READ: Eco Books by Terry Taylor

Subtitled: Inventive Projects from the Recycling Bin, Taylor has assembled over 40 projects using materials such as junk mail, cereal boxes, luggage tags, dental floss containers and other objects we usually just throw into the recycle bin. Projects combine these cast-off materials with traditional bookmaking techniques and structures, including accordion fold, sewing over tapes, long stitch, and others.

Easy to follow instructions accompany detailed drawings, and several templates are included, as well as examples of works by well-known book artists. A great companion book to Jeannine Stein’s re-bound (below). So, don’t toss out those egg cartons! Make a book!

READ: Memoirs of a British Agent by R.H. Bruce Lockhart

One of the more fascinating characters in the British Foreign Service was R.H. Bruce Lockhart. Stationed in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, he knew everyone of consequence, from writers like and artists, Tsarist loyalists and revolutionaries of all political persuasions. His autobiography, published in 1932, made him an instant celebrity.

He became well acquainted with Sidney Reilly, the (presumed) model for Ian Fleming’s literary character James Bond. Bruce Lockhart and Reilly were arrested, tried and sentenced to death for a plot to assassinate V.I. Lenin. Reilly was executed, but Bruce Lockhart was saved through an exchange of prisoners, supposed Russian spies being held in Great Britain.

The tone of this autobiography is friendly and unassuming, especially considering the cast of real-life characters swirling around its pages – Hugh Walpole, Leon Trotsky, Feodor Chaliapin, Maxim Gorky, Tsar Nicholas II, Arthur Ransome, and Prince Lvov, to name just a few. Now out of print, copies of the 2003 Folio Society edition are available from online booksellers. It’s well worth the tracking down for an exciting and enjoyable time experiencing the secret world before easy mass communication immediately let us all know the latest news from the secret world.

WATCH: Salome and Lot in Sodom

The 1923 silent film, Salome, stars Alla Nazimova as the young Judean princess, and the hauntingly seductive Nigel De Brulier as Jokaanan, the Prophet. Based on the play by Oscar Wilde, with sets based on the illustrations by Audbrey Beardsley, the film lasts a little over one hour and cost $350,000 , an exorbitant amount for the time. The sets are fairly bare, relying on atmosphere and character interaction to move things along. The straightforward narrative follows the Wilde drama faithfully, in high camp fashion even by contemporary standards. Posturing and posing are the main acting methods. It’s an amazing work nonetheless. A failure at the time of its release, it was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2000.

Of more interest on this double-bill DVD is Lot in Sodom, a short (28 minutes) silent art film directed by James Silbey Watson, heir to the Western Union fortune and friend and patron of artists and writers of the 1920s, especially e. e. cummings. Watson used many interesting cinematic devices, such as multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, and blurring to retell the biblical story of the ancient sin city, its lustful inhabitants, and destruction, without resorting to such high-camp attics as seen in Salome.

WATCH and LISTEN: Wagner’s Ring Really Fast!

Every now and then, I pull out Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and listen to the entire thing from beginning to end – without stopping. I have a variety of performances and formats to do this. At any moment I can listen to recordings by: Georg Solti, James Levine, Bernard Haitink, Hans Knapperstbush (Bayreuth 1951), Clemens Krauss (Bayreuth 1953), or Karl Böhm (Bayreuth 1967).

If I’m in the mood to sit for 15 hours, I can watch the version from the Metropolitan Opera (Levine), Bayreuth (Boulez), Bayeruth (Barenboim), Het Muziektheater Amsterdam (Haenchen), Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona (de Billy), or Staatsoper Stuttgart (Zagroesek).

I’m compelled to admit that my iPod contains the Solti recording as one long Playlist. But there are (actually) times when a shorter, less intense version is what’s needed to calm the inner Dunderlumkins. This 45-second German language clip just hits the right button for that.

If you’ve never heard Wagner’s Ring Cycle and are interested in learning what all the fuss is about it, Anna Russell’s explanation, The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis), is also available on YouTube, and on CD titled The Anna Russell Album at Amazon. There’s also a transcript of her presentation here. It’s a good way to get the story under your belt and out of the way, so to speak.

