Our Current Reading and Listening Favorites

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

Books

Sadly, Terry Pratchett passed away March 12, 2015. He will be greatly missed. Over the years, we went "ape" over Terry Pratchett's writings. We've pretty much devoured most of his work. All we can say now is: OOOOK... [sad orangutan sound]

A master list of Terry Pratchett's Books

Our connection with Terry is founded on our love of British Humor, such as the Goon Show.

Continuing in the vein of British Humor, Bob has been a fan of Bill Tidy for years and years. Great Stuff! Bob has enjoyed reading some of the Fosdyke Saga , as well as collected a few of Tidy's older cartoons.

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, and a fascinating look into life at sea and land in 1800.

Moving along from humor to outrageous behaviour that ought to be humor: there is the political arena. We get a regular chuckle from the Mallard Fillmore comic strip. Absurd political behavior is not pointed out by the mainstream any more, but is more clearly documented on the web. For instance, Ancipient provides links to various opinion items.

We also read books by:

Victor Davis Hanson
Ayn Rand
Investigative Reporters [from the New York Times, no less]

Online Columns and Opinions by:

Don Boudreaux
Mark Perry
Hillsdale College Imprimis
Various Europeans
Walter Williams
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
Add a Comment to ANY Webpage [note content warning]
Opinions from Everyone [note content warning]

And Books On Such Subjects As:

Why we will never run out of energy, and saving fuel doesn't help...
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.

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:

The cello mastery of Mischa Maisky
Anything by the Canadian Brass
Anything by John Williams

And speaking of the guitar, we lived on Maui for 10 years, a slack-key guitar heaven! Some of our favorites are:

Dennis Kamakahi [deceased 2014] Photos we took in 2007 of Dennis and David (During a father and son concert).
Ledward Ka'apana
Keola Beamer
Sonny Chillingworth
actually, ANYTHING released by Dancing Cat Records

The number and quality of musicians in the Hawaiian Islands is staggering! Some of our favorites include:

Keali'i Reichel
Brutha Iz

The Cazimero Brothers created a remarkable opus of Hawaiian songs for 40 years. All of their CD's are still available "in print". Sadly, brother Roland Cazimero performed for the last time in 2014, and passed away in 2017. The remaining brother, Robert Cazimero continues to perform, we are told.

We like Jazz, too, including:

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

and on and on....