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Conversations with Glenn Gould by Jonathan Cott

Since the inception of Rolling Stone, Jonathan Cott has been a contributing editor, and this book came out of interviews he did for that magazine. Highly respected as an interviewer (Jan Morris called him an “incomparable interviewer”), Jonathan has converted many of his in-depth conversations into books. I have read works where he interviews writers of children’s books as well as musicians like John Lennon and Yoko Ono. As I have gotten increasingly interested in the piano, I decided to read this work in which he conversed with Glenn Gould.  Gould does almost all the talking, but Jonathan offers probing prompts which open Gould to new revelations. 

Hearing Gould explain himself and his views is a wild, astonishing trip.  I have listened to him often on YouTube and see what a quirky and brilliant musician he was, but nothing prepares you for his level…

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Musical, an adaptation of Coleridge’s poem by Margaret Gonzalez

I am including my own recent adaptation of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. If you have a group that wants to put on a play for Earth Day next year, I am offering this musical version for your consideration.  I directed it this year, and you will find photos of our production down here in Fort Myers, Florida.  A musical friend and I wrote some tunes, and we used other tunes in the public domain. To help the audience see the relevance of killing an albatross to other forms of environmental destruction I wrote a couple of scenes for an adult and two kids. Though faithful to Coleridge’s words for the most part, I cut out parts of his denouement. Another editorial decision was to divide the ancient mariner into two parts, the…

Lucky by Design, The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want by Judd Kessler

Can you make yourself lucky?  There is so much we can’t control – who our parents are, how talented we are, what country we are born in.  This book shows that in that narrow but all-important area where we have agency, we can learn strategies which help us beat the odds.  If you would like to jump to the front of the line to get a rare entry ticket or stack the cards so that your child has a shot at the college they most want, you can learn effective tactics to turn your luck around.

This book might be viewed as an economics textbook, but the information is conveyed in such a clear and amusing way that it has nothing in common with the tedium you might associate with that field. Examples…

Reasons to Lie by Emily Listfield

When you want to find a cozy spot and take a few hours to lose yourself in reading, there is nothing like a big fat juicy novel. And here it is. For half of this book, we know that there is about to be a murder within this uptown elite private school community, and for the other half we sort through the ample list of likely suspects.  And that isn’t even the juicy part. What is most intriguing is the interaction of three mothers of teens and even more tantalizing is what their taciturn teens are hiding.

Privileged as this world may be, it holds within its homogeneous veneer its own pecking order. Emily Listfield understands the inner workings and shows how easily a less affluent or a less “respectable” family can quickly be skewered. Everyone in this tale has a secret or two. The…

Having read Susan Gilman’s vivid depiction of immigrant poverty and its repercussions in her novel The ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street, I wondered what else she had done.  This hilarious and human memoir makes the experience of growing up in New York come alive.  Middle School at Friends Seminary is a brief chapter in the life of a a writer gifted in remembering the details of her school years in all their confusion and incongruity.  What a kindergartener she was.  Had to wear a tutu.  Had nothing for Show ‘n’ Tell so blurted out that she was changing her name to Rhinestone – no, wait a minute, to Sapphire.  And what an obliging school; they henceforth called her Sapphire. 

Among her potent fantasies was the dream of running into Mick Jagger at a dinner party and catching his eye. This improbable fiction came true. The encounter was not as dreamed,…

When I spent my junior year in Paris, I used to walk about the city on Saturdays with my Guide Michelin.  It was like having an erudite friend who knew all there was to know about the history and architecture of this magnificent city.  “Look up and note the sixteenth-century drainpipe in the form of a gargoyle.” Michael Kimmelman’s book, The Intimate City, offers similar companionship for those exploring another magnificent city, our own New York.

As architectural critic of the Times, Michael got the idea during COVID of taking walks around the city with a succession of “cicerones,” a charming old term for knowledgeable guides.  This book originates in those walks. Among his walking companions are Eric Sanderson, who led the Mannahatta Project, which dove into the ecological complexity of the city, the author Suketa Mehta, who brought an immigrant’s perspective to the exploration of Jackson Heights, and the…

Laura graduated in the late seventies.  While she was a student at Friends, she was a drummer for a group called the Student Teachers that played regularly at CBGB. Her experience in that world is recorded in a book I read and reported about on this site a few years ago.  Now she has collaborated with Liz Lamere, the widow of Suicide’s Alan Vega, on an in-depth biography of Alan, from his childhood as a brilliant kid in Brooklyn to his death. 

His childhood and youth are at odds with the iconoclastic performer he became.   At first, he seemed destined to become a renowned astrophysicist. Then he began to excel in the world of painting and sculpture.  Even as he shone in these divergent areas, there was another hidden identity that awaited discovery. 

The experience of seeing Iggy Pop altered his life.  The performance he witnessed was revolutionary.  Iggy Pop…

Amanda by H S Cross

I’m just guessing, but I contend that at least half of all works of fiction conform to the Shakespearean premise that the course of true love never did run smooth. The impediments to true love are what keep us watching or reading for at least the duration of a play or a novel. If the obstacles are overcome, then we have a comedy of some sort. If not, well we have Romeo and Juliet. So sad. These hindrances often involve an irrational parent, restrictive social norms, big divides of age, background, race, or class, or collective madness as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. How much fun or angst we encounter depends on the inventiveness of the author. In this novel, Amanda, also called Marion, helps the author out by creating her own complications to a beautiful love.

In Amanda, a novel set in post-World War I England, a…

The Aviator and the Showman by Laurie Shapiro ’81

This intensively researched book puts to rest some of the myths surrounding Amelia Earhart and, by virtue of going into every detail of extant data, shows us that this story is of two intertwined lives. Amelia Earhart is a household name, but many of us know little about George Putnam, her husband. He was the showman, the wizard manipulating the legend from behind the curtain. Though many of his contemporaries found him unpleasant, he knew how to play the game of getting publicity for Amelia, and for making her the central woman in the history of aviation.

Amelia was an early feminist. Terribly ambitious, she worked to make a name for herself and to break new records. She wanted to be the female Lindy and indeed was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Her last trip, of course, is…