There's no such thing as the perfect recording of the Ring. Each has merits and liabilities unique to itself. Personal taste comes into play when deciding which you prefer. At different time, different performances will seem right. For me, the Solti is the sound recording I always want to hear, and the Boulez Bayreuth video recording is hard to beat. The staging is inspired, and the interplay between Wotan (Donald McIntyre) and Brünnhilda (Gwyneth Jones) is unsurpassed in its pathos. Whichever version you choose, enjoy!

READ: C D B! by William Steig

Since my house was invaded by honey bees yesterday, coming in through a small hole they made in the ceiling, I thought it was time to pull off the shelf one of my favorite books from my days as a children’s librarian.

William Steig’s C D B! is forty pages of silliness for people of all ages. Each sentence is made of one-letter words, creating a wonderful puzzle. The reader must solve the puzzle to enjoy the humor. Try this one: D B S A B-Z B. (The bee is a busy bee.)

Each page is a new puzzle, accompanied by Stieg’s simple line drawings, made famous by his work in The New Yorker and other children’s books, including Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Abel’s Island, The Amazing Bone, and the wonderful Shrek!

The Bee Man is due any minute. My faithful cat, Sophie, is locked in the bathroom. Most of the bees are still sleeping, so it’s time to go.

So, have fun. And – N Q 4 R E D N!

UPDATE: Those are Yellow Jackets, not Honey Bees. The Bee Man is not best pleased! Anyone know a good book about Yellow Jackets?

WATCH: Idiot

Adapting any literary work into a screenplay is fraught with problems from the start. Translating written words into images can be tricky, especially the internalized motives of characters. Reshaping a 900-page novel into a 2-hour film means leaving out some scenes, characters, conversations and thoughts the novelist believed important to the overall telling of the story.

When the masterwork in question is Russian, there is the added complication that most of the viewing audience will be intimately familiar with the story, and will harbor dangerous thoughts at any screenwriter or director who dares to leave anything out. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Idiot is such a masterwork well beloved and known to Russian audiences. There have been dozens of stage and screen adaptations over the years, with the first film released in 1913.

In 2003, Russian television produced a 10-part series that is faithful almost to a fault, although this version, too, leaves things out. Two of Russia’s best young actors take the leads: the dark, smoldering Vladimir Mashov as Parfyon Rogozhin and Yevgeni Mironov as Prince Myshkin, the idiot of the title. Mironov, a talented stage actor, creates his character through the use of his body – tightly drawn up into himself, stiff, never blinking his eyes. When he walks he never swings his arms, and his feet are placed one in front of the other, giving him an unbalanced persona. When he finally relaxes (or lapses) into happiness, as when he hops up a set of stairs, you appreciate the incredible job Mironov has accomplished.

The young female leads are also good, with Lidiya Velezheva as Natassya Filipopovna, the object of both men’s unrealistic affections, and Olga Budina as Aglava Yepanchina, young and immature, and out of her league with the others. But it’s the veteran actress Inna Churikova as Lizaveta Prokof’yevna that holds the entire production together, from the first episode to the last scene of this stunningly beautiful production.

The English subtitles are something beyond the pale. They go by very quickly (have your hand on the pause button), occasionally run off the ends of the screen, and are often so badly translated that they are funny. When General Yepanchin has a heart attack, his young son Koyla screams, “Impact! Help! Help!” That makes a little sense, some of the other subtitles are just gibberish.

READ: A Village Life: Poems by Louise Glück

There is a certain amount of trust that must be given to artists – a willingness to follow them wherever their creativity takes them. From writing terse, exquisitely crafted poems, Louise Glück has entered the realm of the short story in verse form. It’s jarring, and not completely successful, but there are moments of bone-chilling clarity. For those moments alone, it’s worth the reader’s attention and commitment to her new poetic form.

The themes of the poems in A Village Life revolve around a fountain in a small, unspecified small town, although it feels like it may be somewhere near Averno, in Italy, the setting of her previous book. Poems concern the seasons, the necessity and unwillingness to accept the changes life inevitably presents, death, and uncertainty. Death, and our inability to accept it as part of life, is a major theme in many of the poems. From “A Slip of Paper” comes:

“To get born, your body makes a pact with death,/and from that moment, all it tries to do is cheat.”

During a panel discussion of poets, Glück said, “You have to believe that what you're doing as you're working has the makings of a miraculous utterance, you have to believe it. But if you continue to believe it, in the absence of evidence, if you begin to think that if nobody seems to like your poem it's because your poem is so harrowing and so violently perceptive that people are fleeing from it—that response needs to be examined.”

There are miraculous utterances in this collection of poems, and they are harrowing. And, if you find yourself fleeing from her poems by simply feeling the need to put them down for a time, the she’s achieved part of her goal as a poet.

WATCH: The Gay Desperado

One of the very few advantages of hot, muggy, smoky, sleepless nights is watching old movies on Turner Classic Movies. Last night it was The Gay Desperado, starring a very young Ida Lupino, the always entertaining Leo Carrillo, and opera star Nino Martini. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian in 1936, the story involves a band of Mexican train robbers who want to become American-style gangsters, a runaway rich kid and his fiancé, Mexican and American police, and a supposed bandit who wants to be an opera singer. It doesn’t matter that the plot is silly, there’s lots of great music. And who would ever guess that a radio station pick-up band would know the music to Celeste Aida!

Born in Verona, Nino Martini was a popular operatic tenor of the 1930s and 1940s who split his time between the New York Metropolitan Opera and Hollywood. At the Met he sang mostly the bel canto roles of Bellini, Rossini, and Donizetti, as well as the heavier Puccini and Verdi roles. He appeared in seven other films through 1948.

The film was produced by Mary Pickford and distributed through her United Artists company. Let’s hope there are more movies like this in the vault. Who knows how long these sleepless night will last!

LISTEN: The Impossible Duet: Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia for Cello and Violin

There isn’t much to say except that this is one place where art and technology intersect.

READ: Twelve by Nick McDonell

Another novel by a rich white New York kid with publishing world connections. Another novel in which the teenage author tries to impress readers with his private-school education (I’m so smart I can quote Catullus). Another novel about rich white kids trying to be cool, dealing and taking drugs, buying lots of expensive stuff like Prada bags, (the litanies of luxury are numbing). Another novel of rich white teenage angst, told in prurient detail for readers with attention spans the length of Twitter tweets. Another novel of teenagers blasted away by a ninja à la Columbine.

None of these things would matter if the novel was well written, but it isn’t. It has no sympathetic characters, including the narrator named White Mike – he’s a drug dealer who doesn’t take drugs, smoke or drink. That’s not enough to make the reader care. SPOILER ALERT: He winds up getting shot, recovers from his wounds so, like Melville’s Ishmael, he can tell the tale. Then he goes off to college in Paris. France. Europe. At least it isn’t “home.” Get it?

Twelve (the name of one of the drugs White Mike sells) has no character development. Characters either die or continue their empty lives, just like their parents. Nobody changes because of experience. It has no original voice – just a Bret Easton Ellis or Jay McInerney wannabe tone that’s not even a good imitation. It’s so derivative it’s like reading a back issue of the Sun. It wasted my time, which is inexcusable.

If you want to read a novel by a teenage author, why not try Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan? Or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein? Or Christopher Paolini’s Eragon? Or S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders? Or Richard Mason’s The Drowning People? Each has merits that far outweigh their defects, and great storytelling without self-indulgence.

Warning: McDonell has written two additional novels, and Twelve has been made into a motion picture for a 2010 release. Read and watch at your own risk.

READ: The Pocket Engineer by Carol Barton

Pop-up books are popular with children and adults alike. There are hundreds available for purchase, ranging from the very simple to the unbelievably complex. You may well ask, “How on earth do they do that?” It’s helpful to know that every project begins small, with basic tools and techniques. Projects expand with the imagination of the artist, building one skill at a time.

