The ninety-second album: #92 Frank Sinatra - Frank Albert Sinatra And Antonio Carlos Jobim
Old Blue Eyes is back, moving from his show tunes to cover more bossa nova songs as well, starting with the now famous Girl from Ipenima. We've not covered his songs in quite a while and it feels like music has taken over Sinatra's music, but here he's showing more flexibility. He's staying where he's comfortable, but there's a modern twist here that shows him trying to evolve. It won't have set the youth aflame, but probably appealed to older audiences.
For the most part it's all standard, though, and while it sounds incredibly good, there isn't actually much news here. The bossa nova influence changes the music somewhat, but there's not loads that would have been different a decade or two ago. Now it feels a bit boring and stale and while other later singers go in this direction too, it feels like here it's missing some energy that really grabs me. Perhaps it's because Sinatra doesn't swing himself - something like the aforemention Girl from Ipenema feels flatter than it should be. Sensitive, sure, but that's not the emotion you want here. It all doesn't quite correlate, and this year offered better.
The fifty-second book: #46 Evelina - Fanny Burney
Evelina is another epistolary, but this time that's better than before. Fanny Burney is a predecessor of the likes of Jane Austen, forward looking in how women aren't treated as the saintly, perfect beings. Evelina is flawed and is surrounded by people who are as well. Evelina's nearest family - a silversmith with wife, daughters and so on, are the biggest example of this. There's a long section surrounding an opera visit that I loved reading. It just worked that well.
Some of the letters don't feel as well set up, but on the whole, we get an interesting, engaging story with real characters that starts to challenge the standard role of women in society, including the conflict between those that want to go with it and those who want to stay where they are - and what happens there in lower classes than the aristocracy these usually cover.