Reading
Finished reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. A masterpiece. 📚
Finished reading: Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth D. Samet. This one was disappointing: too predictable and pedestrian. 📚
Currently reading/listening: Glenn Gould - The Goldberg Variations - The Complete Unreleased Recording Sessions June 1955. An extraordinary experience. 📚 ♫
Currently reading: Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth D. Samet 📚
Finished reading: Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie. What an extraordinary book — so glad I decided to revisit it a decade after I first read it. My head is just buzzing with ideas. 📚
Currently reading: Reinventing Bach by Paul Elie. Read it and loved it when it came out a decade ago, time to return to it. 📚
Finished reading: Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard. It seems wrong somehow to say that this was merely good, but … it moves quickly, and I think the story deserved a deeper treatment – something like the three plays of The Coast of Utopia. 📚
Currently reading: Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard 📚
Finished reading: Reporting World War II: The 75th Anniversary Edition: A Library of America Boxed Set. I wrote about the experience here. 📚
Currently reading: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Revisiting in preparation for class. Still can’t easily believe that I get to teach something so delightful. 📚
Finished reading: Charles Ives by Jan Swafford. A superb biography of one of the most peculiar composers: an ordinary man in almost every respect who simply heard, and couldn’t stop hearing, music that no one else could make sense of. 📚
Currently reading: Charles Ives: A Life with Music by Jan Swafford 📚
Finished reading: Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray on Jazz and Blues by Albert Murray. I read this over a period of months, [ausing to listen to the music Murray talks about. It’s a feast. 📚
Finished reading: The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula K. Le Guin. What a joy to revisit these glorious books. 📚
Finished reading: Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly by Joshua Rivkin. Rivkin is very clear up front that this is not a straightforward biography; but as I read I often found myself longing for a straightforward biography. 📚
Currently reading: Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly by Joshua Rivkin 📚
I’m still reading Reporting World War II: The 75th Anniversary Edition: A Library of America Boxed Set – what an extraordinary anthology of journalism, including photojournalism. The books feature a good chronology of the war and a series of useful maps. It’s a strangely immersive experience. 📚
Currently reading: The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚
Finished reading: The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Sixth Edition by David Thomson. This too I did not read every word of – it’s considerably longer than War and Peace – but it is an invaluable resource and you can find something delightful on almost every page. Thomson has the great gift of often being fascinatingly wrong. 📚
Finished reading: Paul and the Faithfulness of God by N.T. Wright. Didn’t read it all, but read most of it – all that I need. (Most of the rest involves disputes among New Testament critics that this amateur does not need to know about.) 📚