Posted November 24, 2009

This is the time of when “best of the year” lists begin to appear, and since we are on the cusp of a new decade, we are also seeing many “best of the decade” lists. These lists are fun and often spark debate, and we’ll be covering them periodically for the next several weeks. We decided to begin with music by looking at four “best albums of the decade” lists: Pitchfork, Paste Magazine, The Onion’s A.V. Club and the popular British music magazine NME. Each picked from 50 to 200 albums and, as expected, there was some agreement. The “best album of the decade” seems to be a close race between Radiohead’s Kid A and The Arcade Fire’s Funeral, which both ranked high on every list. There were also artists with multiple albums on multiple lists including Outkast, The Shins, M.I.A., LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire, Radiohead and Sigur Ros; and each list had some unexpected and surprising choices. For another take on the best albums, check out NPR’s All Songs Considered’s list The Decade’s 50 Most Important Recordings. Here are some of the best of the last 10 years:

Kid A / Radiohead (2000) - #1 Pitchfork, #4 Paste, #3 A.V. Club, #14 NME
Funeral / Arcade Fire (2004) - #2 Pitchfork, #3 Paste, #8 A.V. Club, #7 NME
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot / Wilco (2002) - #4 Pitchfork, #2 Paste, #5 A.V. Club, #43 NME
Come On Feel The Illinoise / Sufjan Stevens (2005) - #16 Pitchfork, #1 Paste, #30 A.V. Club, #17 NME
The Blueprint / Jay-Z (2001) - #5 Pitchfork, #42 Paste, #9 A.V. Club, #22 NME
Stankonia / Outkast (2000) - #13 Pitchfork, #8, Paste #4 A.V. Club, #57 NME
Sound of Silver / LCD Soundsystem (2007) - #17 Pitchfork, #41 Paste, #14 A.V. Club, #12 NME
Is This It / Strokes (2001) - #14 Paste, #19 A.V. Club, #1 NME
College Dropout / Kanye West (2004) - #28 Pitchfork, #17 Paste, #2 A.V. Club
Chutes Too Narrow / Shins (2003) - #46 Pitchfork, #24 Paste, #17 A.V. Club, #75 NME
Back To Black / Amy Winehouse (2007) - #18 Paste, #26 A.V. Club, #27 NME
A´gætis Byrjun / Sigur Ro´s (2001) - #8 Pitchfork, #13 A.V. Club, #97 NME
Merriweather Post Pavilion / Animal Collective (2009) - #14 Pitchfok, #35 Paste, #22 A.V. Club
Arular / M.I.A. (2005) - #54 Pitchfork, #10 Paste, #50 NME
I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning / Bright Eyes (2005) - #5 Paste, NME #31
Vespertine / Bjork (2001) - #92 Pitchfork, #50 Paste, #27 A.V. Club, #95 NME
Veckatimest / Grizzly Bear (2009) - #42 Pitchfort, #39 A.V. Club
Sea Change / Beck (2002) - #82 Pitchfork, #19 Paste, #24 A.V. Club
Vampire Weekend / Vampire Weekend (2008) - #51 Pitchfork, #21 Paste, #42 NME
For Emma, Forever Ago / Bon Iver (2008) - #29 Pitchfork, #29 Paste, #87 NME

2009 National Book Awards

Posted November 19, 2009

The National Book Awards were bestowed on some very deserving authors in New York City last night. The best fiction winner tells the story of a legendary tightrope walk between New York’s twin towers, and the nonfiction award winner tells the life story of a famous New Yorker. Not a bad night for the Big Apple. Irish-born writer Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, which has been getting pretty much unanimous praise all year, tells the story of Philippe Petit, who undertook the daring and adventurous feat of tightrope walking. If that chapter of Manhattan history sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because the real-life story was also the subject of the acclaimed recent documentary Man on Wire.

Writer TJ Stiles won the nonfiction award for The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. The book has received sterling reviews and sounds like a classic up-by-the-bootstraps story that’s as timely as ever, given Wall Street’s central role in our current economy. The book calls to mind other lauded biographies of the barons of the Gilded Age, including the celebrated 1998 Titan: the Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow and the more recent Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw and The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockerfeller, Jay Gould and J.P. Morgan invented the American Supereconomy by Charles R. Morris.

The award for poetry went to Transcendental Studies: a Trilogy by Keith Waldrop. Novelist, playwright and essayist Gore Vidal received a lifetime achievement award for his “distinguished contribution to American letters,” and Dave Eggers was honored with an award for “outstanding service to the American literary community.” Eggers, of course, has a hit on his hands with his book Zeitoun and recently collaborated on a film adaptation and novelization of the classic children’s story, Where the Wild Things Are. A fine night all around.

Food For Thought

Posted November 17, 2009

Organic, local and sustainable are all concepts that foodies and most anyone who does the grocery shopping are becoming familiar with. Most of us personally know vegetarians and vegans, or maybe we have adopted an animal-free diet for ethical or health reasons, or perhaps we have joined a CSA or started going to the farmer’s market in order to support local farmers. Conscious consumption and eating with a conscience may have seemed like fads a few years ago, but nearly four years after the publication of Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan is practically a household name and the topic of what we eat and why is still on the table.

