Absinthe 2011: A Few of Our Favorite Things

At Absinthe we're quite fond of our local library and are fortunate to live close enough to see it from our window, and though we advocate borrowing books there are some that definitely belong on your own book shelf at home. These are a few of our favorite books (and other things) from 2011:

Karaoke Culture by Dubravka Ugresic

Stone Upon Stone by Wieslaw Mysliwski

Coming from an Off-Key Time by Bogdan Suceava

12 Who Don't Agree by Valery Panyushkin

The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky

Picture World by Niels Frank

Not much to say about cinema though we did enjoy Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris and our favorite blockbuster film to absolutely avoid is Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Don't waste your money!

Our favorite music video features, what else? Supermodels.



And our favorite newsletter of 2011 is the new Absinthe newsletter sent out monthly on the 15th! You can sign up right here for news about Absinthe, interesting events, book & film recommendations, and more.

We're looking forward to a great 2012 and wish you all a Happy New Year!

Chad Post on "Karaoke Culture" by Dubravka Ugresic

I mentioned in my post about the ALTA conference that I'd share some videos interviews I conducted while there and here we are with the first one. Chad Post, from Open Letter Books, talks about one of my favorite books from 2011, Karaoke Culture by Dubravka Ugresic.

(If your browser cuts off part of the video you can watch it here too.)

Christos Anesti

It’s a Good and beautiful Friday here (and the start of my favorite month) so I’ll keep this post fairly short and just touch on a few things I’ve been listening to and reading.

Before that, congratulations are due to Finnish-Estonian author Sofi Oksanen for winning the Nordic Council Literature Prize for her novel Purge.

Purge will be published this month by Grove Atlantic and the publisher’s website describes the novel as “a haunting portrait of two generations of women, the ghosts of Estonia’s Soviet occupation, and the cruel realities of contemporary Europe.”

If you enjoy listening to podcasts you’ll want to check out the Reading the World podcast hosted by the ubiquitous Chad Post of Three Percent/Open Letter and translator and poet Erica Mena.

They are off to a good start with these podcasts, which have so far featured interviews with Lawrence Venuti, Susan Harris, and Suzanne Jill Levine.

The World Books podcast by Bill Marx is fascinating and includes over thirty interviews with writers and translators such as Hungarian novelist Ferenc Barnas (who appeared in Absinthe #6), Dubravka Ugresic, Norman Manea, and Susan Bernofsky.

Both podcasts can be downloaded at itunes.

I read Pierre Guyotat for the first time with Semiotexte’s publication of Coma, translated by Noura Wedell. What can I say about it? It’s not an easy read but is a complexly poetic account of the writer’s descent into physical and mental illness.

And today, as many begin to celebrate forgiveness, I completed Philippe Djian’s novel Unforgivable, translated by Euan Cameron and published by Simon & Schuster.

An entertaining read and not surprisingly being made into a film like some of his previous work. This film is said to star Carole Bouquet, who made quite an impression on me as a young man in her Chanel no. 5 commercials (featuring the great Nina Simone and her song “My Baby Just Cares for Me”, and directed by Ridley Scott).