Read Alikes
Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft
by Simon Houpt
My Life in France
by Julia Child
Book of Lost Books
by Stuart Kelly
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
by Lawrence Wright
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
by Dale Brown
Descent: The Heroic Discovery of the
by Brad Matsen
Cancer Vixen
by Marisa Acocella Marchetto
Epileptic
by Daniel B
The 8:55 to Baghdad: From London to Iraq on the Trail of Agatha Christie
by Andrew Eames
Human cargo
by Caroline Moorehead
The Ode Less Travelled
by Stephen Fry
Queen of the Oddballs
by Hillary Carlip
Poet’s Choice
by Edward Hirsch
Encyclopedia of an ordinary life : volume one
by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
To rule the waves : how the British Navy shaped the modern world
by Arthur Herman
Tab Hunter confidential : the making of a movie star
by Tab Hunter
Truck : a love story
by Michael Perry
The United States of Arugula : how we became a gourmet nation
by David Kamp
River of doubt : Theodore Roosevelt's darkest journey
by Candice Millard
Reading Like a Writer
by Francine Prose
Best American Essays of 2006
by Lauren Slater, guest ed.
One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer
by Nathaniel Fick
War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today
by Max Boot
Shadow of the Bear: Travels in Vanishing Wilderness
by Brian Payton
Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft
by Simon Houpt
No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World’s 14 Highest Peaks
by Ed Viesturs with David Roberts
The Bill from My Father
by Bernard Cooper
The Trouble with Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine
by Paul Collins
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
by Daniel Mendelsohn
The Worst Hard Time
by Timothy Egan
Viva la Repartee: Clever Comebacks & Witty Retorts...
by Mardy Grothe
A Perfect Union : Dolly Madison and the creation of the American nation
by Catherine Allgor
Dead Reckoning : great adventure writing from the golden age of exploration
by Helen Whybrow
Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw : travels in search of Canada
by Will Ferguson
Stuffed : adventures of a restaurant family
by Patricia Volk
The Judgment of Paris
by Ross King
The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial
by Susan Eaton
Fowl Weather
by Bob Tarte
Walt Disney
by Neal Gabler
The House on Boulevard Street: New and Selected Poems
by David Kirby
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
by John Vaillant
The Great War for Civilisation
by Robert Fisk
Barrow’s Boys
by Fergus Fleming
Sunday money : speed, lust, madness, death.
by Jeff MacGregor
The Long Road Home
by Marth Raddatz
The Eiger Obsession
by John Harlin III
Book Description
For me, Daniel J. Levitin’s This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession was one of those books that – when you find it – you realize you’ve been waiting for it all your life. Here are the ABCs of music theory and appreciation, for those of us who know nothing about music, but know what we like. Finally, someone to explain to me why songs written in a major key tend to sound happy, while those in a minor key usually seem hauntingly sad (and what the difference is between a major and minor key, in the first place). Levitin, before he became a neuroscientist (he now runs the Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at McGill University), was a session musician, sound engineer, and record producer, and he puts theory and practice together in a deft and fascinating manner. Beginning with the building blocks of music – tone, pitch, scale, timbre – he proceeds to provide us with answers to all sorts of questions that range from why bits of songs obsessively stick in our heads to whether or not a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it fall makes any sound. This is a book best read slowly, with a piano nearby, and an eclectically stocked music library, so that you have access to all the examples he uses, which span from Wagner to Miles Davis, from Liszt to Ludacris, and everyone in between.
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