been looking forward to this new book by Anne Rice. As I say in every review, I am not a die-hard Anne Rice fan. I found Interview with a Vampire interesting and intriguing, but in hindsight, must lay much of the responsibility of the current vampire as victim and love-object obsession at its feet. After that, I had no patience with her writing until Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. In that book I observed a kind of control and authorial voice that I had not seen in any of the books I had sampled since Interview . So too with Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. Perhaps because of the subject matter, perhaps for other reasons, these two books seemed to witness a level of control of language and story that the other books did not. Gone were messy florid passages that lavished two, three, four paragraphs on the description of the lace and flounce of a jabot. These new books were spare, polished, poetic. The
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting to me, though I am not an ereader, because my son just bought an ipod touch with his birthday/chore money - not enough for the ipad (bad name a turnoff), but enough left over to get a few apps and downloads. I have yet to use an ereader, not being enough of a airline/subway traveler to get my money's worth out of one, in addition to being too cheap: will libraries eventually "loan" ebooks? - but find that on days like today, when I log 82 miles in the car while kidtaxiing, that I love having audio books around, and the ipod is perfect for those, especially with so many free options from sites like librivox. But audiobooks are hard to revisit, and I've no idea how you interact with ebooks - can you mark pages that you want to remember? (I like to fold corners and checkmark passages in paper books)
ReplyDeleteAlso interesting - the link to the Yann Martel interview at the bottom of the page. Only I wish he pronounced "Beatrice" like one of my college professors, Italian style: "Bay-a-tree-chay." Sounds prettier.
Dear Emily,
ReplyDeleteYes, you can bookmark e-books. And, by the way, I can borrow e-books from my library for a span of three weeks. Not for Kindle and other appliances, but date sensitive PDFs nonetheless. The era is upon us whether or not we're ready for it.
shalom,
Steven