Continuing on with a tradition I've been enveloped in (in some unorganized fashion) for many a year and wrote about here more formally last year (in a co-blog with my lady buddy Melissa over at Comfortably Numb), it's time to watch the summer that barely was slip away to the tunes of the soundtrack it hath produced.
Like any good summer, there are one or two songs that are everywhere, and you either choose to embrace them or you exhaust yourself in your detestation of them as you attempt to gripe to anyone within earshot of said ubiquitous earworm every time it spins, which is at the top and bottom of each hour, if not even more frequently than that. Last year, of course, the track was "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, and in a summer filled with a lot of great songs, I added the guilty pleasure as a bonus cut to my list of a dozen songs that captivated my summer.
This year, for whatever reason, I've been captivated by far less. I don't know, necessarily, that this means that there weren't any good songs this summer. If nothing else, we had not one but two "songs of the summer" in Daft Punk's uncharacteristically organic "Get Lucky" and Robin Thicke's he-slut high water mark, "Blurred Lines." And yeah, I dug them both. But because my list is so thin this year, I've got to add both of these done-to-death tracks to my playlist. I'm just not feeling enough of much else. Some songs, like the ever-present radio staple "Clarity" by Zedd, have great lyrics but canned and uninventive of-the-moment production values pilfered from David Guetta. Most everything, it seems, is EDM lite, and I don't like EDM much at all, even in a watered down for pop radio form. Sigh.
Other songs piqued my interest but, for whatever reason, didn't entice me into repeat viewings, a criteria I think is a baseline requriement for granting a song an appearance on a list such as this one. I then eliminated songs like Fall Out Boy's "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light 'Em Up)," because my repeat listening of them was due to something other than my choice. In the case of that particular track, by the way, I heard it repeatedly as the theme music for the Blackhawks' latest Stanley Cup run, and thus can't hear the song without marrying it to images of ice hockey.
...and I'm too classy to include "Cruise" by Florida Georgia Line, though that's a summer song if ever there was one.
I've got three theories as to why I found this summers songs so, well, "meh." And I suspsect that the answer is a combination of all three:
1. This didn't feel like a summer, weather-wise. When the sun is out and the air is hot and you're walking around with sun glasses and bare feet, so many songs feel like a respite to the oppression of the humidity and a companion to the social gatherings. But this summer was unseasonably cold and frequently rainy. In fact, at my end-of-July birthday party last weekend, it was both (low-60s and rain). As such, the soundtrack seems to compliment the mood of the day, and if the mood is "blah," the soundtrack is sure to go all emo on you. And I can only speak for myself in saying that depressing and downbeat music requires me to be in a particular state of mind to enjoy, and that state of mind might occur regularly but it is nonetheless too fleeting to merit repeat listenings. As such, fewer songs stayed with me all summer long.
2. This was the summer of nostalgia. I helped to move my mom and grandma out of an 140-year-old farmhouse that has been in my family for over 60 years. I took days looking through boxes containing the remnants of my childhood. I turned 40. I made the weekend satellite radio countdowns on the 80s and 90s channels event listening every single weekend. It was almost inevitable that I would fail to maintain a pulse on what was current, and even friends like Melissa, who shot me YouTube links like daily vitamins, interspersed those offerings with vintage tracks in equal amounts. This was the summer of "I can't believe that song is 15 years old." 30 years ago, 1983, was a watershed year for some of the most iconic albums that shaped my sonic palate. My interest in current radio play was simply diminished, and for so many completely legitimate reasons.
3. I overloaded on Prince. I just get in these moods. After all, he is my number one obsession. And this summer, I listed to over a dozen episodes of the Peach and Black podcast, in which four Australian dudes who are probably a decade younger than me but have their Prince knowledge on lock go track-by-track through every Prince release and debate the songs, then rank the album as a whole. Each episode tips near the two-hour mark, and then I find myself spinning the discs again myself to come up with my own rankings. With my free time, I'm converting files of live shows from the summer, playing full concerts on my iPod while mowing the lawn or cleaning the house. Fortunately for me, there are at least a few new Prince songs circulating, which allowed me to add him to my list. I placed him first in an act of logic, as I listended to no single artist this summer more than Prince.
So here's my favorite new Prince track, along with some others that managed to rise above the mire of the meh and keep me coming back for more.
1. "The Breakdown" - Prince and 3rd Eye Girl
This week, Rolling Stone released a list called the 50 Greatest Live Acts right now. At the top of the list sits Bruce Springsteen, and you'll get no argument from me on that, having seen Bruce live and understanding with my own senses that the E Street Band is the single greatest live band in the world, able to turn on a dime to magnetically reproduce whatever Bruce or the audience throws at them. Bruce wins because he barely writes a set list; no other live act relies so heavily on what the audience wants to hear from night to night.
But second on the list, cutting off The Rolling Stones (yes, it's true!) is my Prince. Says Rolling Stone: 'he's never sounded better, his band 3rd Eye Girl is fire-hot and he's plundering his back catalog with a vengeance."
More than that, however, Prince is making new music with his all-girl band. Those tunes are said to be appearing on a forthcoming album called "Plectrum Electrum," but Prince is so busy showing up to play a few nights here and there and everywhere from Europe to Tempe, Arizona, that he hasn't confirmed a track list of new material yet, nor a release date. And since Prince can be super squirrelly when it comes to releasing new music on a schedule, he's left fans like myself to scramble on the Internet for breadcrumbs, such as his killer three-night stand at the Montreux Jazz Festival last month.
