Happy New Year

I'm just about back from all my travels now, and normal blog service will resume at the start of 2008. (Thanks for that Comments suggestion about listing all the books somewhere on this blog - I'll try to get that sorted out.)

In the meantime, here's the funniest thing I saw on British TV over Christmas: an old clip from a 1975 chat show. Enjoy!

Consuming Consumables

PopMatters has a very helpful ongoing holiday gift guide called "Consuming Consumables" that lists the best books, music and film gifts for the pop culture junky on your list. And today they feature 33 1/3 Greatest Hits Volume 2, which I would absolutely give to someone this Christmas if it didn't send the message that "I care so much about you that I took this book from work for free."

"For all of us that were buying records way before back-catalogue compilations and the mp3 came to dominate the music scene, the 33 1/3 series of short books, each dealing with a different LP, make for perfect stocking fillers. Then comes the obligatory Greatest Hits, a digest of some of the best writing from the series. With the release of Volume 2 there is the usual mix of insightful personal experiences and professional encounters with the various artists. From pop to hip-hop, this book is guaranteed to shift Christmas Day away from the turkey and the inevitable re-run of It’s a Wondeful Life to a raiding of the record collection at hand."

PS: I wouldn't say no to a copy of this.

All Celine, all weekend...

New York Magazine takes a thoughtful look at Celine, and runs the photo of her in a catwoman pantsuit to your right.

Celine Dion's Las Vegas stage show wrapped up over the weekend and the NY Times has a wrap-up.

The Toronto Globe and Mail published an excerpt from Carl Wilson's book on Celine as well, in which he describes his experience in Vegas to see Celine like so:

"I wandered in a haze through the gold towers and black pyramids, dancing water fountains, seizure-inducing signage and replicas of landmarks from cities where I'd rather have been, before slouching back to my room each night with a fifth of bourbon to watch pay-per-view. Muttering witticisms to myself got tired fast. I was a stray member of the cultural-capital tribe deported to a gaudy prison colony run by a phalanx of showgirls who held hourly re-education sessions to hammer me into feeling insignificant and micro-penised."

CBC's "Q" program interviewed Carl on Friday. You can download the podcast here.

The Montreal Gazette ran a great review of the book on Saturday.

"Let's Talk About Love is a rigorous, perceptive and very funny meditation on what happens when you realize that there's more to life than being hip, and begin to grapple with just what that "more" might be." --Montreal Gazette

"The Mich Vish Interracial Morning Show" out of Guelph, Canada spoke with Carl on Thursday. You can find a link to the archive on this page.

...and this just in: Gawker.com.

The Celine Dion Project

Yesterday I called NPR's Bryant Park Project radio show the "Bryant Park Program." It is indeed "Project," as in The Alan Parsons Project*. I sincerely regret the error.

Anyway, they interviewed Carl Wilson this morning about the Celine Dion 33 1/3. 14 minutes and 21 seconds well spent.

* The Alan Parsons Project's 1985 album Vulture Culture includes the song "Let's Talk About Me."

High notes from Celine Dion

Herewith is the first of a series of several Carl Wilson/Celine Dion mega-posts. At least that's how things are shaping up at the moment. I should be running out of puns for subject headings in about 3 more posts... At any rate:

FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE:
PRI's show Fair Game with Faith Salie had Carl on the program to talk about the book on Monday.

Whitney Matheson at USA Today's Daily Candy blog had Carl on her podcast this morning. She also has an excerpt up on the blog.

He's got some more interviews on the way from NPR's Bryant Park Program and the CBC's Q, among others.

FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE:
McLean's out of Canada references Carl's book quite a lot in a piece about Celine's new album.

A long interview with Exclaim! Magazine can be found here.

And of course Carl's guest post on the Powell's blog, "In Praise of Distraction" is still up as well.

FOR YOUR PARTYING PLEASURE:
Carl will be "not reading" from the book on January 9th in Toronto as part of "This Is Not a Reading Series." It will be amazing. Check out all the details here.

