Medieval Music of Guillaume Machaut

This week's composer on Spotify is the incomparable Guillaume Machaut. Will be posting as the week goes along.




Winter Reading

It's begun to snow again. Old King Winter was teasing us with the warmer weather of 50 and 60 F. The warm sunny evenings with a slight nip in the air made us all feel that spring was here. Even the crocuses and snowdrops reared their green fingers through the ground and seemed to agree with that sentiment.  Yesterday, it rained and temperatures began to drop. The rain turned to sleet, and sleet turned to snow, and it now lays thick in many inches. It's still winter. We were mistaken.

To make most of this weather I have an eclectic mix of books lined up. I'm making a concerted effort of ploughing through them as if they were snow drifts in the driveway. A mountain of books. 

Running, history, science, markets, criticism, self-help, a memoir, and a classic: a fair and balanced diet. I still have a couple more that I made a note of in San Francisco bookstore last month. As usual, my eyes are bigger than my stomach - the voraciousness in my mind is far larger than the appetite time will really allow. I could spend any length of time in a bookstore and one hopes that they still exist and libraries still carry books in the future. A recent move has been to get rid of 'the damned books' and reclaim the space in libraries. I find it amazing to see some homes have no books at all. I believe that they have lots of space now. 

At this point of time, most of us still have books with pages that you can turn and your fingers can still feel the slight bump of the printed word. Perhaps, it's like an early autumn for books. Some leaves have fallen, but not all. Some branches are bare, but not all. 

And outside it is winter.