China Goes To War With Fashion Dynasty Over Bronze Animal Heads
Chinese fury at Yves Saint-Laurent art sale
China’s art historians have launched a fierce attack on a sale of relics from the collection of Yves Saint-Laurent, claiming that the country’s treasures are being plundered for the second time.
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
Last Updated: 8:18AM GMT 04 Nov 2008
The two controversial sculptures from the private art collection of the late Yves Saint-Laurent Photo: CHRISTIE’S
Two pieces of work in particular from Saint-Laurent’s collection have provoked Chinese anger: bronze animal heads from the “Zodiac Clock” at the imperial Summer Palace in Beijing.
All 12 heads disappeared during or after the sacking of the palace by French and British troops during the Second Opium War in 1860.
A number before now have come up at auction in the west and Hong Kong. All five of those have been bought by Chinese benefactors or a government art fund and returned to the country in the last eight years, but as their historical importance to China has become clear, the price has risen.
Saint-Laurent’s pair – the rabbit and the rat – have had estimates of pounds 6-8 million each put on their value by Christie’s, which has put them up for auction with much of the rest of the late designer’s collection in Paris in February.
The fashion designer died in June, and his companion, Pierre Berge, is selling their substantial art collection to raise funds for HIV-Aids research.
Although the circumstances under which relics from the Summer Palace, including the zodiac heads, left the country have never been clear, officials say they were looted by French or British troops.
Popular opinion in China, where the Opium Wars are taught by history books to be the start of a century-long decline in national fortunes only revived by Communist victory in the civil war in 1949, is unequivocal.
The whereabouts of the remaining five heads – the dragon, the snake, the sheep, the cock and the dog – remains unknown.
The State of Rock Poster Art (per PopMatters.com)
Hung Up: The State of Rock Poster Art
[10 November 2008]
With major labels fading and promotional budgets cut to the bone, can rock-concert poster art survive? Can it even thrive?
by Stacey Brook
In the paper-and-ink universe of Brooklyn poster artists Kayrock and Wolfy, of Kayrock Screenprinting, the indie rock band Oneida sounds like two yellow chickens pecking their way through a hypnotic funhouse background. Or like double monkey gargoyle heads floating against a honeycomb pattern of primary colors. Or serpentine dragons and medieval beasts worthy of fairy tales, slinking through a sea of blood red around a light-blue Care Bear. Basically, the band sounds like anything Kayrock and Wolfy’s prolific imaginations squeeze through their aluminum screens.
Oneida’s lead singer, Bobby Matador, who describes his band as “loud, fast, and repetitive,” says, “One of my favorite posters that Kayrock and Wolfy ever made for us was just a bunch of shit that Kayrock took from Tin Tin comics and a Hawkwind album cover. You really don’t ever know where it’s gonna come from.”
Since they began working together in 2000, the Kayrock duo have spent their days designing and hand-pulling promotional posters in a two-story, graffiti-ensconced warehouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, precisely saturating archival paper with ink from plastic quart containers, swapping out screens while aligning print registers, and tweaking last-minute designs. On machines cobbled together from old printer parts, Kayrock Screenprinting gives hundreds of bands identity on paper, churning out designs for such groups as Tall Firs, Les Savy Fav, Deerhoof, and Tiger Mountain. This isn’t a matter of glossy, label-sanctioned photos slapped with crass and impersonal “Fill in the Date” footers. Kayrock and Wolfy create original posters for tours and know the bands they are hired to represent on paper, often intimately. The work is always informed by the music, and lovers of both music and art are drawn to them. Their creations are a far cry from the flimsy promotional one-sheets that propagate modern-day music venues and construction site walls. In a world of pummeling advertising, they are rare promotional artifacts that make you slow down and stare.
