Books Worth Reading this Spring

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” 
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons


“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, 
but rather how many can get through to you.” 
― Mortimer J. Adler

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The Inner Game of Music by Barry Green is a little bit crunchy, but packs a punch.  Read it if you want to gather ideas on how to combat performance anxiety or if you're working on your musical interpretations.  The reviews on Amazon offer a great peek into the content.  

How do you work on performing with more confidence?  Are you playing the way you want to play?  Are you making musical choices that you want to make?  In other words, are you asking yourself the tough questions?  Etc....  

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The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron takes you on a step-by-step creativity trail.  It's time-intensive and I think you'll enjoy it more if you use it as part of a weekly book discussion with friends.  

This book offers a lot of ideas for helping you find your artistic voice and/or get yourself out of the dreaded creative slump.  I'm planning on skimming it again this Spring and then revisiting some exercises this summer.  (Disclaimer: She calls it A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.  In general, this means she invites you to take your beliefs and use them as part of your process, but overall, it's pretty low impact on that front.)

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And now for something completely different.....   Jesuit Priests in Space!

I just started reading The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell and hope to finish it up before the end of the Spring Semester.  I'm not sure what to expect, but it got great reviews from my friend David Taylor.  (Check out Number 10 here.)

Anyway, I'm inspired to read something that's a little bit deeper than self-help books.  If you have any recommendations (before the next installment of A Song of Ice and Fire comes out), please send them my way.  :-)

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