Killer Piks is a monthly review of books, movies, and music by people who are obsessed with books, movies and music. This month features: The Emporor's Last Island: A Journey to St. Helena, The Dish and the Spoon and Ruthie Foster's Let It Burn.

Books

Lacy Simons is the owner and operator of hello hello books, which opened in August 2011 adjacent to Rock City Cafe, in Rockland. She is a reader, a maker, and a collector of fine-point pens and terrible jokes. To find more picks and reads: facebook.com/hellohellobooks Twitter: @hellohellobooks.

The Emperor's Last Island: A Journey to St. Helena

By Julia Blackburn

If you're a sucker for islands and extremely well-written tales of exile, as I am, this contemporary nonfiction classic is for you: Julia Blackburn's The Emperor's Last Island: A Journey to St. Helena.

 Here's what Publishers Weekly said about The Emperor's Last Island when it was published in 1992: "Described by the author as a place 'further away from anywhere than anywhere else in the world,' St. Helena is an island, ten-and-one-half miles long and six miles wide, located in the middle of the South Atlantic, on which Napoleon spent the last six years of his life in exile. British author Blackburn offers an interesting account of Napoleon's difficult existence on this windy, rainy, rat-infested island, as he and his servants strove to maintain the fiction that he remained a powerful emperor. Interwoven with this chronicle, the author presents the history of St. Helena, from its discovery in 1502 by Portuguese explorers through British occupation to 1989, when Blackburn visited St. Helena and retraced Napoleon's steps. Part biography, part travelogue, this is an engaging and unusual narrative."

For store updates, specials, new releases, and ridiculous stuff, follow hello hello on facebook.com/hellohellobooks.

Movies

Tiffany Howard and Jim Dandy co-own Opera House Video, an independent video rental store in downtown Belfast featuring an extensive collection of new releases, foreign films, documentaries, classics and television series. Each takes turns writing the movie review. Find them on Facebook at Opera House Video.

The Dish and the Spoon

Reviewed by Jim Dandy

This is just the kind of indie feel-good love story that I love to love. The setting is a boarded-up off-season beach town on the blustery east coast.
Our leading lady, an emotionally taxed Rose, played by Gretta Gerwig, has just left her unfaithful husband. Angry and out of sorts, she inadvertently hooks up with a wayward British teenager played by Olly Alexander. What follows is a random series of unlikely events and a voyeuristic pleasure cruise through their developing relationship. In a bit of a role reversal it's Olly who says, “You won't hurt me, will you?"

If Gretta's pain fuels the almost non-existant plot, then Olly's Dylanesque hair and waifish charm can surely heal the show. Sometimes, not a lot going on is just the right amount to entertain. The cerebral soundtrack is comforting and many of the scenes were so beautiful, I was tempted to take pictures of my TV.  In fact, so lulled was I by the saccharine antics of these two lost souls filling the void in each others hearts, that I was a little off guard when the other shoe hit the floor.

Not to worry though, the brief sadness that follows is still pretty sweet and should leave you with a smile. This film is time well spent, and as the tag-line goes, "The Dish and The Spoon will run away with your heart!"

Music

Nathaniel "Natty B" Bernier, owner of Wild Rufus Records previously retail and now online, has immersed himself in music for 35 years, hosting several radio shows, deejaying at clubs and parties, writing music reviews and interviewing artists.  He lives on the coast of Maine and continues to live through music.   Find him at: http://www.wildrufus.com or http://wildrufus.blogspot.com/

Artist: Ruthie Foster

Album: Let It Burn

An anticipated release by this reviewer, I was hoping for more, but this album still is very far from disappointing.  The first cut opens with huge voices, pulling me in—it’s the Blind Boys of Alabama with their signature sound beneath Ruthie's amazing voice and the killer pedal steel of Dave Easley.  The variables in this equation are far from formulaic and thus, a stellar blues record has been born.  I love the big Hammond B3 all over this record, seldom heard these days, but my ears enjoyed being enveloped by its warm, rich sound.  Ruthie's powerful voice is almost too much for the music at times, with accompanying musicians kicking it up a notch to keep up.  On her seventh record, she does multiple cover tunes, (plus a handful of originals), and she pulls parts from many of the different tributaries of the huge musical river.  On the Black Keys' "Everlasting Light," she adds her own take to the already phenomenal tune, slowing it down a tad, stripping away the grit and adding a feminine perspective.  Other covers from the likes of June Carter, Pete Seeger and David Crosby also get twists and turns added to them, almost completely making them her own.  (The sax on Seeger's "If I Had a Hammer" is simply delicious!)  A more contemporary blues record, filled with Gospel and slowed-down jams, Ruthie swings really hard and just about knocks it out of the park, but not quite.