>I’m intrigued by Arthur Laurents’s plans to bring West Side Story to Broadway next winter in a “bilingual revival,” having the Puerto Rican characters speaking Spanish and otherwise making the show “more realistic.” (Here’s hoping he doesn’t try to set it in the present, though, because that gorgeous, swanky 1950s brass would sound as corny [...]
>Craigslist or Freaky Friday?
May 13, 2008 By 11 Comments
>Join the Cool Kids!
May 1, 2008 By 3 Comments
>Yes, and you’re not helping
April 23, 2008 By 7 Comments
>Good for the Jews
March 31, 2008 By Leave a Comment
>That’s Why We Clap
March 17, 2008 By 3 Comments
>Saturday night we went to see a semi-pro production of Puccini’s Turandot in the dining hall of Lowell House, a Harvard College dorm that has been putting on operas since the 1920s. Turandot is pretty grand as these things go and the production didn’t miniaturize anything–full orchestra, colorful (very “Oriental”) sets and costumes, big voices [...]
>Hard books and awards
March 13, 2008 By 10 Comments
>Australian Sonya Harnett has won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, an honor that speaks to the discussion we’re having about Nina Lindsay’s comments about “shelf-sitters.” Completely deserving of the many awards her writing has won, Hartnett is, however, no crowd-pleaser. While as a culture we are used to the fact that adult fiction with a [...]
>It’s more than horse books
February 21, 2008 By 3 Comments
>There’s a piece on the International Children’s Digital Library in today’s Boston Globe that inspired me to take another browse over there. The ICDL is currently running a bunch of features on Mongolia, which fits in nicely with my Silk Road kick–I’m reading Colin Thubron’s Shadow of the Silk Road and listening to Sainkho Namtchylak, [...]
>White man speaks
February 1, 2008 By 23 Comments
>Debbie Reese revisits one of the more interesting events of my years here. In another recent entry she talks about author John Smelcer’s aspirations to Indian-ness. Our review of The Trap didn’t mention it, but the jacket flap does claim that the author is “of Ahtna Athabaskan descent,” which apparently he isn’t, although his adoptive [...]
>Money
January 9, 2008 By 7 Comments
>In the February issue of Harper‘s, Ursula K. LeGuin has some interesting things to say about reading (“reading is active, an act of attention, of absorbed alertness–not all that different from hunting, in fact, or from gathering”) and publishing (“What’s in this dismal scene for you, Mr. Corporate Executive? Why don’t you just get out [...]