Master Morandi At The Met
Taking Stock of a Reticent and Reclusive Master
It is nearly 30 years since the Guggenheim Museum mounted its retrospective of Giorgio Morandi, and in that time this reticent and reclusive Italian master (1890-1964) has become a name to conjure with in America and abroad. Though his fealty to modernism and to the avant-garde was always somewhat ambiguous, Morandi is an artist who rivals Rothko and Cézanne in the radical reduction of his subject matter (mostly bottles arrayed across a table top) and in his priestly devotion to the cause of painting.
A new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, billed as the first in America to assess the artist’s entire career, largely confirms the exalted regard in which Morandi continues to be held. That, in itself, is remarkable. For a kind of mythology now encrusts Morandi’s reputation — so thickly that it almost conceals his art. It consists in the notion that he was a perfect, indeed infallible, painter. That is not the case, as this exhibition unintentionally reveals. But far more important is that, even when his weaknesses are admitted, there is still an enduring core of artistic intelligence and vision to the man.
In its barest outlines, the story of Morandi’s life could scarcely be simpler. Born in Bologna, where he lived and where he died, Morandi painted and taught painting for many years in the local academy. Aside from summer jaunts to the nearby town of Grizzana and sightseeing excursions to Venice and Florence, Morandi, who never married, rarely ventured from his hometown. And he left Italy on only three occasions, crossing the border into the Italian part of Switzerland. Contrary to a widely held belief, however, he was not a loner. Rather, he associated with some of the leading Italian luminaries of his day. Nor was he unappreciated or ignored by his contemporaries: From relatively early on, he was written about, exhibited and duly honored even beyond his native country.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Making Of A Posthumous Best-Seller
by Martha Woodroof
NPR.org, November 11, 2008 ·The Girl with the Dragon Tattoois an unlikely best-seller — it’s the first book in a trilogy of thrillers written by Stieg Larsson, a previously unknown Swedish journalist who died of a heart attack in 2004.
“It’s a multigeneration family saga. It’s a story of corporate corruption, of religious fanaticism. It’s about the darker elements in contemporary society,” says [Knopf Editor-in-Chief “Sonny”] Mehta. “And then, at its basic level, it’s a kind of a classic locked-room mystery.”
Larsson’s day job was as a crusading anti-fascist journalist who was passionate in his support of anyone being victimized. He co-founded a magazine in Sweden called Expo. Daniel Poohl, a colleague at the magazine, calls Larsson “idealistic.”
“[I] never met anyone like him,” says Poohl. “I read the book after he died … it was … a way to hear Stieg’s voice again.”
The American edition of the novel sports enthusiastic blurbs from such best-selling authors as Michael Connelly, Lee Child and Harlan Coben. And there’s also one from Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient.
“Michael Ondaatje was in the office some months ago and saw it lying around, took a copy with him to a holiday in Hawaii or something, and then phoned me and said, ‘Who is this guy? What an absolutely wonderful read!’ ” Mehta says.
O where O where have my synapses gone…
“We’ve dealt with this man before….”
Jersey City Councilman Steven Lipski is No. 1 threat at Washington club
Sunday, November 9th 2008, 12:06 AM
A drunken Jersey City councilman was arrested for urinating on a crowd of concertgoers from the balcony of a Washington nightclub, police and club sources said Saturday.
Councilman Steven Lipski was caught relieving himself onto several revelers at the 9:30 Club during a concert by a Grateful Dead tribute band Friday night, club sources said.
“He was very drunk,” the source said, noting that it wasn’t the first time Lipski had caused a ruckus at the popular concert venue.
“We’ve dealt with this man before,” the source added. “He’s never peed on anybody, but he gets really belligerent and drunk.”
AllMyFaves.com
“Yes, ‘n’ how many times must the cannon balls fly…”
John Leonard Gone
A Genial Explorer of Literary Worlds
My literary education was feverish and haphazard. From later childhood through the end of adolescence, from Jimmy Carter to the first George Bush, I schooled myself by snatching novels from my parents’ shelves, haunting the stacks at the local public library, and clawing through boxes of dry-rotted 
Penguins and Bantams at yard sales. Those books formed a life raft, a tool kit, a compendium of clues about what the world might look like and how a person might live in it. Like many other restless, bookish young souls, I read ravenously and indiscriminately, until over time patterns started to emerge, half-occult links between one volume and the next.
