It’s an overly broad term, but essentially “Early Music” refers to Western music from “the beginning” through the sixteenth century (including some artists and genres of the seventeenth). This time period is where I spent most of my time and energy in university, and my honour’s and master’s theses focused on composers...
Rating: 4/5 Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures In The Margin Of Error (New York: Ecco, 2010). This is a book I read sometime last year but just never got around to reviewing. As the title suggests, it’s a book about fallibility. It’s a relatively lengthy book, but the writing style is clear and engaging, and the...
One genre I enjoy for the most part is anime. I’m not hard core or anything, and there’s plenty I don’t like, but there’s quite a bit that I do. My recent Netflix binge has only stoked this even more as I suddenly have access to so many shows I couldn’t access before. The purpose of this post is to mention my three...
Rating: 5/5 I love musicals. I particularly love musicals with strong stories. Adele & I have recently discovered Netflix, and one of the best things about it is the wealth of older movies we can watch for next to nothing. This weekend we sat down and watched two favourites of mine, “Funny Girl” and “Hello, Dolly!”...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (New York: Vintage Classics, 1990). Die Leiden des jungen Werthers [The Sorrows of Young Werther] was published in 1774 and is a quintessential example of early Romanticism and the Sturm und Drang movement. It’s what is called an “epistolary novel”: a novel...
Rating: 5/5 Haim Harari, A View From the Eye of the Storm: Terror and Reason in the Middle East (New York: Regan Books, 2005). Read this book. It will only take a few hours. It is worth every minute.
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress: From This World to That Which Is to Come, ed. John F. Thornton and Susan B. Varenne (New York: Vintage Books, 2004). This is another of those books you encounter tangentially in any study of the arts or humanities but rarely actually sit down and read. This is another book I have...
Rating: 5/5 “Bohnanza” by Rio Grande Games If you’ve known me for long, you know I’m an avid gamer. While I enjoy games in any medium, nothing beats face-to-face, tabletop gaming. (I still think Bridge is the greatest of man’s creations.) And when it comes to face-to-face gaming with a group of non- or semi-gamers,...
Rating: 3/5 Victoria Finlay, Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox (London: Sceptre, 2002). Victoria Finlay is one adventurous woman. From the Australian outback to war-torn Afghanistan, Finlay explores the origins of various colours and how they ended up on canvasses and clothes. It’s not enough for her to simply read...
Rating: 4/5 Daniel Hillis, The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas that Make Computers Work (New York: Basic Books, 1998). Have you ever wondered how a computer actually works? How is it that a wafer of silicon no wider than your thumbnail can do all the things that computers do? How can a device that at it’s most...