New songs like the alleged title track to his new album and the hard-pop "FixUrLifeUp" (the latter a legally downloadable track on iTunes) are great, but the hidden gem is "The Breakdown," a moody slow-burner that builds to a thunderous conclusion that defies the melancholy of the song's lyrics ("this could be the saddest story I've ever told"). There is no studio version available as of yet, but if you are clever enough, you can find some live recordings of the track. My favorite of these is the Montreux performance, where Prince fully deploys all three personas of his still-amazing singing voice: the silky falsetto, the throaty chest voice, and the 80s-era chicken scratch screams. With a piano featuring prominently in the mix, this song feels like a cousin to "Purple Rain" but also gives off a "November Rain" vibe. It's probably the song I've listened to the most in the last month.
2. "Mission Bells" by Matt Nathanson
Over a summery, percussive beat, Nathanson opens "Mission Bells" with the line, "I had a dream you died."
Um...what?
The lyric returns for the chorus as the full band comes in as sun-dipped harmonies are layered on. I'm still not sure if this the greatest slice of sonic irony or pop schadenfreude ever, but it's exactly the kind of warm-weather pop song I like to blast from the car stereo while I'm driving down the road with the windows open.
I've been a fan of Nathanson's since before he cracked Adult Top 40 radio with "Come On Get Higher," and his latest, called, "Last of the Great Pretenders," is likely to release him from our unknown-to-him contract as one of my best kept secrets. Nathanson's gift is truly his lyrics. His new disc opens with the line, "I'd kill anyone who treats you as bad as I do," and tells us in the chorus that "it feels like summer, but it's earthquake weather." But he also manages to tackle frank and emotionally complex ideas with a trademark pop production gloss that puts him at the front of the heap when it comes to male singer-songwriters of his type.
I'm starting to hear "Mission Bells" on the radio, particularly on Sirius-XM's The Spectrum, so I suspect that I'm just beginning to realize how much I enjoy this one. Few songs this summer were as instantly catchy to me as this.
3. "Royals" by Lorde
While half of America spent their free time with their eyes glued to their televisions to await the birth of Diana's grandson, I spent my free time with my ears glued to radio stations smart enough to play this sparse and sassy track from this 16-year-old from Down Under who rhapsodizes about the Windsor life over a low and echoey boom-chick beat and finger snaps.
I learned about "Royals" from college kids while rehearsing a production of "Jesus Christ Superstar" this summer; they were posting song lyrics as status updates on Facebook and talking about the song during rehearsals. Then, WXRT-Chicago started playing it...a lot. And before long, I have friends sending me links to the track.
I find it interesting that "Royals" is really the only song by a female singer that registered with me this summer. I don't know why that is. But this song is boss, with a slack vibe perfect for a leisurely drive or an evening sipping - well, Gray Goose - on your back patio, while also possessing enough bass to groove on the dancefloor at a house party. With only an EP currently available to support the song (and this is the best song on that EP, if you ask me), I am eagerly awaiting a full release from Lorde, and I'm expecting big things from this girl who makes music that feels wise beyond her years.
4. "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons
If "Royals" was my favorite indie song on the radio, than "Radioactive" was my favorite mainstream pop-rock track, though Imagine Dragons is still sitting precariously on the border between indie and mainstream themselves (though with more than one foot clearly planted on the mainstream side by now). It's my third song in a row that relies on heavy, pounding bass - an emerging theme on this year's list, which is something I hardly considered until now. This is one of those songs that I find myself banging my head and grooving to and yet have not quite learned the words despite the dozens of listens. But it's also one of those songs that everyone in my family likes, which is important from time to time.
5. "Back Seat Lover" by Mayer Hawthorne
Only Mayer Hawthorne earns a spot on back-to-back summer lists. This dude is one of my favorite guys out there right now. His last album, "How Do You Do," was all retro soul, and the single "The Walk" was then and still is one of my favorites from a great release. And now, as of just a few weeks ago, he's released the follow-up and with it, yet another new throwback sound. This one, "Where Does This Door Go," feels more like yacht rock than neo-soul. And though he's released two singles from the project already (showcasing his work with Pharrell, easily the producer of the summer), it's this album-opening track - heavily influenced by Steely Dan - that has kept me hitting the repeat button. With its cheeky lyric from the perspective of a guy who seems resigned to the fact that he's being asked to participate in a tryst, it's a great marriage of modern radio content and cool 70s jams.
6. "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell
I am not going to use my blog space to debate whether or not the lyrics of this song or either version of its video (nude or clothed) is "rape-y" (the WORST new term that seemed to magically appear this summer and one that was bandied about everywhere from "The Today Show" to the film "This Is the End"). I'm not going to decide here if these are the lyrics of the misogynist or if Thicke is a grade-A douche. What I will say is that I had two of Thicke's releases on my shelf prior to this release and this is, without a doubt, his breakout hit. It's THE sing-along song of the summer ("hey-hey-HEY!") and I've seen more people on the street trying to capture their inner R&B crooner while blasting this than any song in a long time. Billboard ranks this as the #1 song of the summer (three other tracks on my list appear on theirs), and only Daft Punk's single merits any debate in confirming its status as such.