The name John Leonard was one of these links. The works of fiction that seemed to contain the most galvanizing news of the world — the ones that disclosed entire undreamed-of universes within their pages — all seemed to bear this man’s endorsement on their front or back covers. Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, Don DeLillo, Grace Paley, V. S. Naipaul: writers like these were drawing a new global map of literary possibility, and John Leonard, more than any other critic, was assisting in the cartography, pointing readers toward freshly liberated zones of imagination. He spoke in the voice not of disembodied authority, but of enthusiasm.
I tracked his byline to the pages of this newspaper, and then to the first few issues of the reborn Vanity Fair, which at the time (the early 1980s) was devoting more of its pages to the likes of Mr. García Márquez and Mr. Naipaul than to the collected young blondes of Hollywood. It might have been on the fourth or fifth rereading of one of Mr. Leonard’s essays in that magazine — I think it was his long, sharp and generous consideration of William F. Buckley, who two decades before had published some of Mr. Leonard’s earliest writing in National Review — that a long-held intimation blossomed into conscious thought. Wow, I said to myself, I wish I could write like that.
‘ME’ by Ahree Lee
New Wave Blasphemy
Viewers rise up against ‘Saved by Zero’ ads
The murderous hatred being directed toward Toyota’s “Saved by Zero” ads has been building for a few weeks now, and it’s become semi-official with this Associated Press story. A number of Web sites—Esquire, Best Week Ever, Consumerist and Jalopnik among them—have been hosting rants about the ads, which feature the admittedly awful 1983 song “Saved by Zero” by British new-wave group The Fixx. By and large, viewers feel an urge to end their own lives and/or other people’s when the ads come on: “It makes me want to kill someone/never ever buy a Toyota.” “Marketing 101, don’t piss consumers off, don’t get on their bad sides, don’t cultivate contempt.” “I CAN’T EVEN EXPRESS MY OUTRAGE WITHOUT USING CAPS LOCK.” Clearly it’s the feel-bad campaign of the year, and from a company (and industry) that doesn’t need any extra help in hurtling down the crapper.
—Posted by Tim Nudd
“In an action film you act in the action. If it’s a dramatic film you act in the drama.”
Hard Body Plays an Old Softie (Himself)
PeaceArch Entertainment
Jean-Claude Van Damme in “JCVD,” in which he plays a washed-up, aging movie star named Jean-Claude Van Damme.
by DENNIS LIM
ON the phone the other day Jean-Claude Van Damme, the martial artist and action hero known in his heyday as the Muscles from Brussels, was sounding anxious and apologetic. He had canceled a trip to New York — missing a host of engagements, including an in-person interview with this writer — to remain in Bangkok, where he recently finished shooting a movie. And he wanted to make clear that he had a very good reason.
“I adopted seven dogs here, and one of them had a heart attack,” Mr. Van Damme said. “I’m sleeping with him every night at the clinic. If I leave him, he’s going to go back into a coma. He’s a very sensitive dog.” The others — all strays, some disabled (he built “a little wheelchair” for one of them) — have been sent to his home in Belgium.
It might be odd to think of Mr. Van Damme, a veteran of steroidal exploitation cinema and a virtuoso of the bone-crunching split kick, as an old softie, but it is also perfectly consistent with the image overhaul implicit in his latest vehicle, “JCVD,” which opened on Friday. Directed by the French filmmaker Mabrouk El Mechri, it allows its namesake to reveal new facets to his screen persona basically by playing himself. A jokey hall-of-mirrors movie with a melancholic streak, it stars Mr. Van Damme — who turned 48 last month and whose last film to open theatrically in the United States was the 1998 flop “Knock Off,” — as Jean-Claude Van Damme, a washed-up middle-aged movie star.
