One of the benefits of the TimesSelect membership (yeah, I got sucked in... free and virtually unlimited access to the complete archives, as well as Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman? I was hooked) is finding out on Wednesday what will be in the Sunday Book Review and Magazine. Usually I'd get around to checking the web site the Tuesday or Wednesday after each came out, but sometimes not at all. With TimesSelect, I get an e-mail each Wednesday letting me know what will be in the upcoming sections, and letting me access that content.

This week, the NTYBR unveils its list of the 10 Best Books of 2005. I've read a grand total of one -- Ian McEwan's Saturday. Either I didn't fully appreciate this look at the quotidian aspects of the life of a decidedly un-average New Yorker, or the quality of so-called great books was a bit lacking this year. It's probably a bit of both, though the number of ambivalent or negative reviews for Saturday would seem to indicate the former more than the latter. I love lists, as much for the way they sometimes confirm my own opinions as much as for the ideas they offer, though this is the exception. Little here among the nine I haven't read piques my curiosity; only Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking holds much allure. Otherwise, seeing Haruki Murakami and Zadie Smith makes me wonder if they have automatic spots on such lists, and seeing Curtis Sittenfeld makes me wonder if the NYTBR is trying to appeal to a younger set. Remember: I write these things without having read a word of any of them, so I may be wrong.

Elsewhere, John Hodgman, whose podcasts for the Times' "Funny Pages" offerings try much too hard to be funny with little result, has a nice write-up about the daily comics pages. I'm a big fan of the comics (and have a growing fondness for Hodgman after seeing his side-splittingly funny spot on "The Daily Show" a couple of weeks back), and any time someone takes a critical look at strips without being condescending, I'm in. I had high hopes for The Comics Curmudgeon, but blogger Josh proves only that finding something interesting to say about the comics each day is nearly impossible.

Lastly, Michaelangelos Matos has a good piece in the Seattle Weekly about Continuum's 33 1/3 book series. The books, each slim volume about a different classic album, are great reads. Full disclosure: I just pitched them a book for the series (along with many others, it seems), but I'd sing its praises regardless.

UPDATE: Just noticed that my review of the Long Winters' new EP, Ultimatum, is the lead capsule review on Popmatters today. A long capsule about a short disc.

After being unjustly snubbed for the past few years, the Sex Pistols finally have been voted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Also making the cut after being passed over in past years is Lynyrd Skynyrd. Both are deserving, and it gives legitimacy to the hall to have them as members. Others who deserve a shot were passed over again. No Patti Smith? No Grandmaster Flash? Randy Newman (in a year where he could bring the house down with "Louisiana 1927")?

Instead, the hall will induct Blondie, a band from the same era as Patti Smith and the Sex Pistols that, while perhaps groundbreaking as a female-fronted band, took a quick left turn from punk to pop and turned out a Greatest Hits-disc worth of good song but never really did anything, you know, hall of fame worthy.

There must be at least one controversial entry, I suppose, and as those go, Blondie isn't even worth arguing. The rest of the slate is more than worthy. The Pistols should have been first ballot entries shoulder-to-shoulder with the Clash, and Skynyrd really shouldn't be following the Allman Brothers Band by more than a decade, should they? Black Sabbath and Miles Davis round out the inductee list. Sabbath is another no-brainer, practically inventing a genre that lives on – for good or ill – today. Davis, the left field choice, adds a nice dimension to the hall. He couldn't be considered a rock artist in the traditional sense, but he was truly a rock star, and his fusion work in the late 1960s and early 1970s was incredibly influential and groundbreaking.

This will be an induction ceremony worth watching. Head Pistol Johnny Rotten, who called the institution “the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Shame” in 2003 after being passed over, ought to bring a bit of sorely needed punk attitude to the proceedings.

Meanwhile, enjoy two bands who will never make the hall live in concert on NPR when Iron & Wine and Calexico perform Wednesday as part of the NPR Live Concert Series.

Just some quick hits today before the holiday lay-off.

It was surprising and saddening to learn of Chris Whitley's death yesterday. Never a huge fan, I still seem to have acquired about half of his catalog, and like his music when I take the time to listen. He was a restless soul who bordered at times on genius, which meant he was consigned to a life on the fringes. Still, his debut, Living with the Law, and the stripped-down gem Dirt Floor are well worth seeking out, and the rest of his work, while challenging to the point of being off-putting at times, will likely offer rewards for years to come. There is plenty of opportunity to catch up. There's a link to a downloadable live set from July on his web site, and there are tracks from his albums to sample as well. His record label, Messenger Records, has a nice tribute as its homepage now.

It's odd timing to release an expansive box set by a cult artist more than a month after Christmas, but fans of Richard Thompson will be willing to wait for the five-CD box set RT - The Life and Music of Richard Thompson. It's a staggering set that features unreleased tracks, alternate and live versions of his best songs, a set of live "workouts," covers and rarities. A separate sixth disc of still more rare tracks goes to the first 5,000 people who return a voucher in the box. It even includes a 172-page book about Thompson that sounds interesting in its own right. A look at the track list for the discs whets the appetite and makes February seem a long way off.

Ron Hogan at MediaBistro's GalleyCat reports that the paperback edition of Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex has sold 1 million copies. That's mighty impressive. It was a great read, but getting 1 million people to pony up $12 to read about a Greek hermaphrodite? That's some successful marketing. The Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle awards didn't hurt, but as Hogan points out, there was no Oprah boost to put this one over the top.

I read my first Stephen King book this week. Having done so, I wish that I had not. Before now, I had been proud to say that I had never read a page of King's work. A juvenile stance, perhaps, but a righteous one in my eyes nonetheless. Why waste time on such trash where there is so much great work out there that I'll never have the chance to read? Problem is, that stance was hypocritical to the extreme. I've long railed against those who confine all mystery writing to the genre ghetto, refusing to note the artistic merits of Lehane, Connelly, Pelecanos et al. To dismiss King without having read a word would seem no better.

What swayed me? His latest book, The Colorado Kid, was issued by Hard Case Crime, a new small publisher of paperback pulp novels. Behind those recreations of classically lurid covers lurk some titans of the crime genre. The company already has reissued a couple of out-of-print Lawrence Block books, which was enough to win my undying allegiance. With books forthcoming that are both old, such as a title from Dead Calm author Charles Williams, and new, like the forthcoming collaboration by Jason Starr and the fantastic Ken Bruen, Hard Case Crime's logo seemed like a seal of quality. When The Colorado Kid was announced, it seemed like perhaps this was finally the time to wade into King's work. The spate of reviews that raved about King's brilliant commentary on the very nature of crime fiction and mystery sealed the deal.

What did I find? A half-assed short story padded out to novel length with little in the way of plot, annoying cliched characters and a level of writing that, one hopes, indicates that King wrote this while distractedly watching a movie or cooking dinner. True, the book is not a traditional mystery, but it seems as if most critics have bent over backward trying to find ways to make that lack of resolution seem like some important meta-fictional exercise rather than a lazy, tossed-off project from a guy could sell the scribbled directions to a friend's house written on the back of a take-out menu.

Am I missing something? Jenny Davidson, whose blog, Light Reading, I have come to admire, wrote in the Village Voice that it's "a small masterpiece, a powerful metafiction by a natural storyteller exploring the limits of his art." The Christian Science Monitor's reviewer finds that it "eschews trademark gore in favor of enchanting meditations on unsolved crimes and unresolved stories." King, sounding like a certain president (and using a trick from Dave Eggers playbook) has cut off criticism by writing his own review of the book as an afterword. By noting what critics won't like about the work, and saying they miss the point, he seeks to make all dissenters seem wrong. "Mystery is my subject here, and I am aware that many readers will feel cheated, even angry, by my failure to provide a solution to the one posed," he writes. "...if you tell me I fell down on the job and didn't tell all of this story there was to tell, I say you're all wrong." The Complete Review seems to echo this, by saying that King approached the book in this particular way "well enough -- but mystery fans who like elegant resolutions and every last bit tied neatly together might well be disappointed." Yes, wanting a mystery to end with a resolution is my failing. Of course. Though that is far from my only problem with this thin story. (King may be right, by the way, in saying he told "all of this story there was to tell," though I don't mean that as a compliment)

I'm not alone, however. Patrick Anderson, writing in the Washington Post, called the book "agonizing," while John Koch, writing in the Boston Globe, laments: "If only he could have successfully translated his heartfelt notions in the afterword into lively and persuasive fiction."

This will no doubt do wonders for Hard Case Crime, and for that, I thank King. The story ends after about 175 pages, but there are nearly two dozen more that pitch current and future titles in the series. Here's hoping those drawn by King's name will stick around for the better work that will surely follow. As for King, I can now at least say I tried him before dismissing him. Though it may be unfair to judge him based on something that is clearly (surely?) not his best work, I find myself agreeing with Harold Bloom, whose comments after King received the 2003 National Book Foundation medal for distinguished contribution to American letters, are quoted in Adam Parfrey's review of The Colorado Kid in the Los Angeles Times: "What he is," wrote Bloom, "is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis." The Colorado Kid does nothing to disprove it.

It was a good arts & entertainment weekend 'round these parts. Friday brought the premiere of "Walk the Line," a surprisingly good biopic about Johnny Cash, while Sunday brought a great performance by John Wesley Harding.

The Cash film followed the same template as last year's "Ray": poor Southerner with family troubles and a dead brother fuses a love of music with burgeoning talent to stumble onto a new sound, rides that quick success to great heights that bring marital discord, drug problems and creative flameout. Thanks to the love of a good woman and God, the star straightens out and flies right to become a national treasure. Along the way, "Walk the Line" fudges a few facts, compresses and slices up the timeline for the sake of the story and glosses over inconsistencies. Still, what results is a compelling story that ought to help put the grandfatherly Cash of recent times into better perspective. You gotta sin to get saved, as they say, and Cash definitely put in his time before salvation came calling. That he created his best music at the beginning and end of his career -- two tremendously creative periods that bookend a sagging, inspiration-bereft middle -- is known to fans. Perhaps casual attendees will be turned on to the chick-a-boom as well.

Joaquin Phoenix was surprisingly good as Cash, balancing gravitas and vulnerability, all while turning in serviceable vocals throughout. Reese Witherspoon as June Carter was the revelation. She clearly can act, but she also could have a life in the Opry if she chose, her effervesent personality and pleasant voice more than enough to find success there. Overall, the film was well acted, had good, accurate music and remained faithful to its source material. Let's see what it does for Cash's popularity.

John Wesley Harding, meanwhile, put on a fantastic show as usual. Dag Juhlin of the mighty Slugs opened the show. No mention of that Chicago garage-pop band was made, sadly, but he did play a short set of agreeable acoustic pop. Harding, on the other hand, captivated. Nothing against Juhlin, but it was clear why Harding is a headliner. His songs are great, his stage presence is masterful and he's a surprisingly talented guitarist. Why he has never been able to reach the next rung of the stardom ladder is a mystery. He talked a bit about his novel, Misfortune, played a couple of tracks from the accompanying disc, and performed a set drawn from nearly all of his albums. He mixed the serious with the silly, the ridiculous with the sublime. Juhlin joined him for some nice harmony singing and guitar soloing for about half of the set, but (to contradict the point made in my last post about Matthew Ryan) Harding needs no accompaniment to put on a great show. I'm not one who expects chart-topping hits from Wes, but fame on the order of Steve Earle, John Hiatt or any other theater-filling performers would be nice.

Last night's Matthew Ryan show was a great example of the value of a sideman. While Ryan would have been fine solo acoustic, having guitarist Brian Bequette along made the show infinitely better. Bequette added tasteful electric guitar solos and moody textures to Ryan's songs, coaxing some interesting sounds from six strings and a variety of pedals (and lots of reverb). The result was a show that, while not offering the full band sound of Ryan's albums, closely approximated the feel of those recordings.

Too bad only 10 people turned out for the show. The day marked the arrival of the cold and snowy season in Iowa, it was a weeknight, and the infinitely more hip Detroit Cobras were playing down the street. The 10 that were there (nine, really, if you don't count headliner Anders Parker), however, were clearly fans. They asked for songs from a range of Ryan's work and seemed genuinely enthused. It wasn't enough, however. About three songs in, Ryan and Bequette began making their own crowd noises as each tune came to a close. As the crowd clapped politely (for 4.8 seconds, Ryan said), the two would whoop with mock excitement before launching into the next song. A living room would have provided the perfect level of intimacy, but here the near-empty club was a too large.

That doesn't mean the show was a disappointment; far from it. The two filled all of that empty space with rich, luminous sound in a set that, while short, seemed just about perfect. It must be tough splitting such a meager take with a sideman, but it made all the difference last night. Many, many artists who once lugged full bands around the country have since stripped down in these lean economic times. You've gotta spend money to make money, however, and I can guarantee that those who emulate Ryan will fare much better on the concert circuit once word gets out -- last night's nine paying customers to the contrary, of course.

Billboard, of all places, seems to be the best repository for information about the ever-prolific Robert Pollard. The trade paper -- with a nice new, easier-to-read web site, by the way -- has a nice little feature about the erstwhile Guided by Voices leader and his plans for 2006. He'll make his post-band, non-self-released solo debut with From a Compound Eye on Merge Records on Jan. 26, followed by a tour. The band lineup for that is exciting news for power pop fans, as Tommy Keene will be Pollard's guitarist. Keene is a fantastic songwriter and performer in his own right, but anyone who has seen him live -- either with his own band or as Paul Westerberg's hired gun -- can attest to the fact that he's also a hell of a guitarslinger. Jon Wurster, Superchunk's drummer, will be behind the kit.

Pollard tells Billboard that he'll play mostly solo material in the shows, as well as some tracks from recent collaborations like the Moping Swans and Circus Devils.

As for upcoming releases, he says he already has the follow-up to that Merge debut recorded. Tentatively titled Normal Happiness, the disc is "a pop album expected in October. Pollard tells Billboard "it has 16 two-minute pop songs. I wanted to make a record like that." He also has collaborations coming with late-era GBV bass player Chris Slusarenko as the Takeovers, and Keene as the Keene Brothers which, like similar works with ex-GBVer Tobin Sprout (as Airport Five) and Superchunk leader Mac McCaughan (as Go Back Snowball) involved his partner recording music tracks and Pollard writing and singing lyrics to go over top.

As this promo poster from the start of 2005 can attest, Pollard makes big plans and usually makes good on them. Of the 12 projects promised on this poster, he planned 12 releases, and save for the pushed back solo album due in January and a still planned Acid Ranch LP, he made good on all of them. The only variations came in project titles, which should be no surprise to longtime fans who expected Broadcaster House and got Isolation Drills, for example.

I was all set to write something profound about the relative recent quiet of singer-songwriter Matthew Ryan, but I was sidetracked after some Internet link jumping led me to news about him. It seems Ryan, who hasn't done much under his own name since 2003's Regret Over the Wires disc, has formed a new band with fellow singer Neilson Hubbard. The group, Strays Don't Sleep, has been gigging around Nashville, has toured with Lucinda Williams and has a disc out in the UK. The two musicians seem to have bonded over a love of the band the Blue Nile and started making music, eventually forming a five-piece band. You can hear two intriguing samples of their work at the band's MySpace site, songs that sound a lot like what you would expect from these two, occasionally besting the sum of their parts. Ryan has largely left behind the more muscular guitar rock of his first two discs and his more recent music, which is long on moody atmospherics, fits well with Hubbard's beautifully fractured chamber pop (best captured on 2001's low-key gem, Why Men Fail). The new disc, expected stateside sometime in early 2006, features a DVD that includes a short film (not a video, they stress) for each of the nine tracks. Sounds interesting, and because the music is certainly cinematic, seems like a good fit.

It was an odd thing to learn about an artist who had seemed to fall off the face of the earth. This started because I was shocked to learn that Ryan will open for Anders Parker at a club show here next week. That sent me on a tour through his four studio discs. I guess you could say I'm among his bigger fans, though it's clear I haven't kept tabs on him of late. Having listened to all four records in the past few days, however, I can declare with confidence that he's certainly among the first rank of U.S. male singer-songwriters. I'd include him in the same breath with fellas like Michael Penn, Josh Rouse and Parker, for that matter, who create sophisticated songs that transcend the genre bounds of folk, rock and pop.

Having found in these discs what caused me to take pains to track them down in the first place, I'm glad to learn that he is still making music. Ryan always seemed like someone who either couldn't catch a break or didn't know how to create his own. Part of the blame goes to the marketplace. Without a pop hit or a cute face, the industry just can't break an artist like this any more. His first two discs came out on A&M and had some great music, but even that leg up didn't help. At the time of the release of his second disc, East Autumn Grin, you could find plentiful used copies cheap at big city CD shops. That means too many promos were sent out indiscriminately and the recipients probably unloaded them without giving them a spin. So, no one with any savvy bought it new, and Ryan was released to indie-dom. Ryan's seemingly self-imposed low profile since and the high price of his merch ($22 for single disc live set? I'll pass) haven't exactly made him a household name.

That's why news of this opening slot of a tour of Midwestern college towns seems like such a positive step forward. That and his work with Strays Don't Sleep would seem to indicate a new push on his part. Let's hope so. Ryan is deserving of a wider audience. Hopefully, budding fans will be willing to meet him halfway.

The best new Fountains of Wayne song of late came from the pen of Robbie Fulks, not Chris Collingwood or Adam Schlesinger. Fulks, better known for his own hilarious honky tonk tunes, has a new track available on iTunes called "Fountains of Wayne Hotline." In it, he and his band find themselves in the middle of a pop song with no idea how to proceed. They call the hotline, where a helpful employee talks them through the chorus, and another through the bridge. Fulks offers a spot-on recreation of FOW's signature sound, with big guitars, massed vocals and a "slightly distorted melodic guitar solo."

Fulks explains the genesis of the song on the web site of his label, Yep Roc, and the target of his adoration/deconstruction seems to take it in good spirits, both linking to it on their own web site and offering commentary on the Yep Roc site: "If Robbie Fulks wants to ride someone's coattails, he ought to pick someone more famous than us," writes Schlesinger. "We, for example, cover Britney Spears songs to get attention. But hey, we're still flattered. In fact, we might hire him to write our next album for us."

Real Fulks fans, of which I thought I was one, have known about the tune for a while. It showed up on Fulks' second live set available for download through eMusic.com, from an October 2004 show at the Double Door in Chicago. Anyone checking him out for the first time thanks to this track would be wise to download that entire set, because the live Fulks experience will definitely make you a believer. eMusic offers 50 free tunes when you sign up, so you could download those two discs of music and have enough left over to sample a couple other things.

Mike Love just doesn't know when to quit. Any time his cousin, Brian Wilson, seems to find success, Love is there, lawsuit in hand. This time, Love has filed suit because he says Wilson promoted his remaking of Smile in a way that "shamelessly misappropriated Mike Love's songs, likeness and the Beach Boys trademark, as well as the Smile album itself," according to Billboard by way of the AP. Never mind the fact that Love stopped supporting Wilson's flights of creative fancy long before Smile's implosion. Hasn't Love wrung enough money from the Beach Boys and Wilson by now?

Actually, no. In between lawsuits, Love continues to tour with what he calls the Beach Boys Band, a travesty that features no Wilson brothers. Yes, this is the moral high ground on which Love stands. At issue in the suit is the creation and distribution of 2.6 million copies of a Beach Boys compilation given out with a British newspaper to promote Smile. Love's suit claims that the disc undercut sales of Beach Boys music. Sure, and Mike Love backed by a bar band playing under the name only bolsters that marketability, right?

The discovery of the fantastic music blog Little Hits, which features mp3s from long gone power pop and garage rock bands (and long out-of-print, mostly vinyl releases) led to a bit of a link-to-link discovery of information about Erik Voeks. Little Hits featured an mp3 from Voeks' fantastic debut (and lone long-playing release), Sandbox, "Oh My Darlin'," and comments on the posting mentioned that Voeks now lives in Kansas, operates a record shop and has a new band. That band, the Octopus Frontier (that's a Richard Brautigan reference), seems to be a knock-around group for guys with day jobs but who still want to rock now and again. From the mp3s available on the site, it would seem that Voeks is content to filter his pop smarts through more pedestrian bar band rock these days. A link on that site takes you to Voeks' My Space page, where this self-described "chronic home recordist" offers four streaming tracks. They're all fairly short, but fully fleshed out pop songs that seem to be more direct descendents of the great music he made a decade ago. It's great to see Voeks still making music. Sandbox is one of the great gems of the '90s, and it's promising to know there may someday be a follow-up.

As for Little Hits, it's a nice affirmation that there are more people out there who snapped up all of those old singles from Bus Stop, Summershine, Sarah and Parasol who lament the fact that the music they contained is locked within those hard-to-hear grooves. Here's hoping that blogger Jon Harrison's stated goal -- to contribute to interest that will eventually lead to legitimate re-issue of the works of the artists represented, or wider recognition of already available releases -- is realized.

Marah put on a heck of a show here in Iowa City last night. Most impressive was the fact that the band could clearly fill a theater or small arena with sound and connect with the last person in the place, and did so for about 25 people in a dank club on a weeknight. Perhaps most importantly, the band was having fun, ripping through a well-chosen and diverse cross section of its back catalog while giving the proper promotional support to its latest disc, If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry. That disc is worthy of the attention, offering the best music the band has made since it's sophomore stab at the big time, Kids in Philly. Some in the crowd remarked that they'd lost track of the band after the over-produced flop that was Float Away with the Friday Night Gods. The band has recovered nicely and has even taken steps to rescue the music that most have chosen to ignore from that disc. Last night's set featured a gorgeous, stripped-down sing along version of "Float Away," and the band is hawking a self-released disc on tour called Float Away - Deconstructed. I didn't pony up for it, but the tracklisting mixing demos, live acoustic tracks and alternate takes would seem to suggest that it offers an alternate look at the album that fits more seamlessly with the rest of the band's back catalog.

That catalog is full of good discs and great songs that make me, on further reflection, realize they're one the better bands we have these days. More to the point, last night's show proved that on any given night, they may just be the best live band out there. With a mix of roots rock, Springsteen bombast, Philly Soul and punk spirit, they play music that sounds like a lot of different things while all still sounding like Marah.

Neil Young, who seems to have become a focus here of late, takes over the music slot on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" for the next four nights, starting tonight. Young follows in the footsteps of the Strokes, the White Stripes and U2, who all have held similar four-night stands on the show. Let's hope Young follows the example of the White Stripes, who used the slot to both plug a new disc by performing the single and to dip into the corners of the back catalog to unearth some cool music (in their case it was their fiery cover of "Jolene"). Young surely will play "The Painter" tonight, followed by other tracks from Prairie Wind. But one can't help but hope for an incendiary take of "Rockin' in the Free World" or "Powderfinger" later in the week.