Music to Listen to While You Read, Part I

Picture yourself curled up on the couch with a good book and your favorite drink. No interruptions. What music is playing in the background? Some people like to read in silence, but I'm not one of them. The right music helps me become more involved in my book by creating a kind of environmental blanket that envelops me and keeps the world out. I thought I'd share some of my favorite music to read by with you in the hopes that you might share yours with me. If you've ever read Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander series then you know how important music is to the story. Both Captain Aubrey and Stephen Maturin play musical instruments and they try to play together in Aubrey's cabin whenever they can. ESS.A.Y Recordings has put together a trio of cds featuring music mentioned in the novels: Musical Evenings with the Captain, Musical Evenings with the Captain, Volume II, and Musical Evenings in the Captain's Cabin. They feature works by Locatelli, Handel, Mozart, Bach, and Haydn. I love listening to these cds while I'm reading not only the Patrick O'Brian books but any book set in England in the early to mid 1800s (Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, for instance). Another great cd to listen to while reading Patrick O'Brian is Roast Beef of Old England: Traditional Sailor Songs. This collection features songs that the men on board ship would have sung together: "Spanish Ladies", "Roast Beef of Old England", "Heart of Oak, " 24 songs in all. Confession: I love to sing along with this cd while I'm driving to work in the morning, especially "Heart of Oak." Of course, I wait until all the kids have been dropped off first, so I can really belt it out. Check back tomorrow for more music to read by.

Geoff Hunt, Master Painter and O'Brian Cover Artist

This week's cover artist is Geoff Hunt, the master painter behind Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin nautical series. Take a look at the following two covers for a good example of how much impact a cover can make. The image on the left is from the first edition of Master and Commander, and the second image is Geoff Hunt's painting for the same book: To me there is no comparison. I'm no art critic, but I know what I like. And I love Geoff Hunt's covers. Hunt painted the covers of all twenty-one books in the series, and I think they capture the flavor of the books perfectly. I was in a bookstore one day when I stumbled across a stack of Geoff Hunt calendars. I immediately snatched up two of them; one I kept in its cellophane wrapper, the other I cut up and put into picture frames. If you've watched any of my video book reviews you may have caught a glimpse of them on the wall behind me. Here are a couple of pictures of the framed calendar images: Someday I hope to afford actual prints, but for now these framed calendar pages do just fine. If you're interested in learning more about Hunt's work, the following links may be helpful: Many of his paintings are collected in The Marine Art of Geoff Hunt. There is also a dvd of his life and works called Geoff Hunt: Portrait of a Marine Artist Geoff Hunt prints at Amazon.com