What I’m Reading This Month
Njal’s Saga: Literature and Leadership
By Stan Pelkey In mid-January, during the last few days my two children were home for winter break, my son and I began to watch the first season of Vikings (Michael Hirst, 2013–2018) on Amazon Prime’s streaming video service. We’d watched The Last Kingdom on BBC America in 2015, and we’re huge fans of Game […]
Read MoreWhat I’ve Been Reading (November)
Cameron Pyke, Benjamin Britten and Russia (Boydell Press, 2016). This exceptionally well-written and well-researched study by Cameron Pyke (Dulwich College and University of London) explores many of the ways Benjamin Britten engaged with Russian composers, musicians, and literature against the backdrop of Anglo-Soviet cultural and political relationships, particularly from the 1930s through the early 1970s. […]
Read MoreWhat I’ve Been Reading (September)
Paul S. Boyer’s American History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2012). I have read a number of books from Oxford’s “Very Short Introduction” series, including Kathryn Kalinak’s on Film Music, John Polkinghorne’s on Quantum Theory, and several on world religions and ethics. Paul Boyer’s American History did not disappoint. It is the perfect […]
Read MoreWhat I’ve Been Reading: A Review of “Meaning and Interpretation of Music in Cinema”
Review: David Neumeyer, Meaning and Interpretation of Music in Cinema (Indiana University Press, 2015). David Neumeyer (University of Texas at Austin) expands his significant contribution to film music studies with this magisterial volume, which is in three parts. In the first part, Neumeyer deploys a series of close readings of numerous film scenes to demonstrate […]
Read MoreWhat I Have Been Reading This Month… and Then Some (December)
I love books. I have been collecting them since my teens, and I have a lot of them now, both at home and in my office at the University. It has gotten expensive to move my library, which is one reason I’m looking forward to putting down roots in Tallahassee. Before our most recent cross-country […]
Read MoreOctober 2015 Reading
Michael Hall’s Music Theatre in Britain 1960-1975 (Boydell Press, 2015).
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