In a time when Jay-Z can chart with a track that has the f-word in its title and artists like Macklemore (much as I love him) can get massive airplay for singles that are little more than aural swiss cheese after their profanities are muted, I find it shocking that people who hate this song seem to forget that 20 years ago, they were running on treadmills to Janet Jackson's "If," watching the music video on a channel called MTV that used to play music videos - that one featuring dance routines that just barely counted as dancing vs. clothed sex. Yes, I've sheepishly changed the channel when this song comes on and my kids are in the back seat, just as I've done so with Bruno Mars' "Locked Out of Heaven" and its obvious references to not getting any sex and the feelings a woman's sex gives to a man. But I'm not going to sit here and lie and tell you that I don't think it has THE groove of the summer. This song brought the party to the summer of 2013, and that's saying something, considering there wasn't much of a party to speak of without it.
7. "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk
Though its lyrics clearly make it pop radio's cousin to "Blurred Lines," it's the shockingly non-computerized technique employed by French dance duo Daft Punk to create this track's groove that garner the most attention. Buoyed by some licks from the incomparable Nile Rodgers, I love "Get Lucky" because it's NOT an EDM track in a summer where it seems every dance track is a slave to the genre. This is made significantly more confounding by the fact that Daft Punk are essentially the building blocks of the very genre that is now popular; they seem to have abandoned it with "Random Access Memories" just as it's hitting its commercial peak. Kudos, Daft Punk. For this, I love you even more. And not even the fact that a Chicago DJ repeatedly swears on air that they are singing "Mexican Monkey" can dampen my love for you or this song.
8. "Mirrors" by Justin Timberlake
The album version of this track - the best one from "The 20/20 Experience" - is a balsy eight minutes-plus. It eventually morphs and contorts into something else within the album's sequencing, and I have to be honest in saying that JT's latest isn't generating the heat on my stereo that "Futuresex/Lovesounds" did. All of that being said, I'd put "Mirrors" right up there with any of his best songs, and if I debated whether or not this song was even too old to make my summer list, it's probably because it dominated the front half of my summer. I played it over and over in the car. It was probably the first song on this list that I fully memorized. Though I've grown a tad weary of it by now, it's still a first-rate production. And I'm excited to hear that JT isn't done, having just released "Take Back the Night," a funky MJ rip-off, as a precursor to a follow-up sequel disc to be released this fall.
9. "Diane Young" by Vampire Weekend
I don't know much about Vampire Weekend, but when I do listen to the "regular" radio, it's Chicago's WXRT. And they have played the hell out of this song this summer. I like the word play with the title and the lyrics and the songs almost rockabilly groove. It's made for great dishwashing music. But beyond that, I don't know what to say about it!
My list is supposed to have a dozen tracks, but truthfully, that's all I've got. I considered padding that list with a few songs I like, but thought better of defying my criteria, and the repeat listening just wasn't there for these songs, though I'm listing them hear to identify additional tunes I'm enjoying:
"Second Chances" by Gregory Alan Isakov (very Dylanesque, a free download on iTunes a few weeks back)
"Coming Home" by Dharma Protocol (the name of Boy George's new band, and it's great to hear him again, even if this song is sonically identical to George Michael's "White Light," which appeared on my list last year)
So...that's all I've got. If I was to include old songs that have recaptured my attention, I'd be adding David Bowie's "Last Dance," a song I play almost daily after having rediscovered Stevie Ray Vaughn's stacatto guitar licks peppered throughout the track. Or "Gethsemane" from "Jesus Christ Superstar," which provided me with the most emotionally visceral moments of my summer. But that's not what this list was for. In any case, it's time to wrap-up a musically lackluster summer and prepare for fall, which, if it ends up containing the long-gestating and rumored new albums from U2 and Prince, is going to be the greatest song season in the history of all mankind.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Summer Reading: this time, it's personal
I envision that perfect summer days would look like this: I would rise, fully-refreshed, at 6 in the morning, and then head downstairs to put on a pot of coffee. I'd then take a "Friends"-sized mug o' joe out onto my back porch with one of the books listed below, where I'd stay until approximately 9 a.m. or so, at which time I'd retreat into the house to begin the day's activities of cleaning and, inevitably chauffeuring my children around to Camp I-Can't-Believe-This-Costs-$350...It's-Glorified-Recess. I'd take mid-day breaks from the monotony for 90-minute workouts at the health club in preparation for the unveiling of my newly-taught, age defying body at my 40th birthday party, then prepare a Weight Watchers-friendly meal on the bug-free and impeccably-gardened back patio before retreating to the living room or local multiplex for a TV show binge or film of the day before retreating to bed.
Ha ha ha ha...
Some of my fantasy can and will come true. I will be shuttling my kids to all sorts of camps, and I can have a book under my arm for those moments sitting in the car waiting for them. And you can bet your ass there will be coffee involved. But the rest? Well, if the first week of summer is any indication, it's not gonna happen. So I'll control what I can control, which is to attempt to sprinkle in some summer reading in between required preparation for the coming school year (see my last list). If time can even remotely permit, here's what I want to be reading for my own enjoyment...
