"The Making of Jazz" by James Lincoln Collier

This book I found at a quirky record store. It was a great store, with a small section with music books.

It spans the origins of jazz to about the 70s (but it was published in 1978 so it’s not up to the present and can be a little outdated at times). Solid summary of everything happening though.

Throughout the narrative, there are small bios of the major figures and breakdowns of key records They sometimes doesn’t explain everything, and you need to look some stuff up on your own (example: mentions Cannonball Adderly a few times but never says explicitly who he is…) It can also be simplistic sometimes, but there’s a lot of info here so he can’t go in depth on everything.

His music theory could be brushed up a little, for example he fixates on the “blue third” and I’m not sure he fully understands it, and heavily expresses his own opinions about the players instead of remaining more unbiased.

Overall, a pretty good history and summary of a lot of cultural and musical history! Even if it is a little old.

"Romeo and/or Juliet" by Ryan North

Ok so this is a hilarious book. It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure, but based on the story of Romeo and Juliet by Willy Shakes. It’s the same sort of format as North’s earlier adaptation of “Hamlet” called “To Be or Not to Be: That is the Adventure!” from like 2013. In that last book, you could play as either Hamlet or Ophelia and could go on sidequests to fight pirates and cool stuff like that. Here, you can be either Romeo or Juliet (you can also be both at one point), and there’s a bonus Nurse sidequest and an ending involving huge robots to boot!

(Not to be too spoilers-y, but you can also unlock a secret character if you make the right decisions, ooo!)

Like the last book, an illustration goes along with each ending, which was made by an online comic artist, so it’s all very good and hilarious.

And if you don’t feel like being too adventurous, there are heart icons next to the options that Shakespeare picked when he was writing his version of the story, so you don’t have to make too many choices if you don’t want to!

Great new take on an old story, I hope he keeps making these as I love seeing Shakespeare in different contemporary forms like this.

"Midnight in Europe" by Alan Furst

I found this book in a kind of strange way. It was recommended to me by a lady in a cowboy hat giving a presentation on how capitalism is going to become more environmentally friendly in the future. Essentially she said that if you are looking at the state of the world right now and are angry about it, you should check out this book.

I’m really not sure what I was supposed to take away from this. It’s a really very average spy novel about WWII and all that jazz. It’s kind of aggressively average, I wish that the main character was a little less sex-obsessed and that it focused more on what they were doing rather than his exploits with women. And it doesn’t really say what is going on with the war or anything, it follows them on like two missions. I guess it does create a good sense of the fear and paranoia of the age, but not much more than that as the main character seems fine at most points.

So there’s that. I don’t know, I think there are other books that I would recommend more, like The Monuments Men if you are overwhelmed by the current state of things and want to change it.

What do we owe Trump?

Sorry for all the political posts, but I’ve been thinking about this a lot.

In all seriousness, what do we owe Donald Trump, as the new leader of the USA? What do we, as a group of people, owe to those elected into office. Despite the fact that he’s an asshole, he’s still our leader. Fragmenting the country isn’t exactly going to help. I’m not happy about it either, but if we ever want to recover from this then there are priorities that we have to consider.

First of all, respect of democracy. Like it or not, he was elected into office as a result of the people voting. And it’s not a majority of the people, unfortunately, but he’s still the people’s choice. Which is an aspect that we need to recognize and respect. To go against this choice now is to shut down about half of the country, which goes against the principles of democracy even more. There clearly are people who are thrilled that he was elected, and we have to respect that if we want to get anywhere.

Speaking of respect, I know that he respects literally no one, but if we don’t respect him then we are just as bad as his supporters. Like it or not, this is who our president is now. The title does command a little respect, and if you don’t respect him at least respect this country and comply. You don’t have to do it happily, you just have to do it. That’s what bothers me so much about those viral pictures making fun of him. You can criticize him for so many things, but instead you go for his double chin? Come on.

So what do we owe Trump? We owe him a chance, and we owe him some respect. But we also owe it to everyone who was let down in this election to call out his bullshit and unfair policies, but to do so in a way that focuses on his policies and not his appearance. We owe it to the rest of this nation to combat this in a way that does not divide us further but instead tries to unite us. The last thing I want if for the opposition of Trump to get out of hand and turn into what it was trying to oppose.