May: Week One

Books Bought:

• The Sounds of Place: Music and the American Cultural Landscape (Denise Von Glahn)

Books Read:

• The Hours (Michael Cunningham)
• Naked (David Sedaris)
• The Red Pony (John Steinbeck)

Dr. Von Glahn's book The Sounds of Place is on my personal required reading list for the summer - I'm writing my master's thesis about a specific composer's connection to the American landscape, and Dr. Von Glahn is my advisor, so I need to know what she says about the topic!

I can't remember why I decided to read The Hours - I've heard of the movie but have never seen it, and I was unaware that the book won the Pulitzer. It's a pretty good book - a quick read but well thought out. I actually only read parts of Naked (another memoir told in short stories) - I didn't like it anywhere near as much as Me Talk Pretty One Day. I guess I was more interested in Sedaris's experiences in Paris than his everyday stories about his childhood/weird things that have happened to him. I read The Red Pony because I had to write an essay about the 1949 film and Aaron Copland's score earlier in the semester - I have to say that I much preferred the story in the adaptation to the four separate episodes that Steinbeck wrote. 

I didn't love any of the three books I read this week - I find it much harder to write about books I feel more ambivalent towards.