Hot July brings cooling showers

MUSICAL DISCOVERIES

Shena: I discovered this disco queen thanks to Hed Kandi.  The Fred Falke remix of "Nasty Little Rumor" is a true dance-floor gem, while Warren Clarke Pres. Jonni Black Vs Shena "Bitch Is Back" is just plain fun.

Com Truise: Hat tip to Stereogum for alerting me to the existence of this fab chillwave artist.  I may have only clicked on the link because of my long-standing Tom Cruise obsession, but interesting names have led me to some great artists before, and this is no exception.  I am seriously digging Com Truise's Cyanide Sisters EP, which is available for free at his site. As one would presume from one of the track's being titled "Sundriped," this little gem provides 27 minutes of pure golden aural rays.

MINI MIX

"Love Goes Down" -- Plan B
"Deepest Blue" -- Deepest Blue
"Can't Beat The Feeling" -- Kylie Minogue

"Coast 2 Coast" -- Sam Adams

"Flashback 2000 And One / Spanish Fly (Axwell Mash)" -- Calvin Harris
"You Wanted A Hit" -- LCD Soundsystem

"I Heart NY" -- Samuel
"Where I'm Going" -- Cut Copy
"Bitch is Back" -- Jonni Black v. Shena

FILMS

I Am Love
The Kids Are All Right
The Girl Who Played With Fire
Inception (IMAX)
Inception (plain)
Get Low
Around A Small Mountain

NETFLIX QUEUE

17 Again
Young Guns II
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Hairspray (1988)
Deadwood Season 1
The Lookout
Deadwood Season 2
The Wendell Baker Story
Is Anybody There?
Deadwood Season 3

COOKING

Mushroom and goat cheese crostini
Potato-zucchini soup
Roasted squash pizza

BOOKS

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

Surprisingly not as bad as I expected it to be!  Mainly it reminded me a bit of each Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned, Waugh's Vile Bodies, and Kerouac's On The Road, while not being as good as any of those books on their own. It is a likable enough ex-pat tale, and there is a certain amount of romance in that, but I don't feel that it has the qualities necessary to belong among the books I most revere. 

Losing Mum and Pup, Christopher Buckley

This memoir is incredibly moving.  I read the entire book in one day, and was very glad for having done so.  As an only child, I was able to relate to Buckley's story on many levels and I can see myself returning to this book as a source of comfort and strength many years in the future. I highly recommend this book for parents and children (only or not) alike. 

The Terminal Spy, Alan Cowell

This is a fascinating book that got me thinking about the world and politics in new ways, though it also left me with quite mixed feelings. For the first half of the book, Cowell hardly seems unbiased, yet it is somewhat difficult to tell where his sympathies truly lie.  He is setting Sasha (the spy of the title) up as a victim, yet it is unclear if the reader is supposed to feel sympathetic toward him for anything other than the suffering at his time of dying.  And of course, in the end, there are no definitive conclusions.  On the other hand, I learned much about Russia's recent history and geopolitics - fascinating stuff, especially in light of our own recent Russian spy drama here in New York.  Also, it boggles my mind to think that many of the events in the book were occurring while I was just a short distance from London.  I was even able to remember things that I was doing in Farnham on specific dates mentioned in the narrative.  As vast as the world seems sometimes, (true) stories like this remind me that it really isn't all that big and that there is so much to experience outside of the small sphere of my life.

The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon

I totally didn't understand this book.  I bought it because it was a special Harper Perennial Olive Edition with a cool cover [and I had already read both The Bell Jar (gag) and Fast Food Nation (good), which were the other special editions available] but this is one cover that certainly proves that old adage true; cool covers do not a good book make.  This is one of those books that has absolutely no point.  It is completely silly and I felt like the author was putting one over on me.  I happened to finish the book the same night I saw Inception for the first time, and I ended up feeling like I was in some surrealist mind game, where nothing quite made sense. Too weird for my taste. 
Hotel du Lac, Anita Brookner

This book was quite boring, especially after the Pynchon absurdity (which sounds like it could be a Ludlum title).  I do have to give Brookner props for her extremely nuanced and realistic protagonist and her very true-to-life thoughts and feelings.  However, while the inner world of the protagonist is extremely rich, the world around her and the other characters are mere shells and caricatures (though perhaps this is also a reflection of life to some extent).  This imbalance created the sense of a not quite whole person floating through an even less concrete world. I kept hoping this book would take me someplace interesting, and it never did.
Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely

An extremely easy and interesting read in the business psychology category.  I was able to quickly relate Ariely's studies and findings to my own personal and work lives.  After reading so many other entries in the genre (such as Lehrer's How We Decide - aka the ice cream book, Damasio's Descarte's Error, LeDoux's The Emotional Brain, and of course the Malcolm Gladwell cannon), I was able to quickly understand Ariely's perspective.  His clear, straightforward language and orderly chapter layout makes this both a welcome addition for experienced readers of the genre or a good starting point for novices, and the studies presented and explained create a basic framework from which many real-world applications can be extrapolated.
Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky

Comprised of two separate-yet-related novels, Suite Francaise is a poignant look at life in provincial France during World War II.  I didn't care as much for the first story, Storm in June, as I did for the second, Dolce.  Storm in June chronicles the flight from Paris of several individuals and families, while Dolce examines the relationships between the German occupying forces and the townspeople in the rural community of Bussy.  Both stories contain well-crafted and painstakingly developed characters, but the added layer of complex relationships brings Dolce to vibrant realization.  Nemirovsky's writing shows great understanding of human nature and universal truths.  I found myself quoting several insightful passages on Twitter to share and record Nemirovsky's canny observations and insights.