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Spring Break, 2014
By
Published: Mar 13, 2014
Category:
Beyond Classification
It’s an unwritten law in the world of Manhattan private schools that if you don’t take your kid away for at least a week in the last two weeks of March you will be visited by Social Services, maybe even the police. We are in compliance; we’re taking the child to a warm place that requires a passport. There’s Wi-Fi there — there’s Wi-Fi everywhere — but I’m determined to re-introduce myself to my family, answer the occasional email, and, okay, fill pads of lined yellow paper with notes for something I want to write in April. We’ll pick up again on Monday, March 24. Until then, I thought to leave you with book, music and movie suggestions that might put you in mind of long days in the garden, blue skies and sea air, cold drinks and warm conversation, rebirth, growth and abundance.
BOOKS
All New Square Food Gardening
Raised beds — not a metaphor — solve gardening’s most vexing problem: aching backs. And the yields redefine “humongous.”
HeadButler.com: The 100 Essentials
If you read this collection of pieces about books, music and movies, you will ace every final exam at Head Butler U — and in the school of life.
Light Years
James Salter’s lyrical novel, especially for his you-are-there account of a summer in Amagansett.
Beautiful Ruins
A blockbuster story, but I’m thinking today about “The Hotel Adequate View,” a six-room, three-table nothing of a resort in an Italian coastal town only accessible by boat.
The Big Sleep
Los Angeles in the late’30s. Foggy, trending toward stormy. Tough guys. Tough guy style: “She brought the glass over. Bubbles rose in it like false hopes.”
Bonjour Tristesse
She’s 17. Her father has rented a large white villa on the Mediterranean for the summer. A dream house: “remote and beautiful, standing on a headline jutting out over the sea, hidden from the road by pine woods. A goat path led down to a small, sunny cove where the sea lapped against rust-colored rocks.”
At Blanchard’s Table: A Trip to the Beach Cookbook
Blanchard’s Restaurant is apparently so remarkable that Caribbean-bound foodies go to Anguilla just to eat there. Like: Like baguette stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, marscarpone and basil. The preparation is idiot-proof: puree the tomatoes, blend with the other ingredients, stuff into the baguette. Lemon-pepper chicken that can be prepared in ten minutes
Oldman’s Brave New World of Wine: Pleasure, Value, and Adventure Beyond Wine’s Usual Suspects
Oldman is a rule breaker: “Anything you can’t pronounce is a good value.” A truth teller: “Only 2% of the wines on sale will get better with age.” He suggests tasty wines that insiders cherish. Because they’re not so well-known, they’re better values: “The more popular a wine is, the more likely customers must pay extra for that demand.”
The Kid from Tomkinsville
The baseball novels of John R. Tunis are not only the best sports fiction for 10-to-14 year-olds ever written, they are among the best sports fiction — period.
Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea
A surfer finds land and more at retreats in France, in India, in California. He lives simply; drugs and alcohol fall away. He becomes artful as a surfer. He gets a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University. And writes a wise book.
Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra
High-class smut. A hostess present that can’t miss. First sentence: “Summer 1968. The only man in America who was less interested than me in sleeping with Mia Farrow was her husband and my boss, Frank Sinatra.”
MUSIC
Mulatu Astatke
The sound of Ethiopia. And much more. The horns play cool jazz figures; you could almost mistake them for clarinets. But under that is a groove that could have been created by Booker T and the MGs. Think desert cha cha. Cuba goes to Memphis. Desert trance music. Like nothing you have ever heard before.
Herbie Mann
Here’s how cool this CD is: It starts with a solid minute of stand-up bass playing a single note against subtle bop drums — a combination that practically forces listeners to get up and strut.
Bryan Ferry
You are on the moonlit beach. You may regret it in the morning, but for right now, you want more, you must have more. No one has a name, no one has a past, no one has a problem. And no one has a question about any of it.
Bombino
On every smart critic’s “best of 2013″ list. From Niger, by way of Nashville. “Nomad” is 40 minutes of protein-rich music: great for parties (you will come to be bored by friends asking “What is that?”), a lifesaver on rainy mornings when you don’t want to get out of bed, a good candidate for serious listening, a caffeine hit for long sessions of work when your friends are getting buzzed on Adderall, and, so far from least, an essential ingredient for ecstatic couplings at midnight.
Nick Drake
So few words! Such beautifully spare music! You have to lean in to hear him. But look at the reward: Here is an artist who just…understands.
Cesaria Evora
The soul of the Cape Verde islands, the darling of the world-music crowd. She performed shoeless. She stopped singing in mid-concert to sit at a small table and smoke a cigarette. And she never veered from the gorgeous music she’d made for decades.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Their first major CD. And their best. Tranced-out behind some serious ganja, they played amazingly complicated music that will have you twisting in one direction while the beat has you going in another.
TELEVISION
State of Play
Before there was binge-viewing, there was “State of Play,” a genius 6-part BBC series. When was the last time you watched six hours of anything and found yourself moving closer to the edge of your seat as it moved toward its conclusion?
STUFF
Moleskine Notebooks
Do you really want to immortalize your Deep Thoughts on your phone?
Anthelios
Yes, this stuff costs more than creams that protect against sunburn. The thing is, those creams don’t offer long-lasting protection against Ultraviolet-A rays (UV-A). And UV-A doesn’t cause sunburn — it causes cancer.
Zojirushi Stainless Steel Vacuum Insulated Mug
What is astonishing about the Zojirushi is how long hot stays hot and how long cold stays cold. Fill it with 16 ounces of steaming coffee in the morning, and six hours later, you can still burn your lips. Put ice cubes in a cold drink, and, six hours later, there’s still ice.
