2025 Readings 25

 Let me make an absolutely "duh" statement, at least for my generation, or at least my portion of my generation, that still loves reading: it's so lovely to give yourself over to reading, putting the bloody phone away, and simply immersing yourself in a great book. Janet and I just returned from a few days down in Manchester, VT, which was a great break. It was mainly designed to be a writing trip, and I did get some writing done (more on that later), but the trip was also designed to give us some unstructured time to get some serious reading done. Plus, naturally, we ended up going to the Northshire Bookstore every day. As I'm certain I've expressed previously, Northshire is the best bookstore in Vermont, by just about a million miles. Technically we were stopping by to hangout in the coffeeshop there and write, which we did, but we also knew full well that we'd end up buying more books, which, of course, we did. I Monday night I picked up James Kaplan's 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool. I immediately delved into the 430 page book, and finished it last night. I guess it's not surprising that I would love it, considering that I absolutely love Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans; essentially, I have solid jazz instincts, but not the most adventurous (I like the idea of Ornette Coleman and appreciate the role that he played in the evolution of jazz, but I'd prefer to not listen to him). Still, to blow through a book of that length, or at least a book of that length (I tend to read much longer books) that quickly, speaks to how good the book was but also about the mood I was in and the environment of our time in Manchester. It's so strange to think of a time when jazz was so central to American culture, and how sad it is that it possesses such a tiny and unappreciated niche today. A lot of the book, naturally, focused on the time around the recording of Kind of Blue, and that was fascinating, but it also went pretty far afield from that. It's so staggering to think that Kind of Blue was recorded in about five hours, and that the six artists who recorded it never played together as a group again. Or, it's amazing to think that Coltrane's A Love Supreme was recorded in less than four hours. Giants walked the earth then. Obviously, the book is highly recommended. On a side note: one of the last things that my Dad admitted to me was that he hated jazz, which, considering my love of it, I think I find more disconcerting than his love of the MAGA movement.