Carol Barton, artist, teacher and founder of Popular Kinetics Press, has been teaching book arts and paper engineering for more than 20 years. She has produced (so far) two volumes of The Pocket Engineer: Volume I (Basic Forms), and Volume II (Platforms and Props). Each spiral-bound book contains over 30 projects, with detailed instructions and templates. With a sharp craft knife and a little patience, even the beginning bookmaker of any age can create interesting works of art. And, while it’s not absolutely necessary for the successful completion of a pop-up project, it does help to be able to see things in your mind backwards – folding something out may make it actually fold in. Get the picture? You will. Just trust Carol!

READ: Portrait of a Man with Red Hair: a Romantic Macabre by Hugh Walpole

“The soul of Charles Percy Harkness slipped, like a neat white pocket-handkerchief, out through the carriage window into the sliver-blue air, hung there changing into a tiny white fleck against the immensity, struggling for escape about the purple-pointed trees of the dark wood, then realizing that escape was not yet, fluttered back into the carriage again, was caught by Charles Percy, neatly folded up, and put away.” Any novel that starts with a paragraph like that has me in its spell!

Charles Harkness, an American expatriate living in England, has simply floated through life, his few personal treasures his only company. On a vacation to the Midlands, he becomes entangled in the relationship between a newly married young woman named Hesther, her lifelong friend (and unrequited lover) David Dunbar, and her cold, aloof husband, Mr. Crispin, Jr.

But the most disturbing character in this unsettling novel is Mr. Crispin, Sr., who possesses flaming red hair, a melodious, comforting voice, and a hypnotic hold over everyone he meets. He’s also insane, and believes that only through pain can power over individuals be achieved. He can immediately identify a person’s weakness, no matter how small, and exploit it to prove his point. He can cause discomfort with a smile or the simple touch of his hand.

Portrait of a Man with Red Hair, Hugh Walpole’s 1925 work, was deemed unfit for publication as a serialized magazine piece because of its “revolting character.” Sold to another publisher, it became a popular example of the gothic novel. Even today, over 80 years later, Crispin, Sr. is a stunning creation, and a force to be taken seriously. No longer in print, it’s available free in full- text at Project Gutenberg Australia.

READ: Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown

I found this on a shelf yesterday, tucked behind the new translation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Since I wasn’t going to get through that tome in one day, I opted for my namesake’s story!

Stanley is a boy who becomes flat as a pancake after a bulletin board falls on him. It didn’t’ hurt, but it took a little time for him to get used to being only one-half inch thick. With his new dimensions, he flies like a kite, helps the police solve a mystery, is sent through the mail in an envelope, and saves the day in other ways. With illustrations by Tomi Ungerer, Flat Stanley is fun for all ages. In fact, there’s even a Flat Stanley Project, where school kids send their own Flat Stanleys to other kids their own age, and sometimes, even really famous people.

LISTEN: Dialogues des Carmelites by Francis Poulenc

First performed in 1957, Poulenc’s opera Dialogues of the Carmelites originally had a small, devoted audience. Its popularity continues to grow as more productions are mounted, which is usually performed in the language of the audience where it is being staged.

The story is set in and around the Carmelite convent at Compiegne, Paris, during the French Revolution and the Terror that followed. The opera deals with a number of important questions, including the nature of faith, the place of the individual in a community, religious or not, and the appeal of martyrdom - do you choose it or does god offer it to you? The final scene, depicting the martyrdom of the Carmelite nuns, is scored as a “Salve Regina,” with the chorus of voices diminishing one by one as the nuns are led to the guillotine. The effect is as stunning as it is emotional.

My favorite recording is with the Lyon National Opera Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano. The 2-CD set is available from Amazon.

WATCH: Blu-ray Weekend

Blu-ray is the latest, greatest way to watch videos at home. When hooked up to a large high-definition television set and a high-quality sound system, the overall experience is all it’s touted to be. If you’re trying to decide whether to purchase one, go for it! Or do what I did: visit really good friends who have a new Blu-ray and have a wonderful time! then, put it on your Christmas list!

We spent the weekend watching The Wages of Fear, an unbelievably intense black and white French film from 1954, recently restored and reissued on the Criterion Collection. We continued with The Godfather, Parts I and II. (We only got 15 minutes into Part III and fled the room!) Next up: Master and Commander, Planet Earth, Iron Man and The Dark Knight.

Biggest surprise? Iron Man, which we all found fun, especially the droll performance of Robert Downey, Jr. It had lots of stuff blowing up, too, and the sound went right through us. And the episodes of Planet Earth, the BBC series narrated by David Attenborough, were stunning.

Blu-ray will turn your living room into a great place to watch movies. Don't forget the popcorn!

WATCH: The Crow Road

Based on the 1992 novel by Iain Banks, Joseph McFadden stars as Prentice McHoan, a young Scotsman trying to solve the mystery surrounding the disappearance of his Uncle Rory, a travel writer who vanished without a trace seven years earlier. Rory is “away the crow road,” which in Scotland is a way of saying he’s dead.

The four-part BBC series begins with the McHoan grandmother blowing up in a crematorium at her own funeral (a bit of Scots humor), and continues as the members of his family begin to die quickly and in some very odd ways. It’s filled with flashbacks and even flashbacks within flashbacks. The Crow Road is a mystery, a ghost story, a family of writers filled with secrets they try to take to the grave, and many of them do.

Banks wrote that the novel was about “Death, Sex, Faith, Cars, Scotland and Drink,” and this BBC adaptation is faithful to his description, helped along by a cadre of famous British actors, including Bill Patterson, Peter Capaldi (In the Loop), and David Robb (Sirius Black in the Harry Potter films), among the cast.

LISTEN: Rheingold Curse with Sequentia

Subtitled, “A Germanic Saga of Greed and Vengeance from the Medieval Icelandic Edda,” this rendering of the folkloric stories of the river Rhine, Fafnir, Sigurd, Gunnarm and his sister Gudrun, and Brynhild (among others) is as far from Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle as is possible. Scored for only five musicians, it includes spoken text, ballad fragments, and instrumental interludes created over 800 years ago in the Germanic Nibelungenlied, the Icelandic Eddas, and other ancient texts.

The performance by Sequentia is hypnotic, but does not have the same musical impact as the medieval hymns of Hildegard of Bingen. At nearly an hour and 45 minutes, it may be best sampled a little at a time before undertaking it all in one sitting. Of course, I’ve listened to the Ring Cycle all in one sitting, but that’s another story!

READ: Most Remarkable Names by John Train

Investment advisor, banker, and financial visionary John Train is also a famous raconteur who has collected interesting (and authentic) names of people in all walks of life who have lived in various times places. With each name he includes the person's occupation, location or where he found the name, and often cites similar names in footnotes. The book's deadpan illustrations are by Pierre Le-Matin, whose artwork has often graced the covers of The New Yorker.

Here are some of the remarkable names he's found: Ave Maria Klinkenberg, Buncha Love, Cigar Stubbs, Constant Agony, Dennis Elbow, Nosmo King, and my very very favorite – Immaculate Conception Finkelstein.

Unfortunately, this title is no longer in print. I've had my copy since it was first published in 1985. You might find a copy at your local library, or at a good used book store. Train is also the author of Most Remarkable Occurrences.

Whenever I need a good laugh, I head for the Train!

READ: A Cold Day in Paradise by Steve Hamilton

Not many books take place in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a place dear, if not near to my heart, so it was a pleasure to discover this mystery, a birthday present from very dear friends.

Alex McKnight, a former Detroit police officer left the city due to a near-fatal shooting, is happy to move to the UP and takes over a small hunting owned by his deceased father. He also gets a private investigator’s license. Suddenly, local bookies start getting murdered, and Alex begins receiving letters from the man who (apparently) shot him 14 years ago. These two diverse plots merge in a blaze of glory.

A Cold Day in Paradise won the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin's Press Award for Best First Private Eye Novel of 1997. While the mystery element wasn’t as engaging as some mysteries, I really enjoyed the atmosphere, but I’m partial to my memories of the UP.

