Afghan literature deserves better than being treated as background reading for world events. For a lot of readers, Afghanistan first appears through news coverage, war, politics, and the usual shorthand that narrows a place before you’ve even had a chance to hear anyone speak from inside it. That’s part of why reading books from Afghanistan…
Some albums announce what they are in the first thirty seconds. You know the category, the era, the mood, maybe even the sentence you would use to describe them before the side is over. Terry Callier’s What Color Is Love is not that kind of record. The first thing you notice is probably Callier’s voice:…
One of the reasons Dostoevsky still feels so intense is that he never lets moral life stay neat. Some writers give you a clearer sense of things by the end. You finish the novel with a better grip on who was right, who was wrong, and what the whole mess was meant to prove. Dostoevsky…
I wish more people knew that Simple Minds are not just the Breakfast Club band. Yes, of course “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” is huge. It deserves to be huge and I still love it. The drum hit still lands, the chorus still lifts, and it will probably be attached to that freeze-frame ending forever….
Mornings can be hectic, but on occasion when I have a chance to ease into the day I’ll want some reading and light music to accompany my coffee. Not every book or album works at 8 a.m. though, and I’ve made some mistakes on that front. Some novels ask you to wake up all at…
I really wish more people read South African literature. Not in a homework way or a “you should read this because it’s important” way. I mean because these books are alive. They’re sharp, wounded, searching, complicated, and often unforgettable. They deal with history, but they never leave it at the level of abstraction. In South…
Ranking David Bowie albums is ridiculous. It is a bad idea. It is an impossible idea. It is the kind of thing that seems fun until you are suddenly staring at Hunky Dory, “Heroes”, Scary Monsters, Station to Station, Low, and Aladdin Sane like you’ve been asked to choose a favorite nerve ending. And yet…
Some novels arrive with a brass band. They’re famous before you even open them. People describe them as towering, essential, major. You begin reading half-expecting to be impressed on command. Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women works differently. It doesn’t stride into the room announcing itself. It slips in quietly, offers you tea, and then, almost before…
Miles Davis did not treat live albums like souvenirs. He used them to prove the music was still changing. The studio records are the monuments, obviously. Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain, Miles Smiles, Bitches Brew. Those are the albums people reach for when they talk about how jazz changed in the second half of…
Ranking Octavia E. Butler is a risky little exercise. Not because she wrote a giant shelf of books. She didn’t. It’s risky because even the Butler novels that land lower on the list still contain ideas most writers would build an entire career around. She wrote about power with unusual sharpness. About dependency, hierarchy, survival,…