August Reading and Listening Recommendation

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Let me start off by thanking Eoghan. He took off for some summer gigs around the U.K. and Germany. In doing so he left me in charge of his library. This book is part of the Eoghan collection.
Someday I hope to be able to read Marquez in his original language, but for the time being I’ll settle for Edith Grossman’s translations. If you haven’t read Marquez to tell you what a particular story or book is about doesn’t do it justice. The art is in the process. Love in the Time of Cholera is about a love triangle that goes unrequited for fifty-one years, nine months and four days. It is set in Columbia during the latter 1800’s and early 1900’s, when Cholera was ravaging the residents of the Columbian countryside. As I was nearing the end of the book, I found myself reading slower to avoid finishing it.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is currently writing the screenplay for a movie version which will star Javier Bardem (see Mondays in the Sun, a fantastic movie). I still have one question that lingers and anyone can feel free to answer it. In the last few pages of the book Fermina Daza is going down the river in a riverboat and she sees a woman that she recognizes who is obviously distressed on the shore. She asks the capitan why they don't stop to pick her up and the capitan explains that the woman is a ghost who is always there trying to lure the riverboats into the rocks. Is that woman on the shore Fermina's mother?


Thom Yorke has a new album out as do The Twilight Singers, Johnny Cash and Golden Smog but we haven’t bought any new music in a while, so this month’s selection is brought to you by the Matt Melvin inspired wing of our collection.

Satan is Real – The Louvin Brothers
Outside of what might be the best album cover in our collection and the preachy content (seriously), this comes down to being simply a good gospel/folk collection of Americana. Boasting songs such as “The Angels Rejoiced Last Night”, “There’s a Higher Power”, “The Christian Life” and the two part epic to a drinking man’s finding of Jesus “The Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea” and “The Drunkard’s Doom”.
Charlie and Ira Louvin started in the 1940’s working with Chet Atkins. The brothers were inspired by Appalachian Folk Music. They joined the Grand Ol’ Opry in 1955 and stayed there until 1963. Ira was killed in a car accident in 1965 and Charlie attempted a solo career. The Louvin Brothers provided inspiration for the country-rock genre having influenced The Byrds, Crosby Stills and Nash and Gram Parsons.