Thanks in part to a widely circulating online trailer “JCVD” has garnered more attention for Mr. Van Damme than he has received in years. (The last time he made even a remote impact on pop-culture consciousness was when he appeared on “Friends” as himself in 1996 and boasted that he could crush a walnut with his buttocks.) “JCVD” was a word-of-mouth hit at Cannes, and it had its North American premiere at a raucous midnight screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Janitors of Anarchy & The Southwest’s Cleanest Pit
Rocky Horror Bargain Show
Right In His Big Bear Balls
Use #4,692
FBI: United Airlines passenger restrained with duct tape on flight from Puerto Rico to Chicago
Wednesday, November 5th 2008, 2:50 PM
RALEIGH, North Carolina – An airline crew used duct tape to keep a passenger in her seat because they say she became unruly, fighting flight attendants and grabbing other passengers, forcing the flight to land in North Carolina.
Maria Esther Castillo is due in court Thursday, charged with resisting arrest and interfering with the operations of a flight crew aboard United Airlines Flight 645, from Puerto Rico to Chicago.
Castillo, 45, struck a flight attendant on the buttocks with the back of her hand during Saturday’s flight, FBI Special Agent Peter Carricato said in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Charlotte. She also stood and fell onto the head of a blind passenger and later started pulling the person’s hair, the complaint stated.
Ankle cuffs kept slipping off Castillo, so the flight crew and two passengers were forced to use duct tape to keep her in her seat, the complaint states.
She calmed as the pilot diverted the flight to Charlotte-Douglass International Airport, but became disruptive again when authorities boarded the plane to remove her, authorities said.
Carricato states that a passenger saw Castillo having drinks in an airport bar before boarding. She bought another drink on the plane. Flight attendants stopped serving her alcohol because of her behavior, the complaint states.
Crichton Gone
Reading, Writing, ‘rithmetic and More Carrot Sticks, Please
Schoolchildren too big to squeeze into chairs
Classroom furniture designed for pupils of the 60s is too small
Schools need to upgrade their furniture because today’s children have outgrown the tables and chairs designed to meet the needs of 1960s pupils, experts say.
Pupils are so much bigger in height as well as girth that many no longer fit into standard school furniture.
There is also a much larger variation in the size of pupils meaning furniture needs to be redesigned to meet a wide range of shapes and sizes.
The recommendation is made in a wide-ranging report from the British Educational Suppliers Association, backed by the former education secretary Charles Clarke, which sets out the changing needs of schools.
It warns that schools are creating a generation of children who could suffer from back problems as the result of squeezing into ill-fitting furniture for hours every day.
The Eye Of Silence
A surrealistic short by The 25th Frame
You Must Read Tao
You Must Read This
by Henry Alford
Wisdom For The Ages In ‘Tao Te Ching’
All Things Considered,November 3, 2008 ·
When I tell people that I like to read theTao Te Ching, they start staring at the floor, as if looking for a dog to pet. It’s like I’ve suddenly produced, and then struck, a 4,000-pound gong.
But the thing is, the Tao Te Ching is one of the least ooey-wooey books about religion or philosophy I’ve ever read. And what this collection of aphorisms probably written in the 6th century B.C. has to offer is a series of useful and penetrating thoughts on a wide range of topics.
Of government, the Tao Te Ching says: “To rule a country, one must act with care, as when frying a small fish.”
Of humility, it says: “He who is noncompetitive invites no competition.”
Of leadership, it says: “The existence of the leader who is wise is barely known to those he leads.”
Fairly straightforward, right? I mean, it’s not like its predecessor the I Ching, which at one point counsels, “Deliver yourself from your great toe.” There are no great toes in theTao Te Ching, only great thoughts.
Which is why, despite the fact that I’m agnostic, suspicious of New Age claptrap and, yes, vaguely embarrassed by my pronunciation of this book’s title, I find myself returning to the Tao Te Ching time after time.
Part of what fuels me here is what I’ll call the book’s problem — namely, some readers think the Tao Te Ching promotes passivity. When the book states, “The greatest carver does the least carving,” maybe it’s just advocating something along the lines of “Less is more.”
