These types of conversations make many of my friends uncomfortable. That’s understandable considering that most of them live pretty well with generally high-paying jobs. They are perfectly content to spout the newest buzzword, beatifically discuss the merits of said newest trend, and go about their latte-hazed days. Many I know suffer from a self-centered knee-jerk liberalism. They really feel for the plight of everybody, but they do so in a way that’s skewed towards their own self-interest. Hey, I love locavorism because I live in Seattle and have access to some of the most outstanding produce and seafood on the planet. I wouldn’t feel the same way if I lived in Sudan.

I love my friends, I do. This isn’t about them, per se, but more about what see when I look at my observable universe and I expand outward from there. No prescription, just observation.

How’s all that for a really discursive means of getting to the fact that I really love this rehabilitated house project in Normandy, France? Franklin Azzi architects took a broken down old farmhouse and renovated it, largely in its existing footprint. Isn’t it refreshing when people who can afford to live large, don’t?

Before

After

For more on this project (including interior shots), see the following posts:

• Tiny House Design
• Franklin Azzi Architecture
• MoCo Loco

Anyways, I came home to find out she has a new video to one my favorite tunes on her new album. Lovely.

Check Sera out if she hits your town. Her mellow and shy demeanor are disarming and her well-crafted down-beat country tunes really shine live.

Hit me up in the comments if you want to join us. For now, I’m off to start on this week’s reading assignment.

That experience was cut into a short film by the folks at Coudal Partners. It’s the next best thing to having been there. Check it out.

[via Edward Lifson's blog]

“The device team has the job of making the most remarkable purpose-built reading device in the world,” Mr. Bezos said. “We are going to give the device team competition. We will make Kindle books, at the same $9.99 price points, available on the iPhone, and other mobile devices and other computing devices.”

This is also the first time I’ve heard confirmation of “other computing devices,” which I hope is just plain old code for, “you’ll be able to read all your books on Whispersync between your computer, phone and reader.”

Woohoo!

That's Mr. Coppola in the middle. Can't you tell?

While the movie was a gorgeous black and white masterwork of cinematography, sound, and character, the most interesting part of the evening came at the end of the show when Coppola and his his young start Alden Ehrenreich went onstage to answer audience questions. When Ehrenreich was asked about what it was like to work with Coppola, he spoke about Francis allowing the actors (and the entire staff) a space for play throughout rehearsal and even during shooting.

It was clear through both their answers that Francis values the creativity of his artists, that he is a true collaborator, interested more in getting the best from his team than in getting drones to execute his vision.

Alden told about how playful rehearsals were for the 2 weeks prior to filming, how they were encouraged to go off-script, and how it all culminated in a masquerade ball prior to shooting. Everyone attending the ball came in character, wearing masquerade garb, and carrying note cards with assignments from Coppola, small tasks to complete throughout the night’s festivities. While neither Francis or Alden got into specifics, apparently this was one wild party with lots going. People were disappearing into corners, fights were breaking out, and Francis was shooting everything he could get the whole time. When the cast got into shooting though, these sorts of exercise allowed actors the freedom to tell Coppola, “you know what? I don’t think my character would react as happily to such and such” and Coppola could let his actors respond spontaneously to what they were feeling because they’d worked together to develop the characters and film.

I had never heard of acting exercises such as this, although I’m no actor so it could be quite common for all I know. What I do know, however, is that I’d love to check out the tape from that night and that I left with far more respect for what Coppola is doing in film. Here’s to hoping we see a lot more films from him of this quality.

Does anybody know about Coppola’s process or have any pointers on where I can find about what happens behind the scenes on a Coppola set? Come on, give me the dirt!

The publisher and Murakami, who rarely gives media interviews, kept a veil over “1Q84,” which can be read as “1984″ in Japanese, after many readers asked not be told about the plot before reading the novel.

[via AFP]

• 5. Ink-on-paper manufacturing is an outmoded, toxic industry with steeply rising costs.
• 8. Long tail balkanizes audiences, disrupts means of canon-building and fragments literary reputation.
• 17. Polarizing civil cold war is harmful to intellectual honesty.

#5 resonates with me since I just moved form a large house to a tiny condo and had to move my book collection – again. I have hundreds of pounds of books stored in many bookshelves, even after trimming the collection by about 50% in a recent moving sale. I read the other day that Sherman Alexie considers the Kindle to be an “elitist” device – because Kindle is expensive and only driven by one company. While I understand where he’s coming from and agree that it is currently elitist, I also think it neglects the fact that people with large libraries of physical books are also “elitist” but also “environmentally non-friendly.” I love books, but I also think that books are a luxury that should not be afforded by people who read a lot and can afford to get a device that doesn’t perpetuate the shipping of dead trees and the expansion of personal space to maintain a collection of knowledge.

#8 is just plain interesting. As a literature student, I love the ability to locate nearly any reading material via Amazon.com. The fact that the long-tail is now available to researchers and academics is a boon to society and literary study. Unfortunately, it is also true that the availability of the long-tail has indeed “balkanized” more casual readers. It’s important for cultural reading experiences to exist, for mass market works that matter to be read by large percentages of a population as it further discourse and allows for common language to be achieved. I am particularly interested in group readings of major works. In fact, this is one reason I’ve been so active in reading groups throughout the years and am partaking in Infinite Summer. (We’ve got a small reading group that will most likely be meeting a couple times a week on Wednesday evenings in Seattle. If you want to join us, feel free to leave your comment so I can get in touch with you. You’ll be doing your part to combat excess balkanization.)

#17. That just the result of non-face-to-face discourse in the internet age. A small percentage of vocal self-serving twits can exert undue influence over debate. It’s a core problem that needs to be addressed. I don’t know what to do about it.

The entire list is thought-provoking and worth a read. Which one resonates most with you and why?

In the images in White’s series, both figures are blossoming into womanhood, though each along a different path. As observers, however, we have been taught to view the subjects in much the same way: with sheer terror.