Music
Music reviews and other blog posts related to music.
Ngaio Marsh: Off With His Head (Death of a Fool)
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 19 — Community Traditions & Folklore: Read a fairy tale, or folklore story, or books based on either. Marsh’s third (de facto) holiday mystery, though not exactly set on Christmas but on and around Winter Solstice — because here her focus is on creating (with […]
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Holiday Music
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 8 Another multi-page post; as before, one page per task. Task 1: What’s your favorite type of music to listen to during the festive season? Rock? Classical? Opera? Country? Definitely classical. I have Classic FM playing in the background pretty much all year around anyway (when […]
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Edmund Crispin: Swan Song
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE As part of my Detection Club reading project, I am slowly and intermittently making my way through Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen series: not, so far, in publication order, which hasn’t made much of a difference in the books I’ve read to date, though in this particular instance […]
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Festive Tasks: Door 7 – Gifts
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Task 1: Are you a fan of gift giving, or is it a burden? Have you figured out a way to balance the commercialization of the season with the desire for a sense of meaning (whether religious or not)? Tell us about it and, if you want, […]
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May 2021 Reading Recap
Still a lot of work on the back end of the blog, including on my “featured authors” pages (see the right column on the main Literature page and the introduction of my April 2021 recap post). So, contrary to plans, still no new posts in my alphabet blogging series in May. However, the time-consuming back end […]
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Catherynne M. Valente: Space Opera
Catherynne M. Valente wrote Space Opera as a dare, after a publisher (Saga) had said it would accept a novel from her based on the Eurovision Song Contest sight unseen. The novel had been sitting on my TBR pretty much ever since it was published, and what with May being both the month in which […]
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February and March 2021: Reading Recap
Well, go figure. The first quarter of 2021 is already behind us, never mind that I’m still having to remind myself on occasion to write “2021” instead of “2020” … (and we’re even a week into April already, but let that go). Anyway, since I never got around to doing a “February in review” post, […]
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Anne Tyler: Vinegar Girl
Sigh. Well, I have to admit that it’s hard to translate a 16th century play’s spiky, waspish female main character, who at the end of the play seems to make a complete about-face and to submit to a man whom she professes not even to have married for love, into a modern context — and […]
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A Retro Playlist for a First Day of Carnival Party: 1970s-80s Disco & Dance Music
24 Festive Tasks: Door 10 – First Day of Carnival, Task 2: Burn a few calories from the meal above [in Task 1: your First Day of Carnival meal] and have a dance party. Tell us what songs / artists get your toes taping. Let’s build a playlist! Let’s go full on retro and make […]
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Creature Comforts
24 Festive Tasks: Door 9 – World Philosphy Day: Task 3 How do you stay zen / sane over the holidays or in other stressful periods? My only salvation in stressful times: Creature comforts. Lots of them. And BookLikes! 2019 was a hell of a year in virtually every respect, and I don’t mean that […]
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My All-Time Favorite Gifts
24 Festive Tasks: Door 20 – Christmas, Task 4: What was the best Christmas / holiday present you ever received – the one that meant the most to you or gave you the greatest joy? (This can be anything; objects / material gifts as well as something someone did for you, or anything else – […]
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E.T.A. Hoffmann / Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker – as arranged by Septura
E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Nutcracker, narrated by Derek Jacobi; with excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s ballet, arranged for brass septet and performed by Septura (= seven members of the brass sections of Britain’s leading orchestras): One of my Christmas gifts for my mom this year: it got here just in time and since she opened the package not realizing […]
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John Julius Norwich: The Twelve Days of Christmas – Set to Music
Nothing like John Julius Norwich’s version of The Twelve Days of Christmas to get into the proper holiday spirit. Music by Adam Saunders (RTE Concert Orchestra, dir. by Gavin Sutherland); narrated by Joanna Lumley and John Julius Norwich. Enjoy! Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/2017549/post
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Sleigh Rides
24 Festive Tasks: Door 16 – St. Lucia’s Day, Task 2: Compile a list of five or more carols, poems, short stories, novels or other pieces of writing that feature sleigh rides. On the minus-twentieth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me … Two Christmas carols, one orchestral dance, one fairy tale, […]
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My Favorite Books with Music as a Plot Element
24 Festive Tasks: Door 21 – Kwanzaa, Task 2: Music is an important part of a Kwanzaa celebration. Which is / are your favorite book(s) where music plays an important role in the plot? In no particular order, books (of all genres, except for artist biographies)* that I love where music plays an important […]
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The Beethoven Festival
24 Festive Tasks: Door 2 – Japanese Culture Day, Task 1: Tell us about a cultural festival or event in the area where you live. My home town, Bonn, in 1770 (i.e., 250 years ago next year) was the birthplace of classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven. While you can’t escape this fact even when just […]
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The Twelve Days of Christmas
24 Festive Tasks: Door 24 – Epiphany, Task 3: Compile a post containing one image for every gift mentioned / added in each new verse of The Twelve Days of Christmas (lyrics here: https://www.41051.com/xmaslyrics/twelvedays.html). [Source] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ John Julius Norwich: Twelve Days of Christmas – A Correspondence 25th December. My dearest darling, That partridge, in that […]
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Birthday Gifts
BD gifts: My mom gave me a ticket for Bonn Opera’s production of Händel’s Xerxes — a simply riveting, tongue in cheek production setting the story in a dictatorial fairy tale puppet theatre (yes, there is such a thing) — and my BFF raided my Ammy wishlist … as well as adding a few things […]
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Beatles Jukebox
Source: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6424929116612595712 Got home earlier tonight after a long day and three hours’ worth of sleep the night before, following on the heels of three equally long days (and similarly short nights); finally caught up with three days’ worth of BookLikes posts and am now dog-tired (again). So I thought before logging off I’d just […]
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From Twitter (for the resident Aficionados): Eurovision Acts as Early Modernists
Hooked up at SAA. Are *that* couple in the reading room. Rare Books, but have no reason to be in there specifically. pic.twitter.com/txBpSEHIOL — Kirsty Rolfe (@avoiding_bears) May 12, 2018 Extremely pure of heart. Works on Shakespeare but doesn’t understand why Shakespeareans can be so mean to one another. Excellent student evaluations. Journals room […]
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