The Death of SST
Label of love: SST
From an inauspicious beginning selling spare radio parts, SST went on to establish the US indie underground of the 80s. But its 30th anniversary earlier this year went uncelebrated – even by its own bands
American hardcore … Henry Rollins and Greg Ginn, of SST stalwarts Black Flag in 1982. Photograph: Frank Mullen/Wireimage
With a roster that included Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr, Soundgarden and Meat Puppets, SST was the most individualistic US indie label of the 80s. But few, if any, of its alumni celebrated its 30th birthday earlier this year.
SST’s fall from grace is a similar sad story to Alternative Tentacles and its founder Jello Biafra, that is, a DIY-punk utopian dream turned sour by money wrangles and ego wars.
From its ever-shifting base on the fringes of Los Angeles, SST embraced everything from pop-punk to prog-metal, art-noise and proto-grunge, until it all went wrong in the early 90s.
The shit – or more precisely, U2 – first hit the fan in 1991, when SST faced a huge bill from Island Records for Negativland’s parody of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. SST’s ensuing battle with Negativland saw the dominos fall one by one: Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and Meat Puppets all reclaimed their back catalogues through taking legal action.
No one from SST’s glory days seems to have a good word to say about founder Greg Ginn, who expanded his radio parts operation Solid State Tuners in 1978 so he could put out a record, Nervous Breakdown, by his band Black Flag. Turning on its head the preconception that making a record was an unattainable holy grail, he found a pressing plant in the phonebook and used his brother Raymond Pettibon’s acerbic comic strip artwork for the cover.
Didier Sinclair Gone
from The Times South Africa and AFP
| French techno DJ Didier Sinclair dies at 43 | |
| AFP
PARIS — Didier Sinclair, a pioneering figure on France’s techno music scene, has died at the age of 43, his agent announced.
He started out on France’s youth-oriented NRJ radio in 1982, and went on to score his first recording success with the album “Groove2me” in 1999. The following year, his “Lovely Flight” became an international hit, and Sinclair became a regular behind the turntables in big techno clubs. In April, Sinclair brought out a new album titled “Do You Speak?”, but his website announced he had suspended all appearances for health reasons and that he hoped to be back in spring of 2009. |
|
Art Market Acid Test
Art sales face acid test amid credit crunch
By Deborah Brewster in New York
Published: November 3 2008 02:47 | Last updated: November 3 2008 02:47
The art market, which has enjoyed a robust six-year boom in prices, faces a big test over the next two weeks as it finally shows signs of faltering amid the global financial crisis.
Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the two main auction houses, expect to sell up to $1.7bn in artworks in New York’s two-week sale season which begins on Monday and which has traditionally been a key barometer of fine art prices, setting the tone for the coming months.
The sales come two weeks after markedly weaker contemporary art auctions in London, as buyers finally resisted paying the top prices that contemporary works have come to command.
The Mei Moses All Art Index, which measures the value of works sold at auction, has fallen by 5 per cent in the 10 months to the end of October.
It had risen by 5 per cent is the first six months of the year. The Postwar and Contemporary art index has fallen by 10 per cent in the year to date.
Dick Fuld, the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers, and his wife Kathy are among the sellers at the upcoming sales, although their consignment to Christie’s was made before Lehman Brothers hit trouble and filed for bankruptcy this year. The couple are offering 15 abstract expressionist drawings for an estimated $20m.
Henry Kravis, the co-founder of the private equity group Kohlberg Kravis, is selling a work by Edgar Degas, “Danseuse au Repos”, for an expected $40m or more, which would set a record for a work by Degas. Mr Kravis bought it in 1999 for $28m, which was then a Degas record. The work will be offered at Sotheby’s on Monday night.
Other highlights of the same Sotheby’s sale include a 1916 work by Ukrainian expessionist artist Kazimir Malevich, “Suprematist Composition”, which is estimated to sell for $60m. Sotheby’s said it has received an “unrevocable bid” for the work, which is being sold by Malevich’s heirs after the work was reconstituted to them this year.
