What I'm Reading/Listening To
The main book at the moment is Blood and Roses, by Helen Castor. It's an incredible account of the Paston family's determination to hold on to its properties. Ms Castor has done an amazing job of fleshing out real people from the formulaic letters that this family exchanged during the heat of the Wars of the Roses, which I used to think of as rather grand when I was a kid but which I now see as the worst sort of civil breakdown into thuggery. Ms Castor is so dogged about properties that I want to ask if she herself is the child of traumatically dispossessed parents.
And then there's Murder in Amsterdam, Ian Buruma's book about "the limits of tolerance" after the assassination of Theo van Gogh. The book is yet a mystery; I have no idea how I'm going to regard it. Part of me wonders if I'm still going to admire the author when I'm through. These are difficult times.
As for listening, it's two CDs 24/7. Either the original cast album of The Drowsy Chaperone or the collaboration of the groups Sarband and Concerto Köln that Archiv produced as "The Waltz." The first CD is a surprise, because one had given up on the possibility of good Broadway tunes. The Chaperone's tunes are good, not great, but - my Lord - they're GOOD, and you can listen to them over and over. I'm an accident waiting to plumble! (That's a quote?) .
You may think that Blood and Roses is some pretty history book about an old family, but it's as engaging as a novel can be about Topic A: holding on to property. Unsettling as hell.
