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Over the past week I have repeatedly been listening... with great enthusiasm I might add... to the music of a recent discovery (for me): Charles Koechlin. Koechlin was a French composer (November 27, 1867–December 31, 1950) whose music was quite individual... even eclectic... although he is commonly placed among the French Impressionists. It is with a certain degree of disbelief that I first listened to this composer... and then sought out more and more by him... especially when one considers my ...

It's in the mid-20s outside... snowing and blowing... and I'm sitting in my cozy little library...



the tree is decorated to the hilt and all lit up... the candles are burning... and I'm sipping hot chocolate with whipped cream and nibbling on a few chocolate truffles dusted with coffee. And the music?... some sweet Viennese confections: decadent operetta arias, waltzes, and lieder. Perhaps its ...

Over the holidays I had plenty of time to listen to music sitting in the light of the Christmas tree and the glow of the candle-light. One new disc I've been listening to is Three Ragas by Ravi Shankar, recorded in the late 1950s.



Ravi Shankar was a phenomenal musician... one of the greatest sitar players within the classical Indian tradition. He became well known, for better or worse, through ...

I found myself reading a book that under normal circumstances I never would have even thought to pick up for a couple of reasons. For one the truth is I just don't read a lot of non-fiction, though I do try and altar that from time to time, which brings the 2nd reason, that it should go without saying that when I do read non-fiction it is about a topic of personal interest to me and usually something history related and the book in question happened to be about a subject of which I would not consider ...

As the year is nearly at an end I thought it was about time to post the list of books I've read over the course of the year. There's a lot of them; I'm lucky enough to spend 1 hour 30-40 minutes on the train every week day which is prime reading time. I'll probably make a fairly good start on The Sign of the Four tomorrow, but I doubt I'll finish it. Even I'm not that quick.

I've also been lucky to have read some truly brilliant books this year. There are some which stand out and ...