I've recently -in the last two months- discovered the magic that is Beirut, and more specifically, Zach Condon. The music he and his band creates is original, but not in the rock/pop song where they use the chord progression G Eb D C instead of G Eb A D. The most recent album, The Flying Club Cup is a delirious but somehow organized mix of North American pop and Balkan folk, with an almost Gypsy feel on top of it all. It's wonderful, and the reason I'm buying a ukulele with my most recent pay cheque.
9. Wally Lamb
I just read I Know This Much Is True and I've started on She's Come Undone. Lamb has this ability to take the most profound things and make them paperback-worthy. He's like the Marshall McLuhan of novels. His characters are complex, most often dense, but with some redeeming qualities, adding layers using a technique reserved for shows like The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Although the physical books may be hefty, it's well worth lugging them around for however many weeks it takes you to finish them.
8. Nintendo 64
It's the game console of the nineties. I play it for a joke. A nostalgia trip. It's slightly unusual to have said feelings in one's teenage years, but I have never been usual. I've been feeding my eyes with the now-crude but once advanced graphics of Zelda- Ocarina of Time; filling my ears with the half-hearted whimpers of defeat uttered from the mouths of my friends after a merciless bashing in a game of Super Smash Bros; rehabilitating my lost hand-eye co-ordination by clicking away at a series of simple buttons on a controller designed by engineers with no sense for comfort. The games themselves aren't that fun, although I'm sure they were in 1996.
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