The seventh section of the profile
Contributors who work late into the night to complete the six original sections of a Book Drum profile might be horrified to hear we've introduced a seventh. But don't worry: you don't have to fill this one in. The new Map section of each profile is compiled from the Setting places and any geographical bookmarks. Some of this happens automatically (where there is a Google map), but most of it requires the Book Drum team to enter the latitude/longitude coordinates. So populating these maps is going to be a gradual process. You can see some complete examples here: The Mabinogion The Catcher in the Rye The Age of Innocence. Zoom in on Wales in The Mabinogion to see quite how many places are referenced in the bookmarks! If you'd like us to fast-track the mapping of your profile, you can email us with the lat/long coordinates for your geographic bookmarks. You may even be inspired to add a couple more bookmarks to reflect the different places in the book.
New Facebook Comment System
This seems a good week to acknowledge the supremacy of Facebook in all things social, and we've decided to change the profile comment system to the Facebook model. Every profile index page now has a Facebook comment facility. If you like a profile, or if you have something to say about a book, please leave a comment. Why not start here... Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
The Drum Book Club takes on World Book Night 2012
The next two books to be profiled by the Drum Book Club are both titles chosen for World Book Night on 23 April. First up, for the US WBN, is Bel Canto by Ann Patchett: a truly beautiful tale set in a South American mansion seized by a band of terrorists. Music becomes the only shared language as the assortment of international diplomats, business tycoons and their captors wait months for the siege to reach its lethal climax.
Anyone can add a bookmark, Setting place, review or glossary item. Best of all, your contributions will be credited individually to you. Start here.
There's a lot of opera to relish in this book, but if you're not musically inclined there are plenty of other references to track down. Here are our suggestions for bookmarks:
4 Verdi's Rigoletto
4 Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall
5 Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin
5 early in the second act, when Rigoletto and Gilda sang together
5 Schwarzkopf and Sutherland
5 the genius of Callas
5 Handel's Alcina
6 a recording of Lucia di Lammermoor
6 He saw La Sonnambula three nights in a row
7 her season at La Scala
7 Teatro Colón in Argentina
7 the aria from Rusalka
7 an aria from Partenope
7 If a human soul should dream of me, may he still remember me on awaking!
9 birds of paradise and tightly wrapped canna lilies, banks of lamb's ear and emerald fern
9 blossoms of bougainvillea
14 slipping Madama Butterfly into the CD player
16 and the Olympics (Nagano)
17 a performance of Orfeo ed Euridice
17 looked out over the Acropolis
18 a drink called an Areopagus
21 the elaborately patterned Savonnière carpet
22 bright red river of shingles
32 the rindo flowers that grew near Lake Nagano
33 Wasn't she Tosca? Hadn't she jumped off the back of the Castle Sant' Angelo night after night?
34 Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore
40 I am fascinated by your ruins. [guesses?]
49 taking the Yamanote line into Tokyo station
50 half-empty glasses of pisco sours
50 the encroaching tide of Mormons
51 everything from Die Zauberflöte to Trouble in Tahiti
52 there was no third act for Lulu
53 Carmen gave him dreams
70 a large Matisse painting of pears and peaches in a bowl
72 mostly from Bergman films
75 the sacrament he had most often performed was viaticum
79 Oh Mary We Crown Thee with Flowers Today
81 play Schumann lieder
85 like Joan of Arc before the fire
89 if she was thinking about Brunhilde, if she was wishing for a horse that would take her into the fire
95 a photo button of Che Guevara
95 a cheap scapula of the Sacred Heart
117 images of the blankly staring Hello, Kitty
120 a pocket Venus
126 He started with Chopin's Nocturne opus 9 in E Flat major no 2
134 Schubert's "Die Forelle."
138 listened to her sing Norma
138 while she sang "Casta Diva."
140 Offenbach! Les Contes d'Hoffmann!
145 He read Czeslaw Milosz
147 She prayed to Saint Rose of Lima
148 We all speak Quechua
152 began to sing "O Mio Babbino Caro"
155 The Satie was only music
162 She was Mozart's Susanna. Carmen was the Countess Rosina.
163 the spirit of the water who longs to be a woman
171 the opening lines of "Claire de Lune."
172 reading Pushkin and Turgenev
172 he would look like Tolstoy
174 Opera came to Russia late.
176 The Queen of Spades
186 We should send this young man to Northern Ireland. We should send him to the Gaza Strip.
186 What about a simple coq au vin?
186 a back table at Brasserie Lipp
187 When they moved to the Heart of Darkness
197 cherry blossom season in Kyoto
197 October on Lake Michigan
200 Roxane Coss sang "Ave Maria,"
200 It was a beautiful wall, not unlike what might have surrounded the Mount of Olives
200 Bella crudele
215 For a brief time it was Petrograd
216 We would walk past the Winter Palace
217 Pissarro, Bonnard, van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Cézanne
217 the field where van Gogh painted sunflowers
217 I could tell you the number of haystacks in the field [van Gogh painting]
218 No Seurat
223 Milou, it was called [after Tintin?]
248 reading One Hundred Years of Solitude
249 L'amour est un oiseau rebelle
253 picked out Cole Porter on the piano
263 picked out a piece of Schumann, the simple one that everybody knows
266 the aria from La Wally
288 teach you catechism
297 The sign of the Red Cross, like the very sign of Switzerland
300 Bellini's "Malinconia, Ninfa Gentile,"
307 She sang a line of Tosti
309 Il Barbiere di Siviglia
309 Una Voce Poco Fa
315 come to Lucca for the day
316 the birthplace of Giacomo Puccini