1) "Life After Life" by Kate Atkinson. I bought this book about a month ago when Atkinson came to Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville. I had not read any of her stuff before, though I'd heard of her and her strong fan base. Known for her unusual plotting, this book features a main character who dies in the first chapter at birth and then, in the second chapter, is born again under slightly altered circumstances and lives just a little longer, and so on. Recommended by Stephen King, I was sucked in to this book as I began reading it while waiting for Atkinson to make her book store appearance, then charmed by her visit. After being sidelined from reading by the end of the school year, this is the first book I want to read for my own enjoyment.
2) "VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave" by Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter and Martha Quinn. No joke... I have spent every Saturday for the past few months tuning into the Big 80s countdown on Sirius-XM's 80s on 8 channel. I swear that listening to this has had youth-restoring powers for me, and I'm so obsessed that I once forced my wife to remain in a parked car before entering a restaurant so that I could find out what was number one back in 1984 for that mid-May week. Though my incessant listening to the music of my youth, I learned of this work, a collection of memories by the original MTV veejays (rest in piece, J.J. Jackson), and promptly ordered my copy on Amazon. Can't wait to read it! This will be a fun, mindless escape for me in a summer filled with heavy stuff.
3) "The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers. This book hit my radar months ago as I read reviews that called it the first great novel written about the war in Iraq. I tend to be a sucker for first time novelists, as I aspire to one day be one myself, and I have been excited to read this. Since that time, it's been added to our 11th grade English curriculum. And though I don't teach that class, I am eager to read this book.
4) "The Cineaste: Poems" by A. Van Jordan. Poetry about "Do the Right Thing," "Oldboy" and "Blazing Saddles"? Are you shitting me? This actually exists? Say no more...I'm in.
5) "Middle Men: Stories" by Jim Gavin. About "a group of men, from young dreamers to old vets" who "make valiant forays into middle-class respectability." The description on Amazon says that the characters in this book are "caught half way between their dreams and the often crushing reality of their lives." My favorite subject. This should satisfy my fix for Tom Perrotta-like suburban male fodder, my guilty pleasure. Or, perhaps, my underlying need, as I continue to gravitate toward works like this as I fight with my never-ending daddy issues.
6) "& Sons" by David Gilbert. This book comes out a few days before my birthday and when I read about it in a magazine (probably Entertainment Weekly), I immediately pre-ordered it so that it would just appear on my doorstep as a present to myself. John Irving, my favorite modern American author, is raving about this book, the story of a reclusive novelist who returns home to eulogize an old friend and sets out to repair his own relationships. I've seen it compared to Franzen and Irving, and I don't need any more information than that to know that it's a must-read for me!
7) "Superman: Red Son" by Mark Millar. Henry Cavill said that this was one of three graphic novels he used as inspiration for his character for "Man of Steel." What if Superman had landed on Earth in Cold War-era Russia instead of farmland middle America? The premise is too good to pass up, and I'll need something to temper my Superman fever this summer. I've just recently finished reading J. Michael Straczynski's "Superman: Earth One" and "Earth One: Volume 2."
8) "Life Itself: A Memoir" by Roger Ebert. Maybe, just maybe, I'm approaching a place where I can pick this book up again without sobbing after every fifth page in mourning for the loss of one of my heroes.
9) "Night Film" by Marisha Pessl. Because Entertainment Weekly told me to read it. And every summer, I read at least one of their recommendations. I'm not a big mystery reader, but this looks trendy and hip and shocking and cool. It won't arrive until late August, so I'll be following the buzz until it arrives.
10) "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo. I tacked this one on to the end of my list because I'm already about a third of the way through this book but it is so dense that I think I need to start over and try again, as I did earlier this summer with "The Great Gatsby." This book is actually on the approved list for my sophomore class but seems so dense and depressing that I'm not sure I'd be able to use it. One of my friends who read it says that Boo's depiction of Mumbai makes Kotlowitz's Chicago in "There Are No Children Here" look like Dubai. Depressing, but also amazingly researched and written, from what I've experienced so far.
For the record, I reserve the right to replace anything on this list with anything else that strikes my fancy at any moment, including the various books sitting on my Kindle app on the iPad that I keep forgetting about as I continue to purchase physical books with prejudice, and the weekly supply of DC Comics I pick up every Wednesday from the comic book shop down the block. In other words, don't hold me to any of this!
Ha ha ha ha...
Some of my fantasy can and will come true. I will be shuttling my kids to all sorts of camps, and I can have a book under my arm for those moments sitting in the car waiting for them. And you can bet your ass there will be coffee involved. But the rest? Well, if the first week of summer is any indication, it's not gonna happen. So I'll control what I can control, which is to attempt to sprinkle in some summer reading in between required preparation for the coming school year (see my last list). If time can even remotely permit, here's what I want to be reading for my own enjoyment...
1) "Life After Life" by Kate Atkinson. I bought this book about a month ago when Atkinson came to Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville. I had not read any of her stuff before, though I'd heard of her and her strong fan base. Known for her unusual plotting, this book features a main character who dies in the first chapter at birth and then, in the second chapter, is born again under slightly altered circumstances and lives just a little longer, and so on. Recommended by Stephen King, I was sucked in to this book as I began reading it while waiting for Atkinson to make her book store appearance, then charmed by her visit. After being sidelined from reading by the end of the school year, this is the first book I want to read for my own enjoyment.
