Laurie Carney, violinist, American String Quartet
I've been reading a pretty diverse selection of things lately - everything from Susan Orleans Rin Tin Tin, Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and The Tipping Point, to Arthur Schesslinger's interviews with Jackie Kennedy. An unbelievable true story is Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, about an athlete who ran in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, joined the army, was shot down over the Pacific, and survived in a raft for almost two months before being captured by the Japanese. Then he lived for almost two years as a prisoner of war! For light reading, I just finished Walter Lord, A Night to Remember, based on interviews with survivors of the Titanic. But I also go back and reread many of Milan Kundera's works that have had recent new translations; my favorite is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I think the best book I've read in the last five years would be The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wrobeleski; it was his first novel and took him 15 years to write. But at the opposite end of the spectrum, I couldn't put down the Steig Larsson trilogy!
Johnny Gandelsman, violinist, Brooklyn Rider, The Knights
Books! God, you know how it is with a kid, you read when you can, so I read on the subway and on tour. The most recent ones are Murakami's IQ84, which I got for my birthday.
Another book I absolutely loved is Julie Orringer's Invisible Bridge. I was in Budapest with Brooklyn Rider, we had a day off so I was wandering around the city. I walked into a gorgeous 1920's style cafe, and sat down at the bar to read (I think I was reading Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union - another incredible book!). There was an older couple sitting next to me, a Hungarian man and an American woman. They told me their daughter lives in Brooklyn. I gave them our cd and invited them to our show the following day. I didn't get a chance to see them at the show, but they left me a book, Invisible Bridge. I always wondered if they were related to the author. It took me a few months to get to the book, but once I started reading it I couldn't put it down. It's an amazing story of love and family set in Budapest and Paris in 1930's.
Charles White’s The Life and Times of Little Richard is absolutely blowing my mind! The guy was doing it before James Brown, Ray Charles, Etta James. Elvis and Buddy Holly were huge fans and covered his songs, selling millions of records. And this is in the mid-50's, with a segregated South, with segregated concert halls. Yet he was so popular that he blurred those lines. Apparently his concert with the The Upsetters was the first concert in history where girls threw their panties on stage, showering the band! The other interesting thing is that he was either gay or bisexual, and it doesn't seem like he was really hiding it. He was so modern, so ahead of his time.
Another book I absolutely loved is Julie Orringer's Invisible Bridge. I was in Budapest with Brooklyn Rider, we had a day off so I was wandering around the city. I walked into a gorgeous 1920's style cafe, and sat down at the bar to read (I think I was reading Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union - another incredible book!). There was an older couple sitting next to me, a Hungarian man and an American woman. They told me their daughter lives in Brooklyn. I gave them our cd and invited them to our show the following day. I didn't get a chance to see them at the show, but they left me a book, Invisible Bridge. I always wondered if they were related to the author. It took me a few months to get to the book, but once I started reading it I couldn't put it down. It's an amazing story of love and family set in Budapest and Paris in 1930's.
Charles White’s The Life and Times of Little Richard is absolutely blowing my mind! The guy was doing it before James Brown, Ray Charles, Etta James. Elvis and Buddy Holly were huge fans and covered his songs, selling millions of records. And this is in the mid-50's, with a segregated South, with segregated concert halls. Yet he was so popular that he blurred those lines. Apparently his concert with the The Upsetters was the first concert in history where girls threw their panties on stage, showering the band! The other interesting thing is that he was either gay or bisexual, and it doesn't seem like he was really hiding it. He was so modern, so ahead of his time.
Rob Moose, violinist and guitarist, Bon Iver
I am a streaky reader at best, but many of my fondest literary memories are associated with travel. A few years ago, while touring with Antony and the Johnsons, I crawled through Proust's In Search of Lost Time, purchasing various volumes in New York and London and savoring the final pages in a public park in Amsterdam. More recently, in Wellington with Bon Iver, I stumbled upon a rather comprehensive used book store and spent an hour aimlessly browsing its wares. I quickly devoured three of my purchases- Run River by Joan Didion, An American Dream by Norman Mailer, and Motel Chronicles by Sam Shepard- during that trip to New Zealand and Australia. I look forward to reading the remaining two, Typee by Herman Melville and As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, on our summer tour of Europe.
John Rutter, composer
On flights, usually I read trash, but lately I’ve been reading about Benjamin Britten, to prepare for a set of BBC radio talks that I’m doing to celebrate the fifty year anniversary of Britten’s War Requiem. I was actually in the boy’s choir that first recorded the War Requiem, under the baton of Benjamin Britten, himself, in 1963. So in the spirit of Britten I’ve been reading Galina, the memoirs of the Russian Soprano Galina Vishnevskaya (who sang in the original recording), Putting The Record Straight, by John Culshaw (who had a close connection to Britten) and Humphrey Carpenter’s Benjamin Britten: A Biography.
Dave Taylor, bass trombonist extraordinaire
I’ve been reading some wonderful books: Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov, and Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut. I’m usually reading a bunch of books at the same time, so I’m also getting into Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad Love Story and the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop.
