Author Keith Whamond

Don't read my diary when I'm gone, starts "Journals" (Putnam, $29.95), a collection of excerpts from over 20 of Kurt Cobain's surviving journals and diaries. Cobain suddenly contradicts himself in the next line: "OK, I'm going to work now. When you wake up this morning, please read my diary, look through my thoughts, and try and figure me out.

I never watched much baseball after my favorite player, Donny "Baseball" Mattingly, left the sport. I didn't get back into baseball until freshman year, when I learned how powerful a force your favorite team could be. I was coming back from Monday night mass my freshman year (sidenote: I recommend that everyone try to attend one before graduation.

It's not the conventional rags to riches story where the guy gets the girl and the unfathomable wealth and all is right with the world. However, on Detroit's real Eight Mile, the strip of land that separates the black from the white neighborhood, the urban from the suburban, this story is worthy of Disney accolades.

by Keith Whamond By all rights, this should be a good album. Like a cross between an easier-to-listen to version of Weezer and a boy band with guitars, OK Go might seem like the perfect package. They've got guitars, a fairly unique sound, and what has become the most important thing of all: a catchy single.

By Keith Whamond Smooth, simple, haunting, beautiful, Coldplay's sophomore effort, A Rush of Blood to the Head. And with a fair amount to live up to. The band's last album, Parachutes, sold 1.4 million copies, backed by the hits "Yellow" and "Trouble". With all four members, Chris Martin (vocals), Jon Buckland (guitar), Guy Berryman (bass) and Will Champion (drums) still in their early 20s, the band is already being compared to The Smiths, Radiohead, and U2.