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Winter is in full swing here in Nashville! Looking for something to stave off that cabin fever? Try an epic movie. An epic is a genre of film that emphasizes human drama on a grand scale.
- Crystal
Whole Lotta Zeppelin: The Illustrated History of the Heaviest Band of All Time By Jon Bream
This book is truly great. For anyone interested in a band that really made its own rules while creating some timeless and never equaled rock music, this large book will satisfy you on many levels.
This is a comprehensive, lavishly illustrated history with all the bases covered; tour diaries and dates, memorabilia shots, complete reviews of their recordings by various writers, interviews, timelines, recollections and fascinating stories. The band members certainly have their say through various excerpted interviews as well.
The picture of Jimmy Page ordering at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant circa ‘68 is priceless alone, but this book also filled in many gaps in my Zep knowledge, including manager Peter Grant’s involvement in many incidents, the source of their early bluesy material, and how their music continued to evolve up through 1980. It also includes a close look at their film The Song Remains the Same and covers their 2007 London reunion performance with Jason Bonham on drums as well as an extensive discography.
I can remember when an older brother put headphones on me around 1973 and boggled my mind with the solo from “Heartbreaker” when I was about 10 years old. While we can’t go back in time this book will take you through the years with many excellent guest writers and critics, sound engineers and fellow musicians who share personal recollections. Like the band and their career, an enthralling tour de force!
There’s still time to create your list of top ten movies released in 2009. Did you catch all the best of 2008?
Check out the films that at the top of last year’s “best of” lists.
- Crystal
Nashville: The Occupied City, 1862-1863
By Walter T. Durham
I am not originally from Nashville, so I didn’t grow up learning about the history of this place I’ve chosen to call home. What I am, however, is a Civil War buff. (I’m also a Yankee, but you won’t hold that against me, right?)
I came across Durham’s book one day in the stacks and thought it would be interesting. Most of the Civil War knowledge I’ve acquired has been about the Deep South, or places like Savannah or Richmond. I don’t know much about the Western Theater. Or should I say, I didn’t know much until I read Durham’s book. For instance, I did not realize that Nashville was considered the second most important Confederate city (after New Orleans) in terms of shipping and supplies, and yet the Confederates did nothing to protect it. No breastworks, no new fortifications, no ditches, nothing. It was also the closest capital city to the North, which made the lack of protection a little more puzzling.
I also found it interesting that the term “Old Glory” originated here. A retired sea captain gave the Union officers the old American flag that he’d flown from his ship so they’d have one to raise above the capital building.
Make sure you read the author’s introduction, because there is a nice shout out to our very own Nashville Room and the great staff that works there.
Now I’m caught up to 1863, but even I knew that most of the fun happened after that. It looks like I’ll have to read Durham’s sequel, Reluctant Partners, so I can see how things turn out…
- Amanda
Revolution
By: Miranda Lambert
In 2003, Miranda Lambert came in a disappointing third place on the first season of the now defunct Nashville Star. Seven years later, Lambert has released her third CD, Revolution, and her career is hotter than ever. She is the most successful musician of any that were on Nashville Star.
On Revolution, Lambert shows her softer side with songs like my favorite, “Dead Flowers,” and “The House that Built Me.” Miranda performed a one night show at The Ryman in September ’09 to celebrate the release of this album, and when she played “The House that Built Me” with her parents in the audience, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place (including mine, and I’m not a crier.)
Ran doesn’t shy away from her rowdy side, though, rocking the house with songs like “Somewhere Trouble Don’t Go” or the big single “White Liar.” You can hear a short clip of “Dead Flowers” by listening to our Popmatic Podcast. Revolution was definately one of my favorite albums of 2009.
- Amanda
The Most They Ever Had
by Rick Bragg
No one in the world can break your heart as beautifully as Ricky Bragg. This slim volume by the author of All Over But the Shoutin’ and Ava’s Man tells the story of the men and women who worked in and lived their lives around the textile mill in Jacksonville, Alabama until its permanent closure in 2001. It is the story of hardscrabble lives. It is the story of the meanest of mill owners, of cotton lint and brownlung, of shocking industrial accidents. But it’s also the story of the proud, hardworking generations of folk who never shirked, and did what had to be done to feed their children.
Bragg is the master of powerful, understated description. The first page of chapter one is so perfectly written that I had to read it aloud to a friend. He is also the master of speaking in a southern voice so natural that it catches you by surprise when you realize you’re hearing it: he was bad to drink then, or: he got red in his face. Never gratuitous, perfectly timed.
The mill in Jacksonville ultimately went the way of much American manufacturing: the jobs moved out of the country to workers willing to do them for 33 cents an hour. And make no mistake about it: despite hardship and tragedy, the mill was a life and a history for generations of workers and their families, its loss devastating to them.
Rick Bragg asked a friend of his if he thought anyone would read the book, filled as it is with sadness. His friend replied, “Well, it ain’t a damn barn dance, is it? It’s an American tragedy.” — Pam
Nonfiction
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Nonfiction, Pam, South
Home
By Marilynne Robinson
Home was only the third novel by Marilyn Robinson in thirty years. It was definitely worth the wait. Home chronicles the return of prodigal son Jack Boughton to the family farm in Gilead, Iowa. His aged father Robert, and Glory, Jack’s baby sister, now middle aged, anxiously await Jack’s return after twenty years of non-communication. Glory, a former school teacher, who by chance or unconscious design has slowly crashed back to Gilead to care for her fading father. That father, the Reverend Robert Boughton, spiritual lighthouse to the town of Gilead for much of his life, is now a wisp of his former self. He clings to life in the small hope he will once again meet his estranged son. The Lord giveth; Jack returns.
Polite but unrepentant of his past transgressions, Jack torments his father by simply being himself, the black sheep of the family, also a drunk, and maybe a coward. Glory accepts Jack wholeheartedly, hardened liver and all, while the Reverend Boughton becomes tortured by his life’s one failure: his anti-social communist sympathizing son.
In case you are thinking you’ve heard this one before, you’ve never heard it by a writer as talented as Marilynne Robinson. In her hands the sleepy Boughton household becomes a boiler engine of psycho-spiritual pressure. The tension between father and son permeates the house like sunlight. Fate, sin, free will, and the capital “eff” Fall, are all weapons in the psychic warfare. Robinson illuminates both the positive and the negative nature of piety with clear effortless prose. If you are afraid this is just a book about a bunch of churchies in need of a little grease, all the characters have secrets and there is a surprise ending. The reader, and author, always know that rural Iowa in the late 50s is a serious bubble, outside of which are horrors that don’t permit the luxury of theological angst.
Literati may recognize the Boughtons and the town the Gilead as it gave the title to Robinson’s previous novel which earned her a Pulitzer Prize. Gilead and Home are companion pieces that take place in the same town at the same time but inside different households. I can’t recommend both novels strongly enough. On a personal note, Home is the last book I will get to read with the 2nd Wednesday Book Club, a reading group I’ve led here at the library for the past two years. To all my book club members, I thank you, and apologize for all the pretentious literary crap I’ve convinced you to read. Though it is sad to have to move on, I am happy the last book we read together was one as powerful and meaningful to me as Home.
- Bryan
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