LISTEN: Zarah Leander sings Adieu

One of the great things about YouTube is serendipity. You’re watching one video clip that leads to another, and another, and suddenly you’re completely lost. In the process, you might just discover someone really interesting, like Zarah Leander.

A very popular singer and movie star in Scandinavia and especially Germany before and during World War II, Leander was a beautiful and talented Swedish artist. As can be seen in publicity stills, German film studio UFA tried to capitalize on her physical likeness to that other great Swedish actress, Greta Garbo. She remained in Germany during the war, and only returned to Sweden after her Berlin home was bombed. Shunned by both the Swedish artistic community and the public, her career never regained its former popularity. By the late 1960s, Leander’s voice, once a lovely, lilting mezzo became a glorious, scrappy cabaret instrument.

READ AND WATCH: Julie & Julia

READ: Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell. Cooking any recipe out of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking seems like the challenge of a lifetime. Cooking all 523 recipes in one year flat seems just this side of manic. Julie Powell did that and blogged about her experience. The fact that she lived to tell the tale (thanks to a living-saint of a husband) and write another book, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession, is testimony to the power of the human spirit.

The humor in the memoir is infectious, and it’s easy to empathize with the author’s ups and downs, which seem to happen at the drop of a spoon. I’m not quite sure she’s the kind of person I’d want around the house for more than a few days, but those days would be a riot of food and fun.

WATCH: Julie & Julia: based on two true stories. Based on Julie Powell’s book (above) and My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’Homme, the movie intertwines the stories of Julia Child’s initiation into the world of French cuisine first French cook book for an American audience and Julie Powell’s attempts to cook all the recipes in it in one year.

The film is remarkable on many levels. Meryl Streep completely captures Child’s quirky persona, an especially difficult feat since so many of us have that persona living in our memories from her numerous television shows. Amy Adams does a good job of capturing the Julie Powell we only know from her book, but writer/director Nora Ephron has cleaned her up a bit and made her tone less abrasive.

The depiction of marriage is also a wonderful and rare aspect of the film. Both the Powell’s and the Child’s marriages are seen as loving, respectful, supportive and kind without ever being cheapened by becoming maudlin. These are real people who genuinely care for each other, not idealized or romanticized.

Julie & Julia is the first movie of the summer that’s worth seeing twice.

WATCH: Apartment Zero

Colin Firth may be Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy (Pride and Prejudice) or Mr. Mark Darcy (Bridget Jones) to many people, or even Tommy Judd (Another Country) for those with really long memories, but how about Adrian LeDuc in Apartment Zero from 1988? Firth plays the young, extremely anti-social owner of an apartment complex in modern-day Buenos Aires who also runs a broken-down revival movie theater, showing English-language films from the 30s and 40s.

Strapped for cash, he’s forced to look for a roommate, and finally settles on the charming, seductive and mysterious Jack Carney, played by Hart Bochner with just the right amount of insidiousness to make him utterly irresistible to everyone he meets, including the tenants in the other apartments. Both men are harboring deeply held secrets and, when they’re revealed, the results are both devastating and surprising.

READ: Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich by Mark H. Kater

What are the moral responsibilities of artists in repressive regimes? Is it possible to separate art from politics in environments such as Nazi Germany? Do artists promote the values of their governments simply by performing their art? Kater poses these questions while discussing the lives and careers of classical musician who remained in Germany during the Second World War, including conductors Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan and Karl Böhm, composers Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner and Carl Orff (Carmina Burana), singer Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and others.

A very interesting film on the same subject is Taking Sides, available on DVD or complete on YouTube. Based on the play by Ronald Harwood, it’s a fictionalized account of the denazification inquiry brought against Wilhelm Furtwängler, considered by many to be the greatest conductor of the the last century. Starring Harvey Keitel as the American Lieutenant leading the 1945 investigation and Stellan Skarsgård as Furtwängler. Directed by István Szbró (Mephisto, Colonel Redl, Being Julia).

