Music

I've finally changed the CD in my alarm clock. After weeks and weeks of Lorenna McKennit, I switched over to Sarah Brightman's "Harem Tour" CD, courtesy of T'Other Logan. I have very specific requirements for the type of music I like to wake up to, thanks in part to a rude, rude awakening to Tejano. Tejano is the kind of music you think, "Wow, accordians! Peppy!" and then you switch the station really quickly. (I'd go about radio DJs too, but I'm running out of time).

Like I said, Liz sent me Harem Tour. I'd heard rumors at the concert that there was a special CD available for sale, but never quite chased them down. Plus, I was pretty sure this tour CD would end up being another Classics disappointment. Luckily for me, Liz and her friend are more devoted fans than I and so I got my hot little hands on the CD, with All!New!Songs with the exception of A Question of Honour, which has been around for absolutely forever. So far, My Imagination is my favorite; it's got that pop, light-hearted sound I enjoyed so much about Dive.

In fact, as I was telling Liz, Sarah's sound is very different on this CD. You can tell it was recorded quite some time ago, because several of the songs also have an Eden vibe to them. Plus, her voice sounds a lot less, I don't know how to put this, but pure? Maybe untrained? Harem is a good CD, but she sounds a lot more affected than ever before. I think this tour CD captures Old!Sarah perfectly and while there are some things that just get better with time, nostalgia also can be meaningful.

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Don't you hate mystery books when about 100 pages from the end you figure out whodunit? Gah. I still stayed up until about 12:30 last night to finish off the book. It was Steve Martini's The Arraignment, and no, I don't recommend it; the suspension of disbelief was almost too much to take, not to mention the whole crazy mystery and obviousness of the suspect. Martini is the type of anvil-dropping author, which these days makes me absolutely nuts. He's so fond of writing something and then telling the reader what it means. For example, Martini will write an exchange very similar to the following:

"It is raining," Harry tells me. He's talking about the weather.

Read 300 pages of that and it'll slowly drive you insane. And I'm probably not one to criticize the first-person/present tense method of writing, but Martini is not particularly good at that either. He overuses the phrase "tells me" or "tells him" and I think, to make his thrillers more literary in value, he adds tons and tons of metaphors and similes. Add on top of that, his OC Paul Madriani is a self-righteous, smug Mary Sue who is absolutely insufferable. It's never a good sign when the reader is rooting for the hero of the novel to be dropped off the edge of a Mayan pyramid.

Next up is Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake."