Four Short Books

[coalescent]

Making Book is a collection of highly entertaining essays by editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden (whose blog is very good, but frustratingly lacks a full-text RSS feed). They date from the eighties and early nineties. Most are autobiographical anecdotes (e.g. 'God and I', in which Our Heroine is excommunicated by the Mormons), but there are also a couple

Comments

[groolover]

Suggestions for which one I should try after that are welcomed.

I'm sure it would have been high on your list anyway, but you may be interested to know that the Music VSI is really rather good (apart from a few irritations such as misspellings of band names) and is officially recommended by the Open University as preliminary reading for their postgraduate music courses.

[ninebelow]

I think I'm most interested by Free Will becuase its a really obvious and fundamental concept that is hugely problematic.

Kierkegaard is also an intreguing one. Oh, as is Choice Theory.

I've read the Buddhism one a while ago and though its not an area I have any interest in I did find it a good introduction.

[coalescent]

Choice theory looks very interesting. For the philosphers, I keep wondering whether it would be helpful to read the very short introduction to philosophy (all of it) first. :)

[ninebelow]

It probably would be. That way you'd know to steer clear of Wittengeinsten, Schopenhaur, etc.

[coalescent]

I hadn't actually thought of that one--I guess I sort of assumed it would be the music history and theory I'd already covered. But looking at it, it does look interesting, so I'm adding it to the list. Thanks. :)

[groolover]

IIRC it has no theory at all and not very much history. It included quite a few things I hadn't previously known (and I know quite a lot about music!) but its strength was in pointing out links and inferences that should have occurred to me but hadn't. It's also big on the philosophy of it all, and other similarly deep aspects. Excellent for giving one the Big Picture of the state of music today.