LA

Been in Los Angeles this week for the first time for BookExpo America. Picked up some galleys, posting stories on PW's website, smoked in the hotel room, missed B and Cal, and we're bound for good ole NY tomorrow morn. It's about time.

Here are the book I got that I'm excited about:

HOME by Marily Robinson (FSG)
FIREFLY UNDER THE TONGUE by Coral Bracho, trans. by Forest Gander (New Directions)
ISLE OF THE SIGNATORIES by Marjorie Welish (Coffee House)
THE COSMOPOLITAN by Donna Stonecipher (Coffee House)

Also happened to download a ton of music (legally, mind you) during the trip. I think I really just want my blog to be a place I can yammer about my new toys. Here's what I got for music, not that anyone cares:

CROSSING THE FIELD by Jenny Scheinman (Koch Records)
JENNY SCHEINMAN by Jenny Scheinman (Koch Records
GENTLY DISTURBED by Avishai Cohen Trio (Razdaz)
LICORICE AND SMOKE by Jessica Lurie (not sure of label)
THE INKLING by Nels Cline (Cryptogramaphone)
TRIBUTE by Paul Motian (ECM)
ONE AND THE SAME by Jeff Gauthier Goatette (Cryptogramaphone)
THE OTHER SHORE by Cline, Gauthier, Stinson (Cryptogramaphone)

that's a pretty good cross-section of my listening lately: lots of LA and west coast jazz, especially Nels Cline, and some West Coast transfers like Jenny Scheinman, whose new instrumental album, CROSSING THE FIELD, has some of her best tunes yet (though as a whole disc I like 12 SONGS better). I'm still sorting through the self-titled vocal record, and it sounds a lot like Gillian Welch to me, and I'm trying to figure out if Scheinman does this new roots sound as well. I gather she grew up in a musical family in a super-small CA town. The Lurie is great. I know nothing about her, but the band is Nels Cline, Scott Amendola and I think Todd Sickafoos on bass, and Lurie does some great wordless singing, along with her saxing. Motian is an old standby, one of the most interesting players to ever touch a drum kit--he thinks of the drums as textural as well as rhythmic, perhaps leaning harder on the texture than the rhythm.

And that's all from me. Thank god it's back to NY tomorrow.