Tag: 07.03.00

STREET-SIDE BOOKS

Contrary to popular opinion, those street-side booksellers set up on card tables in Manhattan aren’t vagrants or low-lifes. “While many street booksellers resemble refugees from the Beat era, they’re generally savvy and erudite – and they know their books. They have to, in order to survive” A new movie puts them in the spotlight. – Publishers Weekly

BRITAIN’S OPERA HOPE

The hip new opera in London last season was – of all things – a piece about soccer. Mark-Anthony Turnage, the “Silver Tassie’s” composer, “has emerged as one of the great hopes of English classical music – a natural extension of an extraordinary line that runs through such fertile counties as Elgar, Walton, Bridge, Britten and Tippett.” – Sequenza 21

WILD ABOUT HARRY

The Harry Potter books have sold 21 million copies. But the hoopla over the latest book – even before it has been released, is formidable. “At least 9,000 Federal Express trucks will be deployed around the nation on that morning by the Internet retail giant Amazon.com to help deliver 250,000 presold copies of the fantasy novel.” – New York Times

INDIA’S NEW GENERATION OF WRITERS

“Although their voices are being heard much more loudly in the West than in India, they are ushering in a new era for Indian literature in English. They are often called Midnight’s Grandchildren in homage to another seminal Indian novel, Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children,” the dark parable of Indian history since independence that won the Booker Prize in 1981 and in 1993 won a special Booker Prize as the best British novel of the previous quarter century. Now the new generation of writers have in many ways broken away from the magic realism that characterizes much of Mr. Rushdie’s work. – New York Times

STROKE SENDS ARTIST’S CAREER SOARING

Artist Katherine Sherwood was always an artist. But a debilitating stroke at the age of 44 transformed her career.  “Critics see a huge change in Sherwood’s work. From the restricted, analytical style of the art professor she once was, she has been transformed into a vibrant, free-flowing painter. She has just finished a show at New York’s prestigious Whitney Museum, and her abstracts sell for $10,000. “I have sold more paintings in the past few months than in 25 years as an artist,” she says with a smile. – The Times (UK)

TANGO TROUBLE

Composer Astor Piazzolla’s distinctive tango music has become a world-wide phenomenon. But “while his music won an enthusiastic following in Europe, the United States, Brazil, and Mexico, Piazzolla was not widely appreciated in his native Argentina until a decade before he died in 1992. Instead, his tampering with a native form as sacrosanct as the tango earned an intensity of contempt from the music’s old guard that may be difficult to fathom in this country, where disagreements over style and genre exercise only a handful of artists and critics.” – The New Republic

HARRY POTTER’S LITTLE SECRET

There has been a good deal of secrecy surrounding the impending release of the next Harry Potter novel. No one can get an advance copy, no one knows what the plot is, and booksellers kept getting mixed messages on what the title would be. An elaborate marketing plan?  Nothing so clever. Up until very recently, the book wasn’t finished – author J.K. Rowling was scrambling to meet her deadline. – New York Observer

LOOKING FOR LEONARDO

In 1503 Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned to paint a mural in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. But the image disappeared and conjecture is that rather than being destroyed the mural was obscured when a wall was built in front of it. Now scientists are on the hunt. “We will look through ancient walls using the most advanced technologies.” – Discovery.com