There are many passionate and varied opinions regarding our food system and our diet, including the recently published Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Although the author says it’s not an argument for vegetarianism, it is convincing some: the already-vegetarian Natalie Portman announced that the book prompted her to adopt a vegan diet. Safran Foer examines factory farming, the free-range alternative, philosophy and his own history. Booklist notes it is “an indelible book that should reach a diverse audience and deepen the conversation about how best to live on a rapidly changing planet.” The bottom line for Safran Foer and others seems to be that pleading ignorance about the dark side of our food system is not really an option regardless of the choices one makes. If this topic interests you or you’re a fan of Safran Foer, join us tomorrow evening at the Harold Washington Library Center to hear him read from, discuss and sign Eating Animals.

If you are looking for more books on our food system, including the state of the food industry, sustainable agriculture, vegetarianism and other hot food topics, there are a wealth of materials at the Chicago Public Library. Here are some of the best:

Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating With More Than 75 Recipes by Mark Bittman
Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly by James E. McWilliams
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan
Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From And Why We Need To Get It Back by Ann Vileisis
Righteous Pork Chop: Finding A Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms by Nicolette Hahn Nieman
Recipe For America: Why Our Food System Is Broken And What We Can Do To Fix It by Jill Richardson
Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers In The Age of Agribusiness by Lisa M. Hamilton
A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil by Sharon Astyk
The Face On Your Plate by J. Moussaieff Masson
Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food by Gene Baur
Food, Inc. (DVD)
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

Spotlight on Local Book Reviews

Posted November 12, 2009

Looking through the local media, plenty of books have been generating buzz. Over at the Chicago Tribune, critic Carolyn Alessio calls Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna “rich” and “impassioned.” The sprawling novel concerns art and politics in Mexican and U.S. history, weaving together imaginary characters and historical figures such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky. The Saturday Tribune also spotlighted Eula Biss’ Notes from No Man’s Land (review not online).

This weekend the Chicago Sun Times got a kick out of Paul Shaffer’s We’ll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives. Shaffer’s long experience in show biz has garnered him a treasure trove of insider stories. (Don’t worry, we have more copies on order.)

Meanwhile, New City heaps praise on Jonathan Lethem’s latest, Chronic City; TimeOut Chicago recommends Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs; and in its fall books issue, the Chicago Reader keeps the great buzz going for Dominic Pacyga’s Chicago: A Biography.

Happy 40th Birthday, Sesame Street!

Posted November 10, 2009

Sesame Street premiered on PBS on November 10, 1969 to the delight of children and parents everywhere. Set in the inner city with a diverse cast of both actors and puppets, it was a groundbreaking show geared toward children with educational and entertaining elements. Sesame Street has been significant in shaping children’s television since its premiere. The amount of research that went into creating the show, one that would teach and entertain children, was substantial. As Michael Davis stated in his recently published book Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street, “Sesame Street came along and rewrote the book. Never before had anyone assembled an A-list of advisors to develop a series with stated educational norms and objectives. Never before had anyone viewed a children’s show as a living laboratory, where results would be vigorously and continually tested. Never before in television had anyone thought to commingle writers and social scientists, a forced marriage that, with surprising ease and good humor, endured and thrived.” And thrive it did for the last 40 years, making Sesame Street the longest-running children’s show in the history of American television. Malcolm Gladwell even touches on the success, or rather the “stickiness factor,” of Sesame Street in The Tipping Point. To celebrate, Google has been featuring characters from the show on its homepage and Michelle Obama will appear on today’s anniversary show. Congratulations to Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Elmo and all those who reside on Sesame Street for a job well done!

Who Wrote the Great Books of 2009?

Posted November 5, 2009

Publishers Weekly recently published their take on the top 10 books of 2009, kicking off the season of year-end lists. As with awards, such lists, helpful and interesting as they always are, often lead to controversy, and this list has set off a storm of discussion on the Internet for one simple reason: none of the 10 books chosen was written by a woman. Readers on the Internet have taken matters into their own hands and assembled a long list of 2009 contenders written by women, and Laura Miller, the Salon.com books editor who has much experience in choosing books for these kinds of year-end lists, has written a thoughtful response.

Several commentators have suggested that Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, Lydia Davis’s Collected Stories, Barbara Kingsolver’s just-published The Lacuna (which is getting tremendous reviews), Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs and Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness would all make great candidates (among many others). Meanwhile, Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips, which recently took the Trib’s annual Heartland prize, has emerged as one of the novels of the year. And Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall won the Booker prize. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions, but there’s no doubt that women have written at least many of the year’s most prominent books.

Adam Langer

Posted November 3, 2009

Please join us this Thursday, November 5 at 6:00 p.m. at the Harold Washington Library Center for a reading and book signing with native Chicagoan and author Adam Langer. He will be reading from his new book, My Father’s Bonus March, which Library Journal noted is a “sweet autobiographical tale about a writer at midlife trying to understand his late father, a radiologist (and lifelong Chicagoan) who aspired to write about a key historical event in his early life: the Depression-era bonus march on Washington, D.C., by veterans of World War I.”

We’d also highly recommend Langer’s debut novel, Crossing California. The bitingly funny novel is set in West Rogers Park in the late 1970s and explores California Avenue’s divide with more well-to-do Jewish families on the west side of the street and the middle class residing on the east. Langer’s engaging follow-up, The Washington Story, is a sequel to Crossing California; the title refers to the late Mayor Harold Washington. Langer is also the author of Ellington Boulevard, set in Manhattan. Don’t miss the chance to hear this acclaimed Chicago author read in his hometown.