100 Books to Read in a Lifetime

in Books | March 3rd, 2014

100-books_amazon Ama­zon’s Books edi­tors set out to com­pile a list of 100 Books to Read in a Life­time, with a few goals in mind:

We want­ed the list to cov­er all stages of a life (which is why you’ll find chil­dren’s books in here), and we did­n’t want the list to feel like home­work. Of course, no such list can be com­pre­hen­sive – our lives, we hope, are long and var­ied – but we talked and argued and sift­ed and argued some more and came up with a list, our list, of favorites. What do you think? How did we do?

Over­all pret­ty well. That’s how I’d answer the edi­tors’ rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. The list does­n’t pan­der to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor of read­ing tastes. It fea­tures sub­stan­tive works by Albert Camus, Alice Munro (see our col­lec­tion of free Munro sto­ries), Ralph Elli­son, Robert A. Caro, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Rebec­ca Skloot and many oth­ers. It’s a hearty list, so far as these lists go, offer­ing plen­ty of good selec­tions for some­one seek­ing a new read. But let me add this one caveat. If the Ama­zon edi­tors did­n’t sell out, they did intend to sell. Or so it seems to skep­ti­cal me. Of the 100 books on the list, only a hand­ful are old­er works in the pub­lic domain and thus free. Maybe the Ama­zon edi­tors would claim that read­ing books writ­ten a cen­tu­ry ago is tan­ta­mount to home­work. But that seems fair­ly short-sight­ed. All of this reminds me of a post we wrote last year called The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors. Here we looked back at a 2007 book called The Top Ten: Writ­ers Pick Their Favorite Books where edi­tor J. Ped­er Zane asked 125 top writ­ers to name their favorite books — writ­ers like Nor­man Mail­er, Annie Proulx, Stephen King, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Mes­sud, and Michael Chabon. The lists were all com­piled in an edit­ed col­lec­tion, and then pref­aced by one uber list, “The Top Top Ten.” All but one book in the top 10 was writ­ten before 1931 (which means they’re almost entire­ly free and avail­able in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions). It just goes to show, I sup­pose, that one per­son­’s home­work is anoth­er per­son­’s read of a life­time. Feel free to sift through both lists (here & here) and see which texts belong on your per­son­al buck­et list.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936

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Sketches by Guillermo del Toro Take You Inside the Director’s Wildly Creative Imagination

in Art, Film | March 3rd, 2014

Guiller­mo del Toro is per­haps the most visu­al­ly imag­i­na­tive direc­tor alive today. Unlike Paul Thomas Ander­son, with his infu­ri­at­ing­ly per­fect sense of visu­al bal­ance, or Alfon­so Cuarón, whose Oscar-sweep­ing Grav­i­ty required the inven­tion of a nov­el, hyper-real­istic film­ing method, del Toro doesn’t deal with real life. His domain is the fan­tas­ti­cal. There’s a chance you may not have liked Pan’s Labyrinth, and even the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that you’ve for­got­ten what­ev­er it is that hap­pens in Hell­boy, (some­thing about mon­sters? Sav­ing the world?), but I’d wager that its menagerie of hell­ish demons has been seared into your mem­o­ry.

Late in 2013, del Toro released a volu­mi­nous book, enti­tled Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties: My Note­books, Col­lec­tions, and Oth­er Obses­sions. As he explains in the video above, the 256-page hard­cov­er is a selec­tion from his note­books, where the direc­tor devel­oped many of the mon­strosi­ties we’ve seen on screen.
The Guardian Sket notes that there’s some­thing of da Vinci’s note­books in del Toro’s records:  the small, neat script, mixed in with the won­der­ful­ly detailed sketch­es, com­bine to give the impres­sion of del Toro doing his best to record the tor­rent of his imag­i­na­tion before the thoughts dis­ap­pear. In this post, we include a num­ber of these images. The first three sketch­es, includ­ing the one above, depict del Toro’s draw­ings for Pan’s Labyrinth. The fourth is a page from his work on Hell­boy, and the fifth is art for his most recent film, Pacif­ic Rim.

