The Roundtable

Organist Ray Manzarek, a founding member of The Doors, died yesterday after a battle with cancer.

If Jim Morrison got the life-after-death rock sainthood that attaches itself to the genre’s fallen frontmen, Ray Manzarek became the torchbearer for the sometimes loved, sometimes despised, always compelling group that was both a pop success and a beguiling circus.

  "Will You Be Sleeping?" - David Wax Museum, playing Mountain Jam on 6/7.

  Wool is by Hugh Howey. In the summer of 2011, Wool was released as a standalone story with little thought that it would ever become so popular. It soon took on a life of its own, and reviewers clamored for more. The next four books were released to satisfy this demand, each one growing in size. Wool 5 is 250 pages long in print. All five books have now been collected in an Omnibus edition, but they were always meant to be read individually.

  In the spring of 2013 the cicadas in the Northeastern United States will yet again emerge from their seventeen-year cycle—the longest gestation period of any animal. Those who experience this great sonic invasion compare their sense of wonder to the arrival of a comet or a solar eclipse. This unending rhythmic cycle is just one unique example of how the pulse and noise of insects has taught humans the meaning of rhythm, from the whirr of a cricket’s wings to this unfathomable and exact seventeen-year beat.