Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield

I think I found this book via my QPB membership. It's more than likely. I seem to find the best books there. Love Is a Mix Tape is probably one of the sweetest, saddest books I have read in a long while.

In LIaMT, Rob Sheffield tells the story of how his love of music blossomed and how that love of music brought him to Renee, the woman he loved, married, and watched die in his arms one night after about 5 years of marriage. He tells the story using each chapter to show why a certain mix tape was important, the songs that were on it, and why it was even made.

I wondered how gimmicky that would feel after a few chapters, but it didn't feel gimmicky at all. Instead I found a love letter to music, the act of loving a song enough to give it to someone else, to add it in between other songs in order to change it, make it your own, and a love letter to the person we meet that we know will change our lives for the better, forever. Not only could I tell that Rob Sheffield loves music, but I could tell that he loves Renee, even now. It was and is a beautiful story. Anyone who has ever made a mix tape knows the magic in it, and Rob brings that magic, the joy the two of them shared, making tapes together, to the reader.

I got through reading maybe the first 2 chapters before I went into Steve's office and said, "This book - you have to read it. It's like it was written for you by you." I can appreciate it, but Steve, as a true music lover, will be able to get it in a way I can't.

Rating: 5 Purrs for telling the story of two people, so different and yet so right for each other. For making a very sad story into one of love and living.

Barber's Adagio for Strings

I was listening to my iPod, The DoctorPod, this morning while getting ready for work and heard the most amazing song. I had to take a moment and just listen while Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings played. It is possibly one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. I swear my heart broke listening to this piece, the way the strings slowly build and descend, build and descend, until you feel like your heart will burst, and the things get quiet, and then build again. Wow.

I like a lot of classical music; a lot of pieces make me really, truly, emotionally respond, but this one, well, it's a cut above. It's up there with Bach's Toccata and Fugue, Air on the G String, Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring. It's up there with Mozart's Moonlight Sonata, Haydn's Emperor's Hymn, Debussy's Clair de Lune, and pretty much any version of Ave Maria. It's just amazing. I can't tell you how much, you need to go listen yourself.