I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SOAK-Tiny Desk Concert #459 (August 3, 2015).

Soak is Bridie Monds-Watson.  I hate to mention this, because it’s not the focus, but it is impressive that she’s only 19.  And her voice is really lovely.

I recently bought her album Before We Forgot How To Dream, and it’s really good.  The arrangements are complex and thoughtful.  And the album is beautifully orchestrated.  So this stripped down performance shows that she’s not all about production.

Her voice is pretty heavily accented and is almost a mumble, but not quite–it’s the kind of quiet voice that makes you lean in to hear.

The opening track, “Sea Creatures” (an amazing single) sounds pretty with just the acoustic guitar (I prefer the album version, but this is a really neat rendition).  For “B a noBody” and “Wait” she switches to an electric guitar.  It’s got a cool echo effect on it, but it is still quiet and hushed.

She says that she’s nervous playing at the Tiny Desk, but that looking around at all the CDs and poster it “feels like my bedroom.”  This is another delightfully intimate performance behind the Tiny Desk.

Bob Boilen did an interview with her a few weeks ago and she really won me over with her musical knowledge and sense of humor.

[READ: June 4, 2015] Jane Austen

This book also comes from the series called Life Portraits.

This is a very brief (128 pages, but mostly one sentence per page) biography of Jane Austen.  But the real “selling” points of the book are the beautiful illustrations/paintings by Nina Cosford.  They are lovely watercolors which do a great job illustrating whatever detail is listed on the page.

We get basic birth details–born Jane Austen on 16th December 1775.  She grew up on a farm with six brothers and one sister.  There’s even an illustrated family tree.

Her parents turned their farm into a boarding school so she knew lots of children.  But it was her cousin Eliza, a fantastic woman married to a European Count who spoke French and wore continental fashions who became Jane’s lifelong friend.  With Eliza around, all the girls  talked about marriage and money. 

In her teens Jane wrote a novella called “Lady Susan” about a woman who was scheming for two husbands,one for herself and another for her daughter.

When she was 20 Jane began writing Elinor and Marianne which became Sense and Sensibility.  She also finished Pride and Prejudice.  Neither was accepted for publication but that didn’t stop her and she began working on Northanger Abbey.

Despite the desires for marriage among her family, social pressures were beginning to crack.  Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication on the Rights of Women was published around this time.

The family moved to Bath where they could be more social and party more.  Jane didn’t take to this very well.  A friend, Harris, proposed and she said yes but the next day she told him she couldn’t. Eventually the family moved to the countryside again and Jane returned to her writing.  She had Sense and Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice published and began working on Mansfield Park. She wrote Emma as Mansfield Park was being published.

Jane became ill and her last book Persuasion was published posthumously.

I’ve enjoyed Austen’s novels, but I really didn’t know that much about her.  Her tenacity in writing is really impressive.  I enjoyed both of these books, and I look forward to more in the series.