A blog about Bloomsbury Academic's 33 1/3 series, our other books about music, and the world of sound in general.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Rough/Smooth

News of another wonderful honour for Carl Wilson's book in the series about Celine Dion - it's been named in the Top 10 Books of the Year by New York magazine. They have this to say about it:

Wilson, a hip Toronto music critic, sets out to interrogate his deep hatred for Céline Dion. The result is a slim masterpiece of stunt criticism: a tour of the alien biosphere of Québécois pop culture, a philosophical treatise on taste (he’s especially good on Bourdieu’s “cultural capital”), and almost certainly the smartest thing that will ever be written about the Queen of Schmaltz.

To be on this list, alongside books by Aleksander Hemon, Richard Price, Roberto Bolano, and the utterly wonderful B.S. Johnson, is really something.

Also today, a positive review on Tiny Mix Tapes of Bob Gendron's book on the Afghan Whigs for the series - but a review which contains this gem: "it...never fails as miserably as the series' worst moments" - which perhaps we could put on the back cover of the book's second printing.

No comments: