Currents

Have you just finished a book you can’t stop talking about? Is there a CD you’ve been recommending to everyone you know? Want to share your recommendations with Birmingham magazine’s readers? Contact Carla Jean Whitley to learn how you can be included in Currents.”

EDITOR'S CHOICE
Local author and historian Tim Hollis devotes his latest book to Vintage Birmingham Signs (Arcadia Publishing, $19.99). It is a perfect nostaligia piece filled with black and white images of vintage city signs, like Sorrowful Jones’ neon tear-stained used cars sign.

READ
Charleston girls learn some tough life lessons in Girls in Trucks (Little, Brown, $21.99 ), a first novel by a refreshing find, Katie Crouch.
Pulitzer Prize winneJhumpa Lahiri mines the assimiliating lives of Indians in her latest collection of stories Unaccustomed Earth (Knopf, $25).
A tedious, suburban marriage that might not be worth saving and a particularly vexing garage of junk are at the center of Searching for Paradise in Parker, PA (Bantam, $22), a new novel by Kris Radish.
Alice Hoffman is back with a new novel The Third Angel (Shaye Areheart, $25) about sibling rivalry and the darker sides of love and life.
Her grief over the loss of her daughter informs a new memoir by award-winning author in Isabel Allende’s The Sum of Our Days (Harper, $26.95) .
Armageddon in Retrospect (Putnam, $24.95) is a posthumous work by the celebrated Kurt Vonnegut, assembled and introduced by his son, pediatrician and memoirist Mark Vonnegut. The book is a great goodbye to an author, who died last year at age 84, the world is really going to miss. 

What they're reading
Louisa Carlile Jeffries
Copy editor, Southern Progress

"I'm reading Gin Phillips’ The Well and the Mine, a novel that begins with a young girl seeing someone drop a baby into a well. The details about life in Alabama during the Depression and our state’s mining past are fascinating and bring this period of history vividly to life.”


Rev. Dennis Goodwin
Minister to adults, Dawson Memorial Baptist Church
 
“You Were Made for Love by Philip Carlson sounds like a book that could relate to several different areas of life. Actually it is a study of God’s love for the individual. Using illustrations from the scriptures and from real life, Carlson makes that love resound through all the struggles of life. It takes a very difficult topic and applies to everyday situations.”

Listen to this 
T Bone Burnett
Tooth of Crime

 T Bone Burnett has been making music on his own since the 70s, but it’s his production work that has brought him the most fame. He won four Grammy awards for work on the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack, and produced the acclaimed Robert Plant and Alison Krauss collaboration, Raising Sand. Now, Burnett again makes his own mark with Tooth of Crime (Nonesuch). The music was originally crafted for a 1996 revamping of Sam Shepard’s play Tooth of Crime, but you don’t need a back story to appreciate the instantly engaging but mysterious world Burnett creates. - Carla Jean Whitley

My Tunes 
Dan Gurley
Assistant vice president - agency lending,
Grandbridge Real Estate Capital LLC

“a. ‘When the Levee Breaks’ off the album Led Zeppelin IV. Hard driving guitar and percussion. A band ahead of its time! b. Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. I love folk-rock crossovers. c. Audible Sigh by The Vigilantes of Love. Such good songwriting and pure guitar!”

Music Makers
The Dexateens grabbed attention locally by making their latest album, Lost and Found (Skybucket Records), available for free download. But there’s more to this Tuscaloosa-based band than a gimmick: Theirs is Southern rock that needs to be heard.

The Black Angels are at turns dark and engaging, but even when the music is heavy, it’s not oppressive. The band’s latest album, Directions to See a Ghost (Light in the Attic Records), opens with the intense “You on the Run,” but transcends expectations as the album progresses.

Husband and wife songwriters Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken have performed on each other’s solo efforts for years (and will again when they return to WorkPlay on May 4). But they never wrote together until asked, separately, to write for Caedmon’s Call’s last album. Now, the duo has released Ampersand EP, a melding of both their talents and styles. “If Not For You” is the album’s simplest track, but simplicity allows the pair’s vocals and the sweet sentiment to step to the front.

On Serenades and Hand Grenades (King of Hearts Records), Blue Skies for Black Hearts combine catchy, throwback pop tunes with thoughtful lyrics. The album is a carefully-crafted collection, from the upbeat and sunny “A World Without Love” to “Someday There Will CD Better Days,” a poignant but still hopeful song about divorce.

Come Together
We all know about Myspace and Facebook, even though the sites are still most commonly associated with college students and bands. But there are numerous ways to connect on the web, both professionally and socially.

Twitter.com
Twitter is it? Those familiar with facebook might compare twitter to that other site’s status feature. Twitter allows you to pen a 140-character missive about what you’re doing, and anyone following you is notified.
Uses: Check in on your twitter friends via the web, or sign up to update and be updated by twitter on your cell phone. That feature can come in handy for parents tracking what their children are doing or friends planning the evening’s activities.
Privacy settings: I don’t want my whereabouts and goings-on broadcast to just anyone, so my twitter “followers” have to be approved before they can see what I’m up to.

Plaxo.com
What is it? Plaxo started as a web-based address book. When contacts updated their information, it was (and still is) updated in your address book. But now the site offers a number of networking devices, allowing users to create profiles that reflect them socially and professionally.
Uses: Plaxo integrates Myspace, Facebook, Google Reader, Flickr, Blogger, Youtube, Twitter, Amazon wishlists and a number of other applications. That means if I update my Amazon wishlist or add new photos on Flickr, all of my Plaxo contacts can see that when they log into the site. They no longer have to visit each of those sites individually to see what I’m doing.
Privacy settings: You can set different parts of your profile as viewable to friends, family, business contacts or everyone.

LinkedIn.com
What is it? This site serves as a way to connect professionals, though all of them can link you with people in your field. Create a professional profile on LinkedIn, and the site connects you with coworkers, classmates, professional contacts and job listings.
Uses: Select contact settings to indicate how you’d like to use the site—to find career opportunities, offering your expertise to others, serving as a personal reference for others and more. You can also use the site to “meet” and network with people; connect to someone three degrees away from you using an introduction from a common connection.
Privacy settings: Mark your profile as private and it won’t show up on search engines, but you can still establish connections with people you know.