Michelle Sagara & Michelle West

There was no post on Saturday, because on Friday, for the first time in over two months, I went into the book­store. I there­fore did not write on Friday, which meant I wrote on Saturday instead. I was asked to come in because “the shelves are a disaster”, and as there’s only been two people in the store — the owner and the full-timer — for the two weeks, I consid­ered it rela­tively safe, and on Fridays, there’s only one person in the store other­wise. Two of our distrib­u­tors are sending only full cartons of books, which works for some new releases, but means we’re not getting back­list for those two distrib­u­tors. They are doing this to cut down on actual handling of books; in order to send us … Continue reading →

So, last week I mentioned Dimash Kudaibergen, and linked a couple of clips. The couple of clips were not, of course, all that I listened to — on his offi­cial channel he has, ummm, a lot. Including full concerts. But I was very curious — as one is — about who did beat him in the Singer 2017 contest. So… I found the full episodes (there are 13 +1 benefit concert) (someone subti­tled them), each about 1 hour and 20 minutes long. Then I had to go to wikipedia because I didn’t under­stand the contest rules. It’s a contest for profes­sional singers. So you have to be invited to go. But you get voted off the island every second episode. The judges are 500 audi­ence members, and at the end of all perfor­mances they list their … Continue reading →

When I was in high school, I took French. In French, the stan­dard curriculum involved the reading of a book – in French, of course – and essays or discus­sions (also in French) about said book. But our French teacher, Bob, decided to go an entirely different route. He brought in a record (yes, record — no CDs existed at that time, and no MP3s – it was a 33 RPM record), and printout of the back cover sleeve, which contained all the lyrics. The record was for a rock musical, Star­mania. We studied specific songs – but of course, we all listened to the entire thing. It is… a younger person’s musical. Also: the French aren’t post-modern in their musi­cals. There are things that work in French that just do not work in English – like Notre Dame … Continue reading →