A Cubist work by Picasso, “Arlequin”, was going to be sold by Sotheby’s for more than $30m, but it was withdrawn from sale last week “for private reasons”, according to the auction house.
Christie’s will sell another Picasso, “Deux Personnages”, a 1934 portrait of his mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter and her sister, for up to $25m on Thursday.
William Hundley
William Hundley
Artist categories: Photographers
About William:
William Hundley was born in St. Paul, MN, earned a BFA in Studio Art from SWT, and now lives and works in Austin, TX. Hundley is a painter by training, and is formerly one half of the group Industry of Light. His video works mix intensely glitchy After Effects editing techniques with painterly textures and often focus on human physical movement. His work has been shown at many previous Digital Showcases, and other various local events and art shows.
Fruitcake Lady Redux
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
52
USA TODAY’s best-selling books of last 15 years
Check the list for your favorite books.
MORE: Best-Selling Books list turns 15 years of pages of top sellers
| USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books List Top 150 books of the last 15 years (Oct. 28, 1993 through Oct. 23, 2008) |
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| Rank | Title | Author |
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| 1 | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone | J.K. Rowling |
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| 2 | Dr. Atkins‘ New Diet Revolution | Robert C. Atkins |
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| 3 | The Da Vinci Code | Dan Brown |
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| 4 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows | J.K. Rowling |
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| 5 | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | J.K. Rowling |
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| 6 | Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | J.K. Rowling |
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| 7 | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | J.K. Rowling |
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| 8 | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | J.K. Rowling |
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| 9 | Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | J.K. Rowling |
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| 10 | Who Moved My Cheese? | Spencer Johnson |
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| 11 | The South Beach Diet | Arthur Agatston |
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| 12 | Tuesdays With Morrie | Mitch Albom |
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| 13 | Angels & Demons | Dan Brown |
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| 14 | What to Expect When You’re Expecting | Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg, Sandee Hathaway |
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| 15 | The Purpose-Driven Life | Rick Warren |
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| 16 | The Five People You Meet in Heaven | Mitch Albom |
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| 17 | The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People | Stephen R. Covey |
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| 18 | The Kite Runner | Khaled Hosseini |
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| 19 | Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus | John Gray |
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| 20 | The Secret | Rhonda Byrne |
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| 21 | Rich Dad, Poor Dad | Robert T. Kiyosaki with Sharon L. Lechter |
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| 22 | To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee |
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| 23 | Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff … And It’s All Small Stuff |
Richard Carlson |
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| 24 | The Secret Life of Bees | Sue Monk Kidd |
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| 25 | Eat, Pray, Love | Elizabeth Gilbert |
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| 26 | Twilight | Stephenie Meyer |
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| 27 | The Notebook | Nicholas Sparks |
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| 28 | The Memory Keeper’s Daughter | Kim Edwards |
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| 29 | The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger |
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| 30 | Memoirs of a Geisha | Arthur Golden |
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| 31 | A New Earth | Eckhart Tolle |
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| 32 | Oh, the Places You’ll Go! | Dr. Seuss |
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| 33 | The Four Agreements | Don Miguel Ruiz |
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| 34 | Angela’s Ashes | Frank McCourt |
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| 35 | The Lovely Bones | Alice Sebold |
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| 36 | Body-for-Life | Bill Phillips, Michael D’Orso |
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| 37 | New Moon | Stephenie Meyer |
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| 38 | Night | Elie Wiesel, translations by Marion Wiesel and Stella Rodway |
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| 39 | Chicken Soup for the Soul | Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen |
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| 40 | The Greatest Generation | Tom Brokaw |
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| 41 | Breaking Dawn | Stephenie Meyer |
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| 42 | The Celestine Prophecy | James Redfield |
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| 43 | Wicked | Gregory Maguire |
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| 44 | Good to Great | Jim Collins |
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| 45 | Eclipse | Stephenie Meyer |
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| 46 | Eragon | Christopher Paolini |
