Saturday Matinee

Hi everyone, I hope people are doing better than I am! Not only is there a huge three hour oral exam in front of five intimidating professors on Friday (where the future of my PhD degree depends on it), but I got sick on top of that. I should have seen it coming, my friends and coworkers got sick last week and were spreading the germs around. I swore I wouldn’t blog this week, but my blog seemed so quiet lately and I couldn’t resist. So when I found out that I had run out of ingredients for my awesome breakfast drink this morning, I’m blogging instead with a cup of hot pumpkin spice flavored coffee and actively ignoring the stacks of paper around my desk.

I’ve been noticing some cool books coming out lately, and thought I’d direct my readers’ attention to them.

• San Francisco Ballet at Seventy-Five: It’s exciting to be in the area when SFB is having their anniversary. There’s so much hype! So much press! And it’s really hard not to get caught up in the excitement of celebrating the first ballet company in the US even if you’re not a fan, and it’s even more exciting when you’re as big of a fan as I am. Not only have I been receiving great things in the mail, they’ve even come out with a book commemorating their anniversary with a beautiful picture of Yuan Yuan Tan (my unabashed favorite female dancer at SFB) and Damian Smith on the front. In addition, my dance history professor at Stanford, Janice Ross, has written it! She is absolutely amazing and so knowledgeable about anything related to dance – I wish I had gotten more of a chance to talk with her more about what she knows when I had the chance. It was great to hear her familiar voice over the radio on NPR last week. She is the official West Coast correspondent/review for Dance magazine. Anyways, this commemorative book will be a gem – I can’t wait to get my hands on it
• The Rest is Noise: by Alex Ross, the classical music critic for the New Yorker. I’m not the biggest fan of contemporary classical music, but the online hype has definitely piqued my interest and left me wondering what the buzz was all about. The thing that tipped it over the edge was Patty’s recommendation that I don’t have to be a fan of contemporary classical music to enjoy the book, as well as it being placed on the Top 10 Books of the Year by the NY Times (as well as winning awards with being one of the topsellers on Amazon.com and the LA Times). It’s enough to make anyone at least pause to consider getting this. I believe this book also comes with a CD of accompanying music excerpts, but I’m not sure and I’m too lazy to search for it. And hey, it would be a great accomplishment if this book would convince me to even consider ever listening to Schoenberg! That would be worth it.
• Musicophilia: by Oliver Sacks. This book merges two of my interests (and usually two separate compartments in my life) into one – music and neuroscience. Oliver Sacks is a well known neurologist, and in this book, he explores the brain and music. From Publisher’s Weekly: “The tales themselves range from the relatively mundane (a song that gets stuck on a continuing loop in one’s mind) through the uncommon (Tourette’s or Parkinson’s patients whose symptoms are calmed by particular kinds of music) to the outright startling (a man struck by lightning subsequently developed a newfound passion and talent for the concert piano).” I love the fact that Oliver Sacks is a neurologist stuck in a probing artist’s mind; very few neurologists are like him (I lived with one for 20+ years, believe me). When I become a doctor, I never want to lose this sense of wonder as well.

Be sure to read out a recent addition to my site – on the top right of this site, I added a bookmark section of my recent reads, or interesting readings I’ve come across on my daily web surfing. Check out a recent (hilarious) exercise craze, conducterise, or why I’m a dance elitist and so are you (thanks to Tonya for directing me to this last link).

What’s on your reading wish list this year?