reading, listening, Starbucks, Harper's

[Sean Carroll]

Okay, reading now or just finished:

  _Mr. Palomar_, Italo Calvino
  _The Treason of the Intellectuals_, Julien Benda
  _From Ritual to Romance_, Jessie Weston (an ideosyncratic take on
    the Grail legends, and a big influence on Eliot's _Waste Land_)
    
Next off the shelf:

  _Hunger_, Knut Hamsun
  _The Waste Land_, T.S. Eliot
  _Vineland_, somebody
  
Listening to:  (the overlap on people's reading interests is not
  completely surprising, but the listening overlap is remarkable)
  
  _I'm Your Man_, Leonard Cohen
  _Turbulent Indigo_, Joni Mitchell
  _Tears of Joy_, Tuck and Patti
  _Some Fantastic Place_, Squeeze
  
Starbucks:  They make good coffee, which is not something to be
sneezed at, especially if you are in an airport in the great
unknown, but they are nevertheless evil.  In Boston the best coffee
for years came from The Coffee Connection, a mini-chain who had
Starbucks beat hands down.  So Starbucks just bought them up,
made soft noises about not changing anything about the decor or
brew, and within a year every CC had been completely Starbucksified.

Harpers:  I also eagerly await each issue, but gripe at the sorry
state.  They seem to have a special weakness for the genre of
"middle-aged guys whining about how things aren't what they used
to be."  But the readings, index, and occasional new talent like
Darcy Frey or David Sedaris makes it all worthwhile.  (For me the
_NY Review of Books_ and _Lingua Franca_ are also enjoyable
without being so irritating.)

Sean
carroll at itp.ucsb.edu
http://itp.ucsb.edu/~carroll