InDigest Picks

Books:
Juliet, Nakedby Nick Hornby [Riverhead]
+ I wanted to try and explain the plot of this book, but the more I read the less I understood.

This is the product description from Amazon:
"Annie loves Duncan-or thinks she does. Duncan loves Annie, but then, all of a sudden, he doesn't. Duncan really loves Tucker Crowe, a reclusive Dylanish singer-songwriter who stopped making music ten years ago. Annie stops loving Duncan, and starts getting her own life.

In doing so, she initiates an e-mail correspondence with Tucker, and a connection is forged between two lonely people who are looking for more out of what they've got. Tucker's been languishing (and he's unnervingly aware of it)[...]redemption[...]life[...]emotional[...]artistic[...] But then there's also the new material he's about to release to the world: an acoustic, stripped-down version of his greatest album, Juliet-entitled, Juliet, Naked." I'm so confused already. But Nick Hornby's awesome, so...

The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)edited by Otto Penzler [Vintage]
+ Editor Otto Penzler (Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps) collects over 80 vampire stories in this volume. With the return of vampire chic this collection doubles as some cool literature that you won't find in that Norton you have left over from college or a great gift for your Twilight watching nephew or niece. The collection includes stories from Edgar Allen Poe, Lord Byron, Stephen King (I see you're not surprised), Clive Barker, Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ambroce Bierce, D.H. Lawrence and many more. This collection actually has some wonderful literary works about vampires, which is good; it will nicely augment that copy of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies sitting on your coffee table.

Poetry:
Museum of Accidentsby Rachel Zucker [Wave Books]
+ Rachel Zucker's newest collection is a beautifully bound book. It's huge (not long, physically large), and it actually adds something to the whole experience. Zucker likes to surprise through odd enjambments, peculiar inversions and disjointed structure. She likes to let the white space be a part of the poem, like in "What Dark Thing," where the end of stanza does not just mean that it's time to hit return button twice, but that it's time for emptiness, for space to take a pause, to let the words breathe. After reading Museum of Accidents it's hard to imagine the book being anything but this size, a smaller version couldn't contain all the white space necessary to make these poems breathe how they want to and to fully expose their beauty. This is a great collection.

Also out this week through Wave Books is Bluets by Maggie Nelson.

Music:
Drummer - Feel Good Together[Audio Eagle]
+ Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys) struck out on his own early this year and now Patrick Carney, drummer of The Black Keys, has a band of his own. That's actually the concept of Drummer. It's constructed of drummers who play in other bands. On top of Carney the band also includes Jamie Stillman of Teeth the Hydra (playing guitar), Jon Finley of Beaten Awake (on vocals and guitar), Stephen Clements of Six Parts Seven (on keys and vocals), and Greg Boyd of Ghostman and Sandman (on drums). It's about time some drummers got their due in the ever expanding world of side-projects.

In Theaters:
A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen) [Focus Features]
+ I can't remember the last time that a new Coen Brothers wasn't a cause for celebration.

Capitalism: A Love Story (Michael Moore) [Overture Films]
+ Ok, yes, I know. Michael Moore is divisive. He can be an asshole and sometimes he does take a somewhat simplistic view of things to get his point across. That's fine; I agree. But Moore manages to do something very few people can do. He can stir national political debate as a writer and filmmaker. There are plenty of people who write books and make films about the same things he does who are far more radical and divisive, or far more centrist, that really don't cause any debate at all outside of their small (often academic) circles. Moore stirs debate because he's good at what he does. There. Someone needed to lay out a defense of a guy who is generally getting attacked from both sides. He's not my favorite, but can you really say you've hated or disagreed with his previous films? Oh. You do. Fair enough.

DVD:
Away We Go(Sam Mendes) [Big Beach Films]
+ Away We Go was certainly not a perfect film, but it has a lot of charm. Mendes, Dave Eggers and John Krasinski all partnered up to make a funny film that felt a little easy at time, but was still pretty damn lovable.

Comics/Graphic Novels:
Batman Widening Gyre #2(of 6) by Kevin Smith [DC]
+ The Widening Gyre marks director Kevin Smith's return to writing Batman comics. The first issue was beautifully bound and incredibly engaging. If it weren't for that whole Bruce Wayne is dead thing I'd say this is one of the most exciting things to happen in comics this year.

Dark Reign Hood #5(of 5) by Jeff Parker [Marvel]
+ This is probably my favorite thing to have come out of Dark Reign so far. The Hood has been an intense limited series and with the conclusion coming out this Wednesday I'd put this up against almost any limited series Marvel has put out. Paired up with the limited series of Mr. Negative (in which The Hood is a main character) Marvel really hit it out of the park on some of these limited series Dark Reign tie-ins.