2) "VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave" by Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter and Martha Quinn. No joke... I have spent every Saturday for the past few months tuning into the Big 80s countdown on Sirius-XM's 80s on 8 channel. I swear that listening to this has had youth-restoring powers for me, and I'm so obsessed that I once forced my wife to remain in a parked car before entering a restaurant so that I could find out what was number one back in 1984 for that mid-May week. Though my incessant listening to the music of my youth, I learned of this work, a collection of memories by the original MTV veejays (rest in piece, J.J. Jackson), and promptly ordered my copy on Amazon. Can't wait to read it! This will be a fun, mindless escape for me in a summer filled with heavy stuff.
3) "The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers. This book hit my radar months ago as I read reviews that called it the first great novel written about the war in Iraq. I tend to be a sucker for first time novelists, as I aspire to one day be one myself, and I have been excited to read this. Since that time, it's been added to our 11th grade English curriculum. And though I don't teach that class, I am eager to read this book.
4) "The Cineaste: Poems" by A. Van Jordan. Poetry about "Do the Right Thing," "Oldboy" and "Blazing Saddles"? Are you shitting me? This actually exists? Say no more...I'm in.
5) "Middle Men: Stories" by Jim Gavin. About "a group of men, from young dreamers to old vets" who "make valiant forays into middle-class respectability." The description on Amazon says that the characters in this book are "caught half way between their dreams and the often crushing reality of their lives." My favorite subject. This should satisfy my fix for Tom Perrotta-like suburban male fodder, my guilty pleasure. Or, perhaps, my underlying need, as I continue to gravitate toward works like this as I fight with my never-ending daddy issues.
6) "& Sons" by David Gilbert. This book comes out a few days before my birthday and when I read about it in a magazine (probably Entertainment Weekly), I immediately pre-ordered it so that it would just appear on my doorstep as a present to myself. John Irving, my favorite modern American author, is raving about this book, the story of a reclusive novelist who returns home to eulogize an old friend and sets out to repair his own relationships. I've seen it compared to Franzen and Irving, and I don't need any more information than that to know that it's a must-read for me!
7) "Superman: Red Son" by Mark Millar. Henry Cavill said that this was one of three graphic novels he used as inspiration for his character for "Man of Steel." What if Superman had landed on Earth in Cold War-era Russia instead of farmland middle America? The premise is too good to pass up, and I'll need something to temper my Superman fever this summer. I've just recently finished reading J. Michael Straczynski's "Superman: Earth One" and "Earth One: Volume 2."
8) "Life Itself: A Memoir" by Roger Ebert. Maybe, just maybe, I'm approaching a place where I can pick this book up again without sobbing after every fifth page in mourning for the loss of one of my heroes.
9) "Night Film" by Marisha Pessl. Because Entertainment Weekly told me to read it. And every summer, I read at least one of their recommendations. I'm not a big mystery reader, but this looks trendy and hip and shocking and cool. It won't arrive until late August, so I'll be following the buzz until it arrives.
10) "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo. I tacked this one on to the end of my list because I'm already about a third of the way through this book but it is so dense that I think I need to start over and try again, as I did earlier this summer with "The Great Gatsby." This book is actually on the approved list for my sophomore class but seems so dense and depressing that I'm not sure I'd be able to use it. One of my friends who read it says that Boo's depiction of Mumbai makes Kotlowitz's Chicago in "There Are No Children Here" look like Dubai. Depressing, but also amazingly researched and written, from what I've experienced so far.
For the record, I reserve the right to replace anything on this list with anything else that strikes my fancy at any moment, including the various books sitting on my Kindle app on the iPad that I keep forgetting about as I continue to purchase physical books with prejudice, and the weekly supply of DC Comics I pick up every Wednesday from the comic book shop down the block. In other words, don't hold me to any of this!
My summer must-reads (and I mean that in the literal sense)
One exciting aspect of writing a new English department (well, okay, "Communication Arts" department) curriculum has been serving on the committee making the choices of everything from what district assessments will look like to the much more exciting decision of which books will be approved for each grade level to read. The process involved a tragic slashing of the dead white males of the literary canon, thanks to a modern belief that we should be teaching the skills, not particular works. I have strong feelings about that, knowing full well that kids aren't going to pick up Steinbeck just because they have the skills to do so, but I'll keep politics out of this particular post and focus on the task at hand, which is to tell you about what I'll be reading this summer.
The Common Core curriculum, as formed by the PARCC assessment team our district is following, requires that about half of the year-long curriculum be informational/nonfiction texts and the other half be fiction, including world literature. In other words, even in my year-long sophomore journalism class, I'll be teaching a minimum of two extended works of fiction. That will explain why most of what you'll see on this list is actually nonfiction, where I'll be placing greater emphasis and where I'll even be affording my students more choice at various times during the year.
1) "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr. I'm actually excited to read this one, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize a few years ago and a work that I fear will confirm my suspicions that our kids don't understand research or even the concept of cheating today because of the convenience of Google. If I end up liking this book as much as I like the idea of it, I will probably end up teaching it next year.
