Pleasures of… November

otherwise known as, the things that dipped our floats last month;

Robin

Jonathan Safran-Foer “Eating Animals”
Utterly compelling, rational dissection of the meat industry by the author of ‘Everything Is Illuminated’. Reading it has made buying lunch in the West End a lot more difficult.

Animal Collective “Fall Be Kind”
This 25 minute EP sees the Animal Collective bookend 2009 with two of the most outré rock’n’roll records of recent times. Together with ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’, these five tracks put the band somewhere between ‘Smile’ era Beach Boys and ‘Acid Trax’. A band at the height of their powers. Awesome.

Four Tet “Love Cry”
Wondrously loose and hypnotic nine-minute house work out from CBTR fave Kieran Hebden. The album (out Jan) is bloody ace too.

Peter Serafinowicz’s Twitter
If you’re ever bored at home at about ten pm, you can pretty much guarantee one half of the team behind the BBC’s classic comedy show Look Around You will be doing a live Q&A joke session for anyone who can be bothered to mail him. It’s consistently brilliant and the single best reason for signing up to Twitter (apart from CBTR updates – now
available!)

The River Cottage Canteen
Not the actual cottage itself but a foodie mecca all the same – worth the trip to Axminster for incredible beers, organic food and a selection of books from the likes of Hugh F.W. and Common Ground. If CBTR were a restaurant… well, we’d like to think so anyway.

Andrew

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster – author of my favourite ever book ‘Mr Vertigo.’ I went on to read a few others of his which were hit and miss,but thoroughly enjoyed this.

Superfreakonomics by Levitt and Dubner – a rare thing – a wonderful sequel to a brilliant original. Full of interesting interpretations of
statistics. Well worth a read of this and its predecessor ‘Freakonomics.’

The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll – Brilliant book. A diary providing a graphic insight into a young boys adolesence. Certainly made mine feel tame in comparison.

The Blueprint 3 by Jay Z – I’m loving this record. Especially the collaborations with Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys.

Fox Base Beta by Saint Etienne – Richard X subtly, but brilliantly, updates a classic album.

In The Loop – Armando Iannucci – I love ‘In The Thick Of It’ and thoroughly enjoyed this. An excellent British political satire.

Jeff

My first time fishing for Grayling. A day on the Test with Jon Berry. I caught three.

Legend of a Suicide by David Vann. Powerful, beautiful, sad. My book of the year. There is an illuminating interview with the author at Doveygreyreader and an extract can be read HERE.

Bibio – ‘The Apple and the Truth’. On Warp.

David Rawlings – ‘I Hear Them All’ from the album A Friend of a Friend. Gillian Welch sidekick / guitarist goes it alone. Sort of.

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Deadwood. bit late. ’nuff said.