The beckoning silence

This is another documentary based on one of Joe Simpson's books, this time about the 1936 4-person expedition that tried to make it up the North Face of the Eiger, and the parallels between Tony Kurtz's death and Simpson's ordeal. It's not nearly as gut wrenching as Touching the void, though I imagine it was just as emotional for Simpson to make as that movie was, but it's nevertheless incredibly impressive.

Touching the void

Touching the void is a documentary about two British climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who made it up a very challenging mountain face in Peru, the Siula Grande, only to run into trouble on the way down. It's absolutely excellent and truly gut and heart wrenching. In my opinion it's up there with the White Spider. I swear I had to take a break and eat something and drink chamomile to get through it, my stomach was so upset.

Τέχνη αλυπίας 2004 and 2006

We had these two bottles of red wine over the last couple of nights with my parents and I found them both depressing, though the 2006 was worse than the 2004. They're from a city in Northern Greece called Δράμα. The '04 is described as a blend of cab sauv and merlot, which is reasonable, but the '06 adds syrah to the blend to disastrous effect. They both have nice legs, and color, and the '04 had a bit of sediment. But neither had a nose of anything, and the '06 especially was quite sour. I mean dry is one thing, sour is another. The lack of nose in the '06 was made especially sad by the fact that the label made some quite specific claims about what we ought to have been smelling, which I won't repeat here (too lazy to find the bottle).

McClean Syrah

When I went to UC San Diego for an interview -- and I'm taking that job, by the way -- my hosts took me out to lunch to a fantastic near campus that I will probably never be able to afford again, the Adobe Restaurant at the Estancia Hotel & Spa. Along with the meal we had a random bottle of Syrah. I suspect the place does not serve wine rated below 90 to begin with, but this one blew me away. Of course I was too distracted with everything else, the interview, the meal, the upcoming talk, to write down what the wine was. I thought it was a Santa Barbara Syrah, and I knew it started with "Mc", and I knew I thought the label was boring. I definitely didn't note the year. So today I took the time to do a little searching, and I'm pretty sure it was the McClean Syrah, which, however, is from Paso, not SB. The only real way to verify is to have a bottle sometime. *wink*

The Sacred and Profane by Soul Miner's Sister

I've spent a lot of time driving to and from the Eastern Sierra in Ben's car lately, which has entailed listening to his music over and over. The other night the album 'The sacred and profane' by Soul Miner's Sister came on for the first time, and, frankly, it stopped whatever conversation we had going. This album qualifies for inclusion under Pradyut's super-impressed category. SMS is a now defunct band from Atlanta, Georgia, headlined by Jennifer Nettles, who subsequently sold out and started making country music. Gotta pay the bills I guess. Apparently Ben saw them play live a couple times and scored the album way back. Nettles' voice has the same wrenching soulful quality as Lila Downs' voice, and she writes all her own music. SMS put out two albums, neither under a major label, and neither obtainable for a reasonable amount of money online in CD or digital form. This is a huge pity! Of course I copied this one from Ben...

Frère Delas' Côtes du Ventoux 2006

Typical Rhone Valley offering. Light red so you should serve it slightly cooler than regular reds.

Quite delicious. Will stand up to salads, or even ginger which is not what most reds can do.

Most quaffable. At $9, it won't break the bank either.

The Inheritance of Loss

Lawd, did this stink!!! I gave up half-way.

This is all part of the nouveau fascination with all things Indian.

PS :- Offspring of famous artists are frequently triple-flusher stinkeroos.

The Athenian Murders

This book by José Carlos Somozo is simply the best I have read in a very long time.

To say too much about the book would be to destroy it completely but you can argue endlessly whether this is a cracklin' mystery story, or a book on philosophical ideas or `ideas', or a meta-fictional philosophical mystery or ...

Incidentally, the original Spanish title La caverna de las ideas (The Cave of Ideas) is far better than the English version in as much as it echoes Plato's cave metaphor.

And it is far far superior to Eco's The Name of the Rose to which it is (very) superficially related. (It is clearly more influenced by Nabokov's Pale Fire than anything else.)

Can we create a "super-impressed" category? This one belongs there.

Slumdog Millionaire

Loved it, loved it, loved it.

Not just because I'm from Bombay (now Mumbai) but because it's a tight, slickly-edited modern day thriller + love story in a Bollywood guise via Lancashire and Hollywood.

It takes immense cinematic talent to not only keep the audience engaged but also on total edge when you know all along how it's gonna end. Danny Boyle pulls out all the stops for this movie which is Oliver Twist in all but name.

It would really help if you understood Hindi/Urdu which are known for their highly "creative" approach to swearing. Extraordinarily creative, Joyce-worthy creative. The subtitles lame out.

But the soundtrack kicks ass.

Bernard-Henri Levy - Left in Dark Times

This is a polemic. Based on the author, that is a given. However, due to Levy's amazingly eventful life and courage, just about everything he writes is worth reading. Particularly, his lucid passage about the conflict between tolerance and secularism (in the "Fascislamism" chapter) is alone worth the time required for the book. It is also interesting to read a perspective informed by the recent history of Europe rather than North America, to see which events resonate in different places.

Once can find many conversations with Levy on CharlieRose.com.