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| 47 | Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood | Rebecca Wells |
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| 48 | Your Best Life Now | Joel Osteen |
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| 49 | In the Kitchen With Rosie | Rosie Daley |
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| 50 | Simple Abundance | Sarah Ban Breathnach |
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| 51 | A Child Called It | Dave Pelzer |
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| 52 | A Million Little Pieces | James Frey |
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| 53 | The Testament | John Grisham |
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| 54 | Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul | Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Kimberly Kirberger |
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| 55 | Deception Point | Dan Brown |
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| 56 | The Alchemist | Paulo Coelho |
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| 57 | Marley & Me | John Grogan |
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| 58 | Dr. Atkins’ New Carbohydrate Gram Counter | Robert C. Atkins |
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| 59 | Life of Pi | Yann Martel |
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| 60 | The Brethren | John Grisham |
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| 61 | The South Beach Diet Good Fats Good Carbs Guide | Arthur Agatston |
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| 62 | The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town |
John Grisham |
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| 63 | For One More Day | Mitch Albom |
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| 64 | The Polar Express | Chris Van Allsburg |
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| 65 | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
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| 66 | The Last Lecture | Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow |
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| 67 | What to Expect the First Year | Arlene Eisenberg, Heidi Murkoff, Sandee Hathaway |
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| 68 | Love You Forever | Robert Munsch, art by Sheila McGraw |
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| 69 | Green Eggs and Ham | Dr. Seuss |
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| 70 | A Painted House | John Grisham |
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| 71 | The Rainmaker | John Grisham |
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| 72 | Skipping Christmas | John Grisham |
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| 73 | Cold Mountain | Charles Frazier |
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| 74 | The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time | Mark Haddon |
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| 75 | Life Strategies | Phillip C. McGraw |
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| 76 | Seabiscuit: An American Legend | Laura Hillenbrand |
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| 77 | The Summons | John Grisham |
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| 78 | Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil | John Berendt |
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| 79 | The Hobbit | J.R.R. Tolkien |
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| 80 | The Runaway Jury | John Grisham |
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| 81 | Goodnight Moon Board Book | Margaret Wise Brown, art by Clement Hurd |
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| 82 | The Perfect Storm | Sebastian Junger |
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| 83 | Snow Falling on Cedars | David Guterson |
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| 84 | The Giver | Lois Lowry |
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| 85 | Embraced by the Light | Betty J. Eadie |
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| 86 | The Chamber | John Grisham |
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| 87 | You: On A Diet | Michael F. Roizen, Mehmet C. Oz |
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| 88 | The Prayer of Jabez | Bruce Wilkinson |
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| 89 | Holes | Louis Sachar |
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| 90 | Digital Fortress | Dan Brown |
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| 91 | The Shack | William P. Young |
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| 92 | The Devil Wears Prada | Lauren Weisberger |
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| 93 | Water for Elephants | Sara Gruen |
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| 94 | A Thousand Splendid Suns | Khaled Hosseini |
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| 95 | The Seat of the Soul | Gary Zukav |
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| 96 | Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul | Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Jennifer Read Hawthorne, Marci Shimoff |
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| 97 | The Partner | John Grisham |
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| 98 | Lord of the Flies | William Golding |
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| 99 | Eldest: Inheritance, Book II | Christopher Paolini |
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| 100 | The Broker | John Grisham |
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| 101 | The Street Lawyer | John Grisham |
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| 102 | A Series of Unfortunate Events No. 1: The Bad Beginning |
Lemony Snicket |
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| 103 | The Poisonwood Bible | Barbara Kingsolver |
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| 104 | Into the Wild | Jon Krakauer |
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| 105 | The King of Torts | John Grisham |
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| 106 | The Tipping Point | Malcolm Gladwell |
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| 107 | The Horse Whisperer | Nicholas Evans |
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| 108 | Hannibal | Thomas Harris |