2) "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach. Described by many as an odd choice for reading that you'll be surprised you're so engrossed in (and grossed-in) once you decide to pick it up, I've heard great things about this and have even witnessed reading-averse students stay engaged in this one.
3) "Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won" by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim. Why do all nonfiction books have subtitles? In any case, this book looks like "Freakonomics" crossed with sports. I'm curious to see how it destroys my love of any games I currently love.
4) "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah. Color me embarrassed, but I never did pick up a copy of this one and read it, even as I brushed past it on countless Starbucks counters. Apparently my jonesin' for a grande skinny iced hazelnut latte won out over my desire to absorb the atrocities of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, but I will correct this amoral decision making in the coming weeks.
5) "Dead Man Walking" by Sister Helen Prejean. Not sure how I can escape memories of the fantastic film when I read this, especially when the cover of my copy has Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn on it, but I'm told that the book is actually quite different from the film, so I'm looking forward to seeing how this is the case.
6) "Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich. As with "A Long Way Gone," this is already a staple work of nonfiction in school classrooms and a source of embarrassment for me, not having read it yet. It seems to me that it will occupy similar space in my mind to Alex Kotlowitz' "There Are No Children Here," and I'm already nervous that a lot of what I'll read will feel by now outdated, seeing as how this was written in 2001. But my 10th anniversary edition copy has a new afterword! So we'll see...
7) "The Fiddler in the Subway" by Gene Weingarten. I'm cheating a bit by putting this book on the list in the sense that I was the one who got the title approved for this class and have already read most of it, though not all. Written by one of the most fantastic feature newspaper writers in America, the two-time Pulitzer-winning writer for the Washington Post collects his favorite works here, including the piece after which this book is titled, a must-read for all people who believe in the power and beauty of the arts and the result of a social experiment conducted by Weingarten and violinist Joshua Bell, in which the virtuoso dressed as a peasant and played his Stradavarias outside of a D.C. subway station for handouts to see if people would stop to appreciate beautiful music. But just as good, I think, is his piece called "The Great Zucchini," about a child-party entertainer who takes spoiled kids off the hands of their rich and entitled suburban mothers for hundreds of dollars during the day and returns at night to his unfurnished apartment, his money sent directly to pay off his substantial gambling debts.
8) "One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko." One of the true masters of newspaper writing, period. I'll be fishing for pieces from this collection to use at various points during my class as I do currently with pieces by Studs Terkel, who wrote the forward for this collection.
9) "The Elements of Journalism" by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil. This one is a reread. I originally received it as a gift from a student and was instantly drawn to its careful research and clear organization. I like the book so much that I got it approved for this year and am requiring all of my incoming sophomores to read it over the summer, so I'll be rereading it as well.
10) "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare. How do I teach the Scottish play in a journalism context? That's what I'll be working out in my head as I reread one of my absolute favorite works by Willie. Somehow, the connection between political deception and corrupt power struggles and the modern world seems ripe for the picking.
Now that I've written this, I must end with a question. How in the hell am I going to get all of this read?
The Common Core curriculum, as formed by the PARCC assessment team our district is following, requires that about half of the year-long curriculum be informational/nonfiction texts and the other half be fiction, including world literature. In other words, even in my year-long sophomore journalism class, I'll be teaching a minimum of two extended works of fiction. That will explain why most of what you'll see on this list is actually nonfiction, where I'll be placing greater emphasis and where I'll even be affording my students more choice at various times during the year.
1) "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr. I'm actually excited to read this one, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize a few years ago and a work that I fear will confirm my suspicions that our kids don't understand research or even the concept of cheating today because of the convenience of Google. If I end up liking this book as much as I like the idea of it, I will probably end up teaching it next year.
2) "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach. Described by many as an odd choice for reading that you'll be surprised you're so engrossed in (and grossed-in) once you decide to pick it up, I've heard great things about this and have even witnessed reading-averse students stay engaged in this one.
3) "Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won" by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim. Why do all nonfiction books have subtitles? In any case, this book looks like "Freakonomics" crossed with sports. I'm curious to see how it destroys my love of any games I currently love.
4) "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah. Color me embarrassed, but I never did pick up a copy of this one and read it, even as I brushed past it on countless Starbucks counters. Apparently my jonesin' for a grande skinny iced hazelnut latte won out over my desire to absorb the atrocities of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, but I will correct this amoral decision making in the coming weeks.
5) "Dead Man Walking" by Sister Helen Prejean. Not sure how I can escape memories of the fantastic film when I read this, especially when the cover of my copy has Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn on it, but I'm told that the book is actually quite different from the film, so I'm looking forward to seeing how this is the case.
6) "Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich. As with "A Long Way Gone," this is already a staple work of nonfiction in school classrooms and a source of embarrassment for me, not having read it yet. It seems to me that it will occupy similar space in my mind to Alex Kotlowitz' "There Are No Children Here," and I'm already nervous that a lot of what I'll read will feel by now outdated, seeing as how this was written in 2001. But my 10th anniversary edition copy has a new afterword! So we'll see...
