BOOKS: The Book of Bob

NEWSWEEK.COM: Bob Dylan is about to publish a remarkably candid, long-awaited memoir. He gave us the first excerpt, and we sat down for an extraordinarily wide-ranging talk.

When I tell Bob Dylan he's the last person I'd have expected to turn autobiographer, he laughs and says, "Yeah, me too." It's not just that he guards his privacy so carefully that he's arranged to meet in a motel room someplace in the Midwest—which is all he'd like us to specify—to talk about his forthcoming book, "Chronicles, Volume One." (Dylan supposedly got in without being spotted, but there's a funny vibe here. Why is our pot of coffee on the house?) His early public persona was built on self-protectively enigmatic statements and artful misdirection, like the yarns he used to tell about being a traveling carny; even Robert Zimmerman's stage name was an invention. And the songs that made Dylan so burdensomely famous—exhibit A, "Like a Rolling Stone," with Miss Lonely, her diplomat and the Siamese cat on his shoulder—seemed to tell his personal truth, and a lot of other people's, by means of surreal evasion. "I'm used to writing songs," he says, "and songs—I can fill 'em up with symbolism and metaphors. When you write a book like this, you gotta tell the truth, and it can't be misinterpreted." He's clearly proud of the book, but he didn't enjoy writing the thing. At all. "Lest we forget, while you're writing, you're not living. What do they call it? Splendid isolation? I don't find it that splendid."

Read the full article in Newsweek here.

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Woman gets 20 months in prison for loud music

USATODAY.COM: A Japanese woman whose loud rock music "inflicted injury" on a neighbor for more than two years will spend the next 20 months in prison.

Miyoko Kawahara, 59, "was accused of causing insomnia and headaches to her next-door neighbor by playing loud dance music almost 24 hours a day on a portable stereo she had pointed at her neighbor's house, 20 feet away," the Associated Press reports from Japan.

The Mainichi newspaper says Kawahara was convicted of attempting "to worsen a 65-year-old neighbor's high blood pressure."

Noting that Kawahara ignored local authorities who ordered her to turn down the music, the judge said Kawahara "still maintains a hostile attitude toward the victim and it is highly likely she will commit the crime again," according to Kyodo news.

She could have been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

BONGORAMA ISTANBUL: 360 Istanbul

FT.COM: Since I was a child, I have always been fascinated by Istanbul's rich history and architecture as well as its exotic and romantic past. When I finally got to go there recently, I found one of Europe's hotspots for food as well. Restaurants driven by a strong economy, combined with an influx of global visitors, were packed out and had very delicious cooking as well.

The restaurant 360 Istanbul is one of those trendy ones filled with a young, smart, beautiful crowd of mainly Turks. I was a bit suspicious when an English banker friend dragged me into a small lift high above Istiklak Caddesi, the heart of Istanbul's commercial centre. After stopping at the sixth floor, we rambled up the stairs to find an upmarket bar/restaurant/club staffed by hip waiters.

Link:
Concierge.com: Istanbul.