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| 109 | The Audacity of Hope | Barack Obama |
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| 110 | Running With Scissors | Augusten Burroughs |
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| 111 | The Glass Castle: A Memoir | Jeannette Walls |
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| 112 | My Sister’s Keeper | Jodi Picoult |
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| 113 | The Last Juror | John Grisham |
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| 114 | The Devil in the White City | Erik Larson |
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| 115 | Left Behind | Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins |
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| 116 | America (The Book) | Jon Stewart and The Writers of The Daily Show |
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| 117 | The Red Tent | Anita Diamant |
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| 118 | John Adams | David McCullough |
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| 119 | The Christmas Box | Richard Paul Evans |
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| 120 | The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants | Ann Brashares |
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| 121 | Sugar Busters! | H. Leighton Steward, Sam S. Andrews, Morrison C. Bethea, Luis A. Balart |
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| 122 | Blink | Malcolm Gladwell |
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| 123 | The Power of Now | Eckhart Tolle |
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| 124 | 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life |
Don Piper, Cecil Murphey |
|
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| 125 | The Fellowship of the Ring | J.R.R. Tolkien |
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| 126 | 1776 | David McCullough |
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| 127 | The Bridges of Madison County | Robert James Waller |
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| 128 | Where the Heart Is | Billie Letts |
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| 129 | The Ultimate Weight Solution | Phillip C. McGraw |
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| 130 | Protein Power | Michael R. Eades, Mary Dan Eades |
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| 131 | Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul | Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Jennifer Read Hawthorne, Marci Shimoff |
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| 132 | Into Thin Air | Jon Krakauer |
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| 133 | Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides |
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| 134 | Three Cups of Tea | Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin |
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| 135 | You: The Owner’s Manual | Michael F. Roizen, Mehmet C. Oz |
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| 136 | 1,000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler’s Life List |
Patricia Schultz |
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| 137 | Self Matters | Phillip C. McGraw |
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| 138 | She’s Come Undone | Wally Lamb |
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| 139 | 1984 | George Orwell |
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| 140 | The Chronicles of Narnia | C.S. Lewis |
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| 141 | The Millionaire Next Door | Thomas J. Stanley, William D. Danko |
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| 142 | The Other Boleyn Girl | Philippa Gregory |
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| 143 | The Zone | Barry Sears, Bill Lawren |
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| 144 | The Pilot’s Wife | Anita Shreve |
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| 145 | The Lost World | Michael Crichton |
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| 146 | Atonement | Ian McEwan |
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| 147 | He’s Just Not That Into You | Greg Behrendt, Liz Tuccillo |
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| 148 | Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury |
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| 149 | The World Is Flat | Thomas L. Friedman |
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| 150 | Cross | James Patterson |
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Which books are you surprised to see on the list? Which ones do you think are missing?
Repetition Kills You
It is 2008…
Girl, 13, stoned to death in Somalia as 1,000 watch; charged with adultery after rape
Saturday, November 1st 2008, 3:05 PM
MOGADISHU, Somalia – A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery, a human rights group said.
Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death Oct. 27 in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo, Amnesty International and Somali media reported, citing witnesses. The militia in charge of Kismayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said.
Initial local media reports said Duhulow was 23, but her father told Amnesty International she was 13. Some of the Somali journalists who first reported the killing later told Amnesty International that they had reported she was 23 based upon her physical appearance.
Calls to Somali government officials and the local administration in Kismayo rang unanswered Saturday.
“This child suffered a horrendous death at the behest of the armed opposition groups who currently control Kismayo,” David Copeman, Amnesty International’s Somalia campaigner, said in a statement Friday.
Somalia is among the world’s most violent and impoverished countries. The nation of some 8 million people has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991 then turned on each other.
A quarter of Somali children die before age 5; nearly every public institution has collapsed. Fighting is a daily occurrence, with violent deaths reported nearly every day.
Studs Terkel Gone
Studs Terkel dies
Chicago writer Studs Terkel died today at his home in Chicago. He was 96.
Studs Terkel ©Nancy Crampton
All Rights Reserved