7) "The Fiddler in the Subway" by Gene Weingarten. I'm cheating a bit by putting this book on the list in the sense that I was the one who got the title approved for this class and have already read most of it, though not all. Written by one of the most fantastic feature newspaper writers in America, the two-time Pulitzer-winning writer for the Washington Post collects his favorite works here, including the piece after which this book is titled, a must-read for all people who believe in the power and beauty of the arts and the result of a social experiment conducted by Weingarten and violinist Joshua Bell, in which the virtuoso dressed as a peasant and played his Stradavarias outside of a D.C. subway station for handouts to see if people would stop to appreciate beautiful music. But just as good, I think, is his piece called "The Great Zucchini," about a child-party entertainer who takes spoiled kids off the hands of their rich and entitled suburban mothers for hundreds of dollars during the day and returns at night to his unfurnished apartment, his money sent directly to pay off his substantial gambling debts.
8) "One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko." One of the true masters of newspaper writing, period. I'll be fishing for pieces from this collection to use at various points during my class as I do currently with pieces by Studs Terkel, who wrote the forward for this collection.
9) "The Elements of Journalism" by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosensteil. This one is a reread. I originally received it as a gift from a student and was instantly drawn to its careful research and clear organization. I like the book so much that I got it approved for this year and am requiring all of my incoming sophomores to read it over the summer, so I'll be rereading it as well.
10) "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare. How do I teach the Scottish play in a journalism context? That's what I'll be working out in my head as I reread one of my absolute favorite works by Willie. Somehow, the connection between political deception and corrupt power struggles and the modern world seems ripe for the picking.
Now that I've written this, I must end with a question. How in the hell am I going to get all of this read?
Summer reads make me feel fine...blowing through the jasmine in my mind
I am never one to make my reading ambitions public, largely because I am a slow reader. I love language itself far too much to blast through paper wedges in an otherwise joyless effort to uncover plot details.
Case in point: In April, I decided I would read "The Great Gatsby" again in preparation for seeing the film. Thanks to Baz Luhrmann, my dirty little secret was out - the fact that I've been an English teacher for 13 years but had not read this staple of English curriculum since I myself was a junior in high school. That's right kids...never taught it, never touched it since a year that started with a 19. So I snatched my pristine and unannotated paperback from its spot on my office shelves prior to a flight to San Francisco in late April. "This thing isn't even 200 pages! Surely I will read it this weekend!" I told myself. To ensure that this would happen, I brought only one other book along with me.
The other book was the latest by comic essayist David Sedaris, called "Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls." And certain that it would contain copious amounts of wit and humor, the new hardcover all but vibrated in the bag between my feet as I sat wedged in my seat reading "Gatsby." Not 40 pages in, I turned to my traveling companion, a fellow English teacher in my department and one who does teach the novel on a regular basis, and remarked how I was shocked to discover that not much happened in the novel in the first three chapters. "Chapter four," she assured me. "That's when it all takes off." Distracted now by puffy clouds, snoring co-passengers in our airborne tube, and a nagging fear that I might not find "Gatsby" to be as charmed and wonderful as everyone else whose opinion I treasure, I stuffed the book in my bag and removed the Sedaris. I then proceeded to scarf it down in one sitting, laughing so hard out loud at times that I woke up sleeping passengers and drew attention to myself.
I returned home and shared my "Gatsby" failure with co-workers. The two teachers I work with whom I consider to be the biggest "Gatsby" experts told me to just start over. "It's well-written," I said, "but I don't feel like anything is happening!" Literary mojo, zapped. Web address to Spark Notes, typed in the browser and ready to hit enter.
Cut to the first day of my summer vacation. I get up to an empty house, brew some coffee, and sit down with "Gatsby" once more, removing the bookmark and slapping it on the coffee table. The film has been out for over a month now, and reviews have varied wildly. I'm sure to hate it now, I tell myself, but I'm still not going to see it until I've reread the book. And so it begins that the task of reading has become just that, a task. A job. A requirement. And summer reading should not feel like "a requirement." (If I haven't bored you yet and you keep reading, you'll see that, unfortunately, much of this summer's reading will be the result of "requirements.")
But this time, something magical happened. I took the first chapter as slowly as I've read anything, this time becoming deeply absorbed in the language, stopping only to slap myself for thinking that there was nothing happening in the early pages the last time I tried reading. Of course there was something happening! I just wasn't in the right space to receive it! To make a long story short, I finished "Gatsby" this morning, after taking the book in morning-reading chunks for four days. And best of all, I found it to be quite wonderful. I wanted to rush straight into a summer school classroom to discuss it, regardless of the fact that I would likely be the only one there who would have read it. I feel like a true English teacher again.
And not a moment too soon, because a challenge from my bestie over at Uncomfortably Numb to start hitting the keys for the summer began with her post about summer reading, a topic I met with dread because for the most part, this summer's reading for me will be mostly born of necessity, rather than the traditional summer raison d'etre, pleasure. This is because our school district has decided to wipe out its existing curriculum and start over, leaving me in the stressful-yet-oddly-exciting position of having a stack of books to read or reread in preparation for teaching them in the coming year. To further entice us, our district was nice enough to allow us to choose any ten books from our approved grade band list and provide us with new copies of them. Running into the department breakroom to pick up the books when they came felt like a robbery at Barnes and Nobel. It was a glorious moment, followed by the oh-shit truth of the matter - I have to read all of this!
So I'm providing two lists here, but I'm putting them in separate posts because I write too much! The first is a list of everything I have to read for my job in preparation for the coming year. They are not all books that I will have to teach, but they are all books approved for the new curriculum for sophomore English, and so I will either be teaching them or choosing from among them.