From Pan’s Labyrinth

From Pacif­ic Rim

For those inter­est­ed in view­ing more of del Toro’s won­der­ful­ly bizarre sketch­es, a some­what larg­er gallery is avail­able here. The com­plete Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties: My Note­books, Col­lec­tions, and Oth­er Obses­sions is avail­able at Amazon.com.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi 

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown (Free Doc­u­men­tary) 

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

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The First Episode of The Johnny Cash Show, Featuring Bob Dylan & Joni Mitchell (1969)

in Music, Television | March 3rd, 2014

Whether you hate-watched, love-watched, or ignored last night’s Acad­e­my Awards, you may be tired today of Oscar talk. Take a break, unplug your­self from Face­book and Twit­ter, and trav­el with me back in TV time. It’s June 7th, 1969, and The John­ny Cash Show makes its debut on ABC, recorded—where else?—at the Grand Ole Opry (“I wouldn’t do it any­where but here”). Fea­tur­ing Cash ensem­ble reg­u­lars June Carter, the Carter fam­i­ly, Carl Perkins, the Statler Broth­ers, and the Ten­nessee Three, the musi­cal vari­ety show has a def­i­nite show­biz feel. Even the open­ing cred­its give this impres­sion, with a decid­ed­ly kitschy big band ren­di­tion of “Fol­som Prison Blues.” This seems a far cry from the defi­ant John­ny Cash who gave the world the fin­ger in a pho­to tak­en that same year dur­ing his San Quentin gig (where inmate Mer­le Hag­gard sat in atten­dance).

But show­biz John­ny Cash is still every inch the man in black, with his rough edges and refined musi­cal tastes (in fact, Cash debuted the song “Man in Black” on a lat­er episode). As daugh­ter Rosanne showed us, Cash was a musi­col­o­gist of essen­tial Amer­i­cana. His choice of musi­cal guests for his debut program—Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Cajun fid­dler Doug Ker­shaw—makes plain Cash’s love for folk songcraft. The appear­ance on the Cash show was Kershaw’s big break (two months lat­er his “Louisiana Man” became the first song broad­cast from the moon by the Apol­lo 12 astro­nauts). Mitchell, who plays “Both Sides Now” from her cel­e­brat­ed sec­ond album Clouds, was already a ris­ing star. And Dylan was, well, Dylan. Even if all you know of John­ny Cash comes from the 2005 film Walk the Line, you’ll know he was a huge Dylan admir­er. In the year The John­ny Cash Show debuted, the pair record­ed over a dozen songs togeth­er, one of which, “Girl from the North Coun­try,” appeared on Dylan’s coun­try album Nashville Sky­line. They play the song togeth­er, and Dylan plays that album’s “I Threw it All Away,” one of my all-time favorites.

Ini­tial­ly billed as “a live­ly new way to enjoy the sum­mer!” The John­ny Cash Show had a some­what rocky two-year run, occa­sion­al­ly run­ning afoul of ner­vous net­work exec­u­tives when, for exam­ple, Cash refused to cen­sor the word “stoned” from Kris Kristofferson’s “Sun­day Morn­ing Com­ing Down” and brought on Pete Seeger, despite the furor his anti-war views caused else­where. Ever the icon­o­clast, Cash was also ever the con­sum­mate enter­tain­er. After watch­ing the first episode of his show, you might agree that Cash and friends could have car­ried the hour even with­out his famous guests. Cash opens with a spir­it­ed “Ring of Fire” and also plays “Fol­som Prison Blues,” “The Wall,” and “Grey­stone Chapel.” And above, watch John­ny and June sing a sweet duet of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law, and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

John­ny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Read The Coming of Jap Herron, the Novel Mark Twain “Wrote” Through a Ouija Board After His Death (1917)

in Books, Literature | March 3rd, 2014

“You’re mov­ing it!” “No I’m not; you’re mov­ing it!” Thus spake the excit­ed­ly anx­ious pre­teen voic­es of an-ear­ly 1990s Park­er Broth­ers Oui­ja board com­mer­cial I must have seen a hun­dred times in child­hood. Though by then such devices had scant import out­side the realm of  sleep­over par­ties, peo­ple took them more seri­ous­ly in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, espe­cial­ly around the time of the First World War. While some must, alas, have regard­ed them as func­tion­al chan­nels to the great beyond, oth­ers saw in them the poten­tial to gin up major pub­lish­ing events. Here we have one of the most curi­ous, 1917’s small-town Mis­souri bil­dungsro­man The Com­ing of Jap Her­ron, alleged­ly writ­ten Mark Twain, at that point sev­en years dead. A mis­placed man­u­script the execu­tors of Twain’s estate found amid his papers, per­haps? Noth­ing of the sort: he began writ­ing the book in 1915, as a dis­em­bod­ied spir­it, through a Oui­ja board. So claimed, at least, one Emi­ly Grant Hutch­ings, who brought Jap Her­ron to pub­li­ca­tion, pre­sent­ing her­self as a mere scribe tak­ing dic­ta­tion from the deceased icon of Amer­i­can lit­er­ary humor.