FOR YOUR BUYING PLEASURE:
The book is in stock at Powell's and Amazon in the US and Chapters & Indigo in Canada.

We will do our best to keep you up to date from our end, but be sure to check in on Carl's blog at Zoilus.com as well.

Put the needle on the record

Way back in August we announced a 33 1/3 t-shirt design contest through Threadless.com and the results are finally in. Here is the winning design (final shirt does not have the 33 1/3 Loves Threadless logo in the bottom left):

They ran out of stock before I could even put up a post about it, but they will have another batch in stock in February, when you can order it through Threadless at $10 for a t-shirt and $35 for a hoodie. T-shirts come in GRAY, and hoodies are in WHITE. On both, the design is in puffy black paint. Very cool.

* * *
...aaaaannnnnnd, in the spirit of the season, we received one extra white hoodie in the office, size LARGE. First person to send me an email at jmboling(at)continuum-books[dot]com.
[That was fast. Hoodie is gone!]
The hoodie looks like this, but slightly less ominous:

Free stuff! Get to it!

The last of the famous international guest bloggers...

It's almost two months later and Powell's managed to squeeze about 20,000 more words out of twenty 33 1/3 authors past, present, and not-too-distant future to promote their buy 2, get 1 free deal on 33 1/3's which, incidentally, runs through the end of the year, if you still have some holiday shopping to take care of.


* Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats author Drew Daniel cures his case of T.M.I. RE~TG (Too Much Information About Throbbing Gristle).
* Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love author Carl Wilson in praise of distraction.
* Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones (coming in December!) author David Smay on Flann O'Brien.
* Nick Drake - Pink Moon author Amanda Petrusich on Joan Didion and California.
* Music from Big Pink author John Niven on being the writer at the party.
* Led Zep author Erik Davis on vikings, black metal, and pumping iron (seriously, folks!)
* Minutemen author Mike Fournier recommends various and sundry items for you to seek out and enjoy.
* The Smiths author Joe Pernice on William Gibson amongst other things.
* Pet Sounds author Jim Fusili on the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, and the finer points of "cool."
* Armed Forces author Franklin Bruno on Elvis Costello and his R&B lineage (amongst other things).
* James Brown Live at the Apollo author Douglas Wolk offers up four books that influenced his book rather heavily.
* My Bloody Valentine - Loveless author Mike McGonigal takes the reader on a virtual tour of Powell's and recommends one dozen rectangular things made of paper that he enjoys and thinks perhaps you might also.
* Highway 61 Revisited author Mark Polizzotti outs himself as a lover of the Moody Blues.
* A Tribe Called Quest author Shawn Taylor on "Who Owns the Art?"
* Exile on Main Street author Bill Janovitz on the Beatles, parenthood, and nostalgia.
* The Ramones author Nick Rombes on Jimmy Carter, the 1970s, and the Electric Eels.
* The Smiths' Meat Is Murder author Joe Pernice on William Gibson.
* Dusty in Memphis author Warren Zanes on the aforementioned David Barker here.
* Belle & Sebastian author Scott Plagenhoef on the online release of Radiohead's "In Rainbows" is here.
* Editor David Barker on the 33 1/3 series here.

* Or you can just click here for the whole lot of them...

Breaking the Ice Again

It's been a little quiet around here recently - I've been out in California; moving into a new apartment; interviewing people for jobs; and generally keeping busy. Looks like it'll be just as busy until the end of the year, but just to keep everyone in the loop:

* We're perilously close to having finished manuscripts for the 2008 books on albums by Slayer, Sabbath, Lucinda Williams, and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

* The Patti Smith book is at proof stage, and is wonderful.

* The Tom Waits and Throbbing Gristle books are at the printers in Canada, but I don't think these will quite hit the stores in time for Christmas. Which sucks.

* The Celine book is in our warehouse, and is currently shipping to Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and many other top-secret locations. Thanks to everyone who entered the "Celine Prediction" contest (now closed): predictions ranged from No.1 to No.55, thereby proving indisputably that your guess is as good as mine.

More soon...