WATCH: Pie in the Sky

Richard Griffiths (Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter films) stars as Detective Inspector Henry Crabbe who, after a 25-year career in the police force, wants to take early and run a restaurant. His accountant wife isn’t so sure, and her idea that “food is just fuel” doesn’t make his decision any easier. Placed on extended leave his superiors, Crabbe finds a location, hires a staff, and tries his hand at the food game. His attempts to create interesting menus and creative dishes are constantly interrupted by Detective Sergeant Sophia Cambridge, who informs Crabbe he’s needed on a case, usually involving murder.

There are 40 episodes in all, and the first 10 (Series 1) have been released recently on DVD. They’re low-key fun, and the mixture of mystery, criminal investigations, the vicissitudes of being a restaurateur and Crabbe’s passionate love for food and cooking make these a treat to watch. And to add to the enjoyment, a great recipe for Steak and Kidney pie, one of the chef’s specialties, is included!

WATCH: Departures (Okuribito)

When a last chair cellist in a Japanese orchestra loses his job, he realizes he will never be able make a living as a musician. He sells his instrument, looks for work and is overjoyed to be offered work with a firm called “Departures.” Thinking it’s a travel agency, he’s stunned to find out that it is really an agency that prepares bodies for burial, usually in the family’s home of the departed. At first he’s repulsed by the work, but slowly begins to understand the importance of the work, as a means of helping relatives cope with grief and as a way of fulfilling his own destiny.

Now in theaters, Departures won the Academy Award for Best Foreign in 2009. It easily could have been morbid or maudlin, but it’s neither. Low key, with moments of humor and pathos, it’s the kind of film the Japanese do better than anyone. Another example in a similar vein is After Life, an another extraordinary Japanese film from 1998.

LISTEN: Renee Fleming Sings Korngold

Soprano Fleming takes a lot of hits on the web, mostly directed at her inability to seem totally involved in the portrayals of her operatic heroines. It’s not by accident that she released a compact disc entitled, The Beautiful Voice. It certainly is and, for some, that’s enough. For others, risk is also part of an operatic experience.

Sometimes she manages both the beautiful voice and total involvement to make the musical experience memorable. Click the YouTube video above and listen to this live performance of the aria "Ich ging zu ihm" from Der Wunder der Heliane by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, recorded at the 2007 Proms at Royal Albert Hall, London. The studio version is available on iTunes.

READ: Uniform Justice: a Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon

Commissario Bruentti tries to solve the mystery surrounding the apparent suicide of a cadet at a prestigious private military academy in Venice. The student body consists solely of the sons of the wealthy and powerful Italian families. Breaking the silence that class, both students and parents, is a formidable task. The general corruption of the Italian government, from the highest offices to the local magistrates, only hampers the Commissario’s efforts.

Donna Leon again captures the frustrations of the police forces in dealing with a class-conscious, corrupt and insular Italian populace, as well as the parental concerns he has for his children, and the very touching relationship between him and his wife, a university professor from an old and moneyed Venetian family.

READ: Death at La Fenice: a Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon

The first in the Guido Brunetti series of procedural mysteries takes place in the world-famous Venetian opera house La Fenice. A renown conductor, (a caricature of Herbert von Karajan) is found dead in his dressing room just before the third act of Verdi’s opera La Traviata is about to begin. The cast of possible suspects includes the (of course, temperamental) prima donna, her wealthy American female lover, the disgruntled tenor and the Luchino Visconti-esque designer/director. Everyone has means, a good motive and ample opportunity.

Brunetti is a memorable and endearing character whose family and life at home are as important to him as solving the terrible crimes that plague modern-day Venice. American author Donna Leon is extremely popular in Europe and should be better known in the US. Her latest book in the series, About Face, published in 2009, is the 18^th title in the series.

READ: Re-bound: Creating Handmade Books from Recycled and Repurposed Materials by Jeannine Stein

Los Angeles-based book artist Stein presents 16 projects using materials as diverse as hot water bottles, window screens, and potato chip bags. Detailed instructions, patterns and a gallery of work by other artists (including my pals Charlene Matthews and Richard Troncone) using blue jeans, soda cans and cereal boxes are included.

