01-29-2019, 11:39 AM
Best new-ish music I've listened to recently (i.e. new to me): The Hygrades, a Nigerian funk group from the 70s. Apparently a super limited amount of their music has been preserved -- like five-six songs. It's fun.
Best new novel I've read: Anna Burns's Milkman, which focuses on a 20-year-old woman's attempts to evade an IRA hitman's sexual harassment (and accompanying communal rumormongering) in Northern Ireland during the troubles. It's a tough read, both in terms of subject matter and prose style. (I'm not happy calling the prose "stream of consciousness," but that's probably the closest commonly accepted phrase to hit on the style. It's very dense reading and the sentences tend to swerve in surprising directions. There's nothing particularly difficult on the level of vocabulary, nor are the metaphors or descriptions terribly poetic or purple in the acclaimed-fiction fashion. It's just packed with stuff going on. A fantastic book.)
Best new novel I've read: Anna Burns's Milkman, which focuses on a 20-year-old woman's attempts to evade an IRA hitman's sexual harassment (and accompanying communal rumormongering) in Northern Ireland during the troubles. It's a tough read, both in terms of subject matter and prose style. (I'm not happy calling the prose "stream of consciousness," but that's probably the closest commonly accepted phrase to hit on the style. It's very dense reading and the sentences tend to swerve in surprising directions. There's nothing particularly difficult on the level of vocabulary, nor are the metaphors or descriptions terribly poetic or purple in the acclaimed-fiction fashion. It's just packed with stuff going on. A fantastic book.)