Elvis Presley and Sophia Loren, goofing around on the Paramount Lot. Sent to us by Pamela Keogh as a token of thanks for indexing her biography of Elvis. Long live the King.
Suddenly I came to, I pulled throughEdwyn Collins, If You Could Love Me
Amazed at what I saw
Struggling hard to find the words
When words tend to stick right in my craw
Because we’re joined at the heartJames, Don’t Wait That Long
Beats faster, hits harder than a boxer
When we are apart
‘Cause you said the brains I had went to my head.Oasis, Don’t Look Back in Anger
I’m like a rough diamond that just needs a little polishing, that’s all.Handsome Boy Modeling School, Look At That Face
I came back to let you knowBobby Caldwell, What You Won’t Do For Love
Got a thing for you
And I can’t let go
It was as if someone had opened the doors of space and time for him. There was nowhere he had to be.Monsieur Hire’s false respite, in Georges Simenon’s The Engagement. Movie adaptation, here.
When you’re married you’ll understand the importance of fresh produce!Tony Soprano to Christopher Moltisanti, The Sopranos, Episode 20, “D-Girl”
If I were asked today how one can recognize love, if I had to make a diagnostic of love, I should say:Alavoine’s letter, from Georges Simenon’s Act of Passion
‘First of all the need for nearness.’
Listen to me, why is everything so hazyJeff Buckley’s Lilac Wine
Isn’t that she, or am I just going crazy …
I turned on Rachmaninoff again. What’s good for the dark of night is good for the morning light.Nick Tosches, Me and the Devil
Little Wonder, by Bowie. All seven dwarfs in this strange, under appreciated piece.
If you have “too many” cookbooks (ridiculous), these are tinier pieces of fiction that you can impulsively buy when you’re bookshopping while hungry.
See also the 39 books we’ve indexed that mention The Joy of Cooking.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE: The Fonts in Philip Sington’s The Valley of Unknowing
The Valley of Unknowing, a stunning new literary thriller set in the last days of the German Democratic Republic, is typeset with the fonts Drescher Grotesk and Excelsior. These were commonly used typefaces in the German Democratic Republic, featuring in publications ranging from children’s books and high-profile Communist publications to the humble Trabant car repair manual.
Life was frugal for designers (and everyone else) in the GDR. Typeface licenses were very expensive and with little money available to pay for them, type designers were instead ordered to design their own version by state publication authorities. Drescher Grotesk, originally designed by Arno Drescher around 1932 and redrawn by Karl-Heinz Lange as Super Grotesk at VEB Typoart (the state-owned type foundry), was the East German response to Futura. Excelsior, designed for optimal readability, was most likely a very close copy of the original 1930’s version by Chauncey H. Griffith.
