Steely Dan in the sun | more books

Today mum wanted to shop and dad wanted to stay home and watch the cricket, so I took her out. Shopping with mum is always awesome, even if we don’t buy anything.
Cruising around in the sun with the windows down, sunroof open and Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature on the stereo was awesome enough, but while we were out and about I visited the Church and bought the 2003 album Everything Must Go and listened to it while cruising through the city, Williamstown and eventually home. Too too good.
You can listen to ten-thousand albums and not one of them will be as well recorded, engineered, mixed and produced as Steely Dan. Listening to Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go today reminded me again that there is simply no dignity in pop-music. Steely Dan is so refined, so funky, so groovy yet mature in lyrical content, musically brilliant without being too muso-niche (which I do enjoy as a musician), full of fun, everything pop-music should be without being absolutely rubbish.

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I got one gift this Christmas because try though I might, I just can’t convince mum not to get me one. She did just get us all vouchers for David Jones though, so at least she didn’t have to labour over it which is something I can’t stand people doing. So today in our wanderings about the city we went to David Jones and looked for clothes and things, none of which I liked. Mum had to go to the toilet which just happened to be on the same floor as the books, and so I inevitably found the children’s section.
I’ve said quite a while ago that I never look for books, that they find me, and yet again this has proven true. I never go out of my way to go to a book-store specifically to look for something to buy, it’s always because other people who I’m chilling with are going there or if we’re killing time before a film or dinner. Today was a perfect example.
The purchases;

The Wind in the Willows, Centenary Edition – Kenneth Grahame, illustrated by Robert Ingpen.
I had a soft-cover novella-style edition of The Wind in the Willows a few years ago, but it was lost after my grandmother borrowed it before she died. No harm done, as I always intended to get myself something exactly like this edition; large format, hardcover with colour illustration. This version is beautiful, and I’m glad I found it without going out looking for it.

The Cloudchasers – Steven Hunt and David Richardson.
What’s the market called before pre-teens? I’m not sure this book is quite mature enough for 12 years olds, probably a little younger, but not as young as say 6 or 7. Anyway, it’s less text than Wind in the Willows, but has beautifully rendered images that look to be a combination of hand-drawn/painted mattes and very well crafted CG characters. Each double-page spread is a full image with a clear-space for text, and many of the images are very dark with large areas of black, many of the other images dark browns and pale ochres. I bought this on the imagery alone so the story might be complete arse, though early pages seem to indicate a good solid story about a girl who something something something and then it probably all works out well in the end. You’ll probably read about it if I think it’s crap, but either way the visuals are a delight.