In Re-bound, Jeannine proves once again that you really can make a book out of anything!

READ: The Raggy Boy Trilogy by Patrick Galvin

This three-part autobiography by the Irish poet and playwright Galvin is divided into:

Song for a Poor Boy, the story of his growing up in Cork until the age of 12. It’s filled with wonderful characters and magical stories as only the Irish can tell, of people who turn into birds, or never leave their houses, or simply wander the streets looking for something indescribable.

Song for a Raggy Boy, the story of Galvin’s life at a reformatory run by the Christian brothers, where cruelty is inflicted for the smallest infraction and only a lay teacher comes to the boy’s defense. This portion of the memoir was turned into a film with Adain Quinn as the teacher, and is much more explicit in its cruelty than the book.

Song for a Fly Boy, recounting Galvin’s time spent in the RAF during World War II. Lying about his age, he joined up at 16 and spent the war, not flying missions, but trapped by a bureaucracy that keeps him idle in Britain, East Africa and Palestine.

Currently out of print and not easily available at your local library, the trilogy is worth tracking down. The entire film version of Song for a Raggy Boy is available on YouTube.

READ: Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano

Italian journalist Saviano exposes the criminal underworld that controls every aspect of life in Naples. The Camorra, a powerful and violent organization that makes the Mafia look charitable, is composed of small, closely-knit groups that deal in textiles, fashion, armaments, urban development and more. Its dealings are worldwide and reaching into nearly every country in the world. The origins of a haute couture dress worn by Angelina Jolie at film premiere are traced to a Neopolitan sweat shop run by a low level Camorra member who ekes out a living exploiting his workers and his family. Life is a commodity like any other, and not a highly valued.

Recently made into an excellent narrative film as opposed to a documentary, Gomorrah is like no other gangster movie you've ever seen and as far from The Godfather as possible. Both the book and the film are as startling as they are thought-provoking.

READ: The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

Tracing the history of classical music from Richard Strauss' opera Salome (1905) through the minimalist compositions of Philip Glass and John Adams, New York Times music critic Alex Ross weaves a story so compelling it’s hard to put down. Connecting a rare or difficult piece of music to a popular one is his forte and simply amazing. His prose style is lively and engaging, never pedantic, and his utter joy in listening to music and mining its depths is infectious.

Ross has provided a website with sound clips of music under discussion, and YouTube has hundreds of video clips that make the reading experience even more fun.

READ: The Spy Game by Georgina Harding

By the author of The Solitude of Thomas Cave

In the 1950s, when a young Polish-born British mother suddenly dies in an automobile accident, her children refuse to accept the simple explanations of the adults in their lives. When Russian spies are uncovered in London, her two children believe she is still alive and living in the Eastern bloc. Her absence and the way her children cope with that loss color their lives and futures.

Georgina Harding’s prose is as elegant as her storytelling, and her understanding of childhood and the terrors it holds prove engrossing.

READ: My Name is Michael Sibley by John Bingham

Michael Sibley visits his old school friend John Prosset. When Prosset is found murdered and the police question Sibley, he lies about his visit. One lie eventually leads to another and the discovery that the two old friends’ relationship was one filled with mutual deception and distrust.

Whenever I read that a writer is another John le Carre I run to the library. In this case, le Carre said as much. Both were in the British secret service together, but Bingham stayed with it and defended it against the more famous author’s criticism. Bingham is good, but he’s not le Carre.

READ: Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

During the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin crime did not exist, so the discovery of the mutilated body of a child is officially covered up. Lev Demidov, a Russian war hero and security officer, believes the official lie, even when the son of a co-worker is found murdered on a railroad track. Demoted to the provinces through the machinations of an envious subordinate, Demidov comes across another murder committed in the same brutal way. The hunt for the serial killer of at least 44 children ends in with a strange revelation.

The prose is flat but the description of life under Stalin is interesting. On publication, the book received much critical praise in the UK, and was one of 13 books longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. (The White Tiger by Avavind Adiga won.) Smith’s second and latest book, The Secret Speech, also features Lev Demidov. I've decided pass on the newer one.