Thursday, January 28, 2010

JDS


JD Salinger died today, he's one of my favorite authors. Except only his short stories, absolutely NOT "Catcher in the Rye." I read that in high school and loved it but then when I reread it in college it was just not that great.

However, I absolutely LOVE "Nine Stories", "Franny and Zooey", and "Raise High the Roof beam Carpenter and Seymour: An Introduction" (in that order). Mainly because I love how Salinger wrote about the Glass family throughout his stories and it was great how you could piece together the family's history through different books. Also many people believe the character Buddy was based on Salinger, which makes sense since both were writers and ended up living in the woods out of touch with reality.

While so many people talk about how they would love to see a film of "Catcher" (which will never happen because Salinger and his family won't allow it), I would much rather see a film about the Glass family based on all the short stories about them. It would be very "Royal Tenenbaum"-esque (Wes Anderson did base some of that movie on the Glass family). It would be so dysfunctionally and darkly fantastic. Someone get on that.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Girls Like Us

I just started reading the book "Girls Like Us" by Sheila Weller about Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. These three women are amazing!!!! I already loved Joni Mitchell before this; Blue is an amazing album.

The book is a biography of all three and they are so fascinating and so talented. I wish I was alive in the 60s and 70s and was a folk singer. I'm only halfway through it, but I already can't wait for all of the interactions each woman had with each other and with other amazing artists.

I had no idea Joni's song "Little Green" was about giving up her daughter for adoption when she was really young. I also had no idea that Carly Simon's dad is the Simon of Simon and Schuster. Definitely a must read.