Our Current Reading and Listening Favorites

February 19, 2006

Our leisure time is often spent reading and listening to music. Here are our favorite reads and recommendations.

Books

We have gone slightly "ape" over Terry Pratchett. We've pretty much devoured most of his work. Our assessment of his writing? OOOOK!

Our connection with Terry is founded on our love of British Humor, such as the Goon Show. We have a lot of tapes, records, and some books of their fine work.

Continuing in the vein of British Humor, Bob has been a fan of Bill Tidy for years and years. Great Stuff! Bob has a few volumes of the Fosdyke Saga, as well as some older cartoons, and would like more!

Our love of boating got us into reading all of the Patrick O'Brian books concerned with the lives of Aubrey and Maturin. Wonderful reading, fascinating look into life at sea in 1800.

Moving along from humor to outrageous behaviour that ought to be humor, we have the political arena. We regularly read The Wall Street Journal, keeping an eye on the very readable opinions.

Books by:
Peggy Noonan
Ayn Rand
Victor Davis Hanson
Michelle Malkin
David Schippers
John Stossel

Online Columns by:
Walter Williams
Thomas Sowell

And Books About:
revenge effects and unintended consequences
Voodo Science
some REAL American history
more of REAL American history

Bob read a lot of science fiction in the "classical" era. One of the best was a fellow who wrote under the pseudonym:

Cordwainer Smith.

Music

Note that we were season ticket holders of the Maui Symphony Orchestra, before its untimely death. We were spoiled forever on classical music when we lived in the Twin Cities. We were season ticket holders for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, which we believe to be the finest small orchestra in the United States.

First of all, here are some music links , including Bob's long-time fandom with the Grateful Dead.

It's obvious that we like Classical music, from Bach on up. We've especially enjoyed:

Awadagin Pratt
Sarah Chang
Anything by the Canadian Brass
Anything by John Williams

And speaking of the guitar, we are now living in slack-key guitar heaven! Some of our favorites are:

The Reverend Dennis Kamakahi
Ledward Ka'apana
Keola Beamer
Sonny Chillingworth
actually, ANYTHING released by Dancing Cat Records

The number and quality of musicians out here is staggering! Some of our favorites include:

Keali'i Reichel
Brutha Iz

We like Jazz, too, including:

Duke Ellington
Louis Armstrong
Django Reinhart
Sidnet Bechet
Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays
Earl Klugh

and on and on....

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