She’d even had some con­tact, albeit through the mail, with the liv­ing one: “In their exchange of let­ters he had giv­en her advice and, inter­est­ing­ly, also marked one of her let­ters with the words: ‘Idiot! Must pre­serve.’ ” That price­less find comes from The Pub­lic Domain Review’s post on Jap Her­ron, where you can read the short book in full, a much eas­i­er option than strug­gling to find a copy that sur­vived the ceas­ing of pub­li­ca­tion and sub­se­quent pulp­ing ordered by Twain’s daugh­ter. (You can also access it by click­ing on the image above.)  And how does this “final work,” whether com­posed as a pas­tiche or para­nor­mal­ly, hold up? “The humor impress­es as a fee­ble attempt at imi­ta­tion,” said a con­tem­po­rary New York Times review, “and while there is now and then a strong sure touch of pathos or a swift and true rev­e­la­tion of human nature, the ‘sob stuff’ that oozes through many of the scenes, and the over­drawn emo­tions are too much for creduli­ty. If this is the best that ‘Mark Twain’ can do by reach­ing across the bar­ri­er, the army of admir­ers that his works have won for him will all hope that he will here­after respect that bound­ary.”

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Plays With Elec­tric­i­ty in Niko­la Tesla’s Lab (Pho­to, 1894)

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Mark Twain Shirt­less in 1883 Pho­to

Find Major Works by Twain in our Col­lec­tion of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, aes­thet­ics, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Oscar-Winning Films Free Online

in Film | March 2nd, 2014

free oscar films

To warm you up for tonight’s Oscars, we “pinned” our col­lec­tion of 34 Free Oscar Win­ning Films to the top of our home­page ear­li­er today. If you did­n’t get a chance to peruse the list, you can always find it here: 34 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web. Or vis­it our meta col­lec­tion of 635 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Niv­en Presents an Oscar and Gets Inter­rupt­ed by a Streak­er (1974)

Hat­tie McDaniel, Star of Gone with the Wind, Gives a Mov­ing Acad­e­my Award Accep­tance Speech (1940)

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash!’

33 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web

80 Years of Acad­e­my Award Win­ning Films in Posters

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David Niven Presents an Oscar and Gets Interrupted by a Streaker (1974)

in Film, Television | March 2nd, 2014

While Acad­e­my Awards will no doubt have its share of dra­ma and sur­pris­es tonight, there will like­ly be few inci­dents of pub­lic nudi­ty. That wasn’t always the case with the Oscars.

Back in 1974, co-host David Niv­en was about to intro­duce Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor when a long-haired, mus­tached nude man sprint­ed out on stage and flashed a peace sign (among oth­er things) before a shocked audi­ence. He jogged from one side of the stage to the oth­er before slip­ping off into the wings, as Hen­ry Manci­ni cued his orches­tra to start play­ing music.

After he regained his com­po­sure, Niv­en quipped, “Well, ladies and gen­tle­men, that was almost bound to hap­pen… But isn’t it fas­ci­nat­ing to think that prob­a­bly the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by strip­ping off and show­ing his short­com­ings?”

Right from the begin­ning, how­ev­er, some won­dered if the inci­dent wasn’t in fact planned by pro­duc­ers hop­ing to give the audi­ence a jolt. Instead of arrest­ing the streak­er (and cart­ing him direct­ly to a Super Max prison, as would hap­pen today), he was giv­en a press con­fer­ence.

At the press con­fer­ence, he said that his name was Robert Opel and false­ly described him­self as an “adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive” dur­ing the press con­fer­ence. When asked why he did the deed, Opel respond­ed, “You know, peo­ple should­n’t be ashamed of being nude in pub­lic. Besides — it is a hell of a way to launch a career.”

The inci­dent did turn Opel briefly into a celebri­ty. He appeared (clothed) on the Mike Dou­glas Show and he was even hired to repeat the stunt at a par­ty for Rudolph Nureyev and Mar­vin Ham­lisch.

Though he was des­tined to go down in his­to­ry as the naked Oscar guy, he was also an avant-garde artist and a leader in the nascent gay rights move­ment. After his brush with fame, Opel moved to the Bay Area where he found­ed Fey-Wey Stu­dios, which was one of the first art gal­leries to show­case artists like Robert Map­plethor­pe and Tom of Fin­land. He also staged an Ani­ta Bryant look-alike con­test at the height of the for­mer beau­ty queen’s anti-gay pub­lic cam­paign. He was mur­dered in his gallery in 1979 dur­ing a bun­gled rob­bery.

