Sunday, June 28, 2009

This and That: Dance, Mystery Novels, Blog Comments and Movie Architecture

Some stuff:

Dancer/Choreographer Merce Cunningham has announced that his company will be disbanded after his death because "he thinks his dances have a better chance of surviving over the long haul if his associates concentrate on making them available to other companies instead of keeping his own troupe going."  Terry Teachout writes in the WSJ that this is the most "significant dance-related piece of news to come along in years."

Ian Rankin retired his famous detective John Rebus but he's not retired from writing.  His new detective is Malcom Fox and Rankin auctioned the opening pages of the first Malcom Fox manuscript for charity.  The novel is set for release in September.

I decided to put Sarah Waters' new novel, The Little Stranger, in my pile of vacation reading.  A few weeks ago Waters wrote a column in  The Guardian in which she discussed the relationship of this novel to Josephine Tey's mystery novel, The Franchise Affair.  I read all of Tey's novels years ago and I'm thinking of digging out The Franchise Affair and re-reading it.  But I can't decide whether to read it before or after The Little Stranger.

I got a chuckle out of  post by Scott McLemee at ArtsJournal in which he clarifies that he doesn't think the problem with online communication is too many people thinking they are important or thinking they are part of the conversation.  No, the "issue is people acting like assholes."   Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up.  I'm pleased that my commenters have (so far) been the exact opposite. :)

Finally, Architect's Journal recently selected the top ten star wars buildings.   What do you think?  I've always wanted to visit the Cloud City, I would have ranked it higher.

November Reading

 I finished the following books in November: Two Short Stories In the leadup to the election, on BlueSky we diverted ourselves by reading tw...