The second list is my "true" summer reading list...the one I have for myself. In between moments of required reading and catching up on movies I've missed, I hope to chip away at this list. Whatever I can't get to is going to stay there into the fall, I can assure you.
My journey as a reader can be summed up nicely by what I've written here. I have to be in a mood. I have to have multiple books going at once. I have to choose the flavor I want that day, or choose not to partake when something else holds more interest for me. I have to start pages over, chapters over, entire books over. All of my literary friends read circles around me. It's frustrating, but I have to accept it. If I didn't, I'd probably have given up on "The Great Gatsby" as a boring book in which nothing happens. And I would have lived secretly with great shame, not to mention some incorrect memories of how the book ends.
Case in point: In April, I decided I would read "The Great Gatsby" again in preparation for seeing the film. Thanks to Baz Luhrmann, my dirty little secret was out - the fact that I've been an English teacher for 13 years but had not read this staple of English curriculum since I myself was a junior in high school. That's right kids...never taught it, never touched it since a year that started with a 19. So I snatched my pristine and unannotated paperback from its spot on my office shelves prior to a flight to San Francisco in late April. "This thing isn't even 200 pages! Surely I will read it this weekend!" I told myself. To ensure that this would happen, I brought only one other book along with me.
The other book was the latest by comic essayist David Sedaris, called "Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls." And certain that it would contain copious amounts of wit and humor, the new hardcover all but vibrated in the bag between my feet as I sat wedged in my seat reading "Gatsby." Not 40 pages in, I turned to my traveling companion, a fellow English teacher in my department and one who does teach the novel on a regular basis, and remarked how I was shocked to discover that not much happened in the novel in the first three chapters. "Chapter four," she assured me. "That's when it all takes off." Distracted now by puffy clouds, snoring co-passengers in our airborne tube, and a nagging fear that I might not find "Gatsby" to be as charmed and wonderful as everyone else whose opinion I treasure, I stuffed the book in my bag and removed the Sedaris. I then proceeded to scarf it down in one sitting, laughing so hard out loud at times that I woke up sleeping passengers and drew attention to myself.
I returned home and shared my "Gatsby" failure with co-workers. The two teachers I work with whom I consider to be the biggest "Gatsby" experts told me to just start over. "It's well-written," I said, "but I don't feel like anything is happening!" Literary mojo, zapped. Web address to Spark Notes, typed in the browser and ready to hit enter.
Cut to the first day of my summer vacation. I get up to an empty house, brew some coffee, and sit down with "Gatsby" once more, removing the bookmark and slapping it on the coffee table. The film has been out for over a month now, and reviews have varied wildly. I'm sure to hate it now, I tell myself, but I'm still not going to see it until I've reread the book. And so it begins that the task of reading has become just that, a task. A job. A requirement. And summer reading should not feel like "a requirement." (If I haven't bored you yet and you keep reading, you'll see that, unfortunately, much of this summer's reading will be the result of "requirements.")
But this time, something magical happened. I took the first chapter as slowly as I've read anything, this time becoming deeply absorbed in the language, stopping only to slap myself for thinking that there was nothing happening in the early pages the last time I tried reading. Of course there was something happening! I just wasn't in the right space to receive it! To make a long story short, I finished "Gatsby" this morning, after taking the book in morning-reading chunks for four days. And best of all, I found it to be quite wonderful. I wanted to rush straight into a summer school classroom to discuss it, regardless of the fact that I would likely be the only one there who would have read it. I feel like a true English teacher again.
And not a moment too soon, because a challenge from my bestie over at Uncomfortably Numb to start hitting the keys for the summer began with her post about summer reading, a topic I met with dread because for the most part, this summer's reading for me will be mostly born of necessity, rather than the traditional summer raison d'etre, pleasure. This is because our school district has decided to wipe out its existing curriculum and start over, leaving me in the stressful-yet-oddly-exciting position of having a stack of books to read or reread in preparation for teaching them in the coming year. To further entice us, our district was nice enough to allow us to choose any ten books from our approved grade band list and provide us with new copies of them. Running into the department breakroom to pick up the books when they came felt like a robbery at Barnes and Nobel. It was a glorious moment, followed by the oh-shit truth of the matter - I have to read all of this!
So I'm providing two lists here, but I'm putting them in separate posts because I write too much! The first is a list of everything I have to read for my job in preparation for the coming year. They are not all books that I will have to teach, but they are all books approved for the new curriculum for sophomore English, and so I will either be teaching them or choosing from among them.
The second list is my "true" summer reading list...the one I have for myself. In between moments of required reading and catching up on movies I've missed, I hope to chip away at this list. Whatever I can't get to is going to stay there into the fall, I can assure you.
My journey as a reader can be summed up nicely by what I've written here. I have to be in a mood. I have to have multiple books going at once. I have to choose the flavor I want that day, or choose not to partake when something else holds more interest for me. I have to start pages over, chapters over, entire books over. All of my literary friends read circles around me. It's frustrating, but I have to accept it. If I didn't, I'd probably have given up on "The Great Gatsby" as a boring book in which nothing happens. And I would have lived secretly with great shame, not to mention some incorrect memories of how the book ends.
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