Bay Area artist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er BIRON, who was friends with Opel dur­ing his San Fran­cis­co days, remem­bered him fond­ly. “Uncom­pro­mis­ing and unapolo­getic, he blurred the lines between art and life as he trav­eled beyond the con­fines of accept­ed behav­ior. Har­vey Milk and then Robert Opel both killed with­in a few months.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash!’

33 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web

80 Years of Acad­e­my Award Win­ning Films in Posters

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

 

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Billy Corgan Performs an 8+ Hour Ambient Interpretation of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha

in Music | March 1st, 2014

Bil­ly Cor­gan, the front­man of The Smash­ing Pump­kins, made this announce­ment on his Face­book page last week:

On 2/28 I’ll be doing a show at Madame ZuZu’s Tea­house [in Chica­go]; start time noon, and due to nature of per­for­mance it’ll last 8–9 hours… As with all our events there is no charge. Per­for­mance will be cen­tered around an ambient/musical inter­pre­ta­tion of Her­mann Hes­se’s Sid­dhartha; built by mod­u­lar syn­the­sis, on the fly. Read­ings of the text to go hand in hand with what­ev­er is cre­at­ed; + the first @Hexistential poster, and event t‑shirts too. Hope to see you there.

One fan quick­ly respond­ed: “Film this, please. This sounds like a tru­ly spe­cial event, one that I’d be hum­bled to take in, even if a record­ing is the only way to do so.” Luck­i­ly, his wish was grant­ed.

Above and below, you can watch Cor­gan’s long ambi­ent inter­pre­ta­tion. And, in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions, you can find a copy of Her­man Hes­se’s exis­ten­tial nov­el from 1922. As you watch the video, you’ll encounter what SPIN describes as “a read­ing of the book itself, com­bined with mod­u­lar synth blips, bloops, and tex­tures.” Set­tle in and enjoy.

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R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their National Television Debut on The David Letterman Show (1983)

in Music, Television | March 1st, 2014

It’s hard for me to believe that we now live in a post‑R.E.M. world. Also a post-Son­ic Youth world, post-Pix­ies world (as far as I’m con­cerned), etc. The bands of my errant youth are no more; some­times it feels like all I can do is toss out the occa­sion­al, half-heart­ed “get off my lawn” or mum­ble bemus­ed­ly, “what’s a Lorde?” when con­tem­plat­ing the cur­rent state of music.

Yet all is not lost for “aging hipsters”—in the par­lance of the blog Rock Turtle­neck!. Though our pop cul­ture may seem to slip into an irrel­e­vant ice age, we can at least warm our­selves at the flick­er­ing screen, where Youtube caches troves of footage of our bygone heroes—like the video above of R.E.M. play­ing “Radio Free Europe” for their first appear­ance on TV in 1983.

Now, this was before the time of my fan­dom, which dates from the lat­er 80s. Still, it’s always a joy to see one of my all time favorites roar­ing in their lion­heart­ed youth.

The band appeared on Let­ter­man, pro­mot­ing their debut, Mur­mur. The venue is no sur­prise, giv­en Dave’s con­sis­tent cham­pi­oning of instant-clas­sic Amer­i­can artists. But after this appear­ance, they would not return to his show for anoth­er 12 years, this time to play “Crush With Eye­lin­er” in the midst of their 1995 Mon­ster tour (above). I loved R.E.M. no less then, but they were pros by that time, not the scrap­py, jan­g­ly South­ern alt-rock­ers bold­ly chal­leng­ing the ortho­doxy of bloat­ed sta­di­um rock.

I think Rock Turtle­neck! does not over­state its case in claim­ing that the band’s nation­al tele­vi­sion debut “was the col­lege rock equiv­a­lent of The Bea­t­les play­ing the Ed Sul­li­van Show in 1964.” Well, maybe just a lit­tle, but it’s still a piv­otal moment in the his­to­ry of alt-rock. Mur­mur appears as num­ber 1 on this list of the “best albums of 1983”—calculated from “over­all rank­ings in over 13,000 great­est album charts”—followed by oth­er new wave and alter­na­tive clas­sics like the Vio­lent Femmes’s epony­mous debut, The Police’s Syn­chronic­i­ty, U2’s War, Tom Wait’s Sword­fishtrom­bones, and New Order’s Pow­er, Cor­rup­tion and Lies. Sim­pler times, sim­pler times….

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

R.E.M.’s Final Encore (and an Ear­ly Con­cert from Ger­many)

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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