David Sedaris is now on vinyl:

The 31-minute album, which will be released on Jan. 5 and cost $24.98, will include only two of the five essays on the CD version of the audiobook, but will feature a code enabling purchasers to digitally download the entire program.

…

Maja Thomas, senior vice president for digital and audio publishing at the Hachette Book Group, said she was drawn to the idea precisely because it was quirky. Mr. Sedaris’s “audience is very attuned to irony and is going to find this funny,” Ms. Thomas said.

Whhhaaaatttt??? That’s some pretty expensive irony! (via NYTimes)

#45: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

And Murakami does it again. For the life of me, I will NEVER understand how someone can come up with such intricate and imaginative plot lines. Wind-Up Bird kind of wound me up in its convoluted characters, leaving me unsure of what I had actually read. Even now, I think I know what happened and simultaneously wonder what it was all about. But what I love most about Murakami, and particularly this book, was that even though I felt left in the dark at times I knew that I was in good hands. Being vulnerable in a book is, without a doubt, a very strange feeling. On the other hand, the suspense that Murakami left for me was a comfort. Almost as if being moved along a very long highway, the story kept me moving forward without once feeling the need to look back.

Essentially, one could quote the hell out of this book or take it as a whole. It’s one that can easily be broken down, but I prefer to think of it as the sum of its many parts. There’s a lot to grasp here and I’m sure I’ll be looking into it, but in the meantime I think I’ll let the idea of it all settle a bit. Wind-Up Bird begs to be taken seriously, so if you’re in the mood to work a little or be dragged into a completely different world, give this book a go.

 #44: 33 1/3, Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti

As promised, I read another 33 1/3 on today’s flight between Texas and New York. There is something to be said for absorbing this kind of album while flying over the general midwest, but when I was trying to understand the breakdown of each individual song, I realized it was a futile effort at best. This book tried with all its might to bring Dylan history into the music. It took each beat and brought to the accompanying lyrics a sense of wonderment that I’m not sure Dylan himself would have understood. In fact, I’ve come to the possibly presumptuous and probably ill-informed opinion that the prolific myth behind Highway 61 Revisited is not only something in which we want to believe, but a thrill that brings us to others who want feel the same. Basically, I wonder if my decision to focus on this album while feeling as if I had two directions home rendered the entire experience moot. While Dylan may have wanted the listener to feel lost, or at least to identify with his own confusion, I found it incredibly comforting to know that my birthplace and current residence can always be revisited. And revisit them I will, again and again.

 #43: 33 1/3 Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes

This is the first book in the 33 1/3 music series and it combines two of my favorite things: great albums and literary merit. In this edition, Zanes becomes slightly tangential in his writing about Springfield’s iconic voice and what he calls “the imaginary South”. The book isn’t so much a history of factual circumstance, but an academic breakdown of an album that represents an era and a place that may or may not actually exist. It explores his own relationship to Dusty in Memphis as well as its place in the history of soul. The writer says “the South is the place that we are more real than we feel” and that music such as Dusty’s creates exactly the same thing. In fact, I read the whole book while on a plane from New York to Dallas last night. If I learned anything, it’s that listening to an entire record (or mp3 version of said record) and then putting it on repeat while reading a 33 1/3 is probably one of the better ways to travel home. So far, I haven’t been able to find better distraction from the general horribleness of the middle seat. And like any new obsession, I plan to read another one on my way back.