Books I'm reading: 2024

Looking back on 2024 from the perspective of the reading I got done, it's a bit depressing to see that I finished only nine titles – ten if you count the book I'm finishing now, in January 2025, that I started in December (see below). It's tempting to congratulate oneself for reading anything at all these days, knowing that many Americans read their last book in high school or college. Rather than taking comfort in that sad statistic, however, I take some instead from the fact that nearly all the reading I did was substantial. With the exception of a collection of popular essays on engineering-related subjects by Henry Petroski that I took along on my March–April trip to Japan, I read about art history in 2024, and mostly academic writing rather than writing aimed at a broader audience. A lot of it, while worth it, was challenging and slow going. I have several more volumes along the same lines waiting on my bookshelves for 2025. 

That last book was Sea and Sardinia, by D. H. Lawrence (I read the older Penguin paperback edition shown). I had thrown it into my bag on the morning of my departure for Los Angeles for a short trip in early December. I chose it simply because it was small and light. In the end, I read most of it at home, after my return, although, with the two-hour delay to our departure because of fog in LA, I was glad to have had something to make a start on. I have no idea where it came from. I don't remember buying it. It may have been something my father left behind. It's an odd little volume. A travelog, it recounts a short trip from Palermo to Sardinia and back over the course of a few days. The trip is by ferry to Cagliari and from there north up the spine of Sardinia by train and motor coach (brand new in 1921) eventually to the port at Olbia. From Olbia they travel by ferry to the Italian mainland (landing north of Rome). Following a train trip south to Naples, they cross by ferry again from back to Sicily. 

There is much description of the landscape; the dreary, impoverished towns they stay in with filthy inns, indifferent innkeepers, and scarce, unpalatable food; of the peasants, with a great deal of attention paid to the subtle differences in their costumes from region to region; and of the various other characters Lawrence and his companion (whom he refers to as the Queen Bee, or the q-b, for short) encounter along the way. Lawrence and the q-b don't seem to be enjoying themselves very much and one wonders what prompted the trip in the middle of winter. Vague wanderlust is the excuse given. That said, Sea and Sardinia is interesting for the glimpse it gives of Sardinia 100 years ago, not long after the end of the First World War. 

Music I'm listening to: James Gaffigan and Ray Chen with the San Francisco Symphony

I attended the January 10 San Francisco Symphony concert, which featured soloist Ray Chen doing the Samuel Barber Violin Concerto and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5. The concert opened with a piece by Missy Mazzoli called Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres). James Gaffigan, formerly an assistant conductor in San Francisco but now active mostly in Europe, was the guest conductor. In retrospect, I think I was coming down with Covid or the flu as I began to feel quite sick the following morning. That had nothing to do with the concert, but last week I didn't have the energy to record any immediate impressions of the concert, which, nevertheless, was quite enjoyable. 

Chen gave a fine performance of the Barber, I thought, despite a little dramatic flourishing of his bow at the end of particularly challenging passages, which seemed unnecessary. I liked Gaffigan's reading of the Prokofiev. That second movement gets me every time.... A real pleasure to hear it live. Chen gave an encore in the form of a portion of one of the Bach solo partitas. 

Dinner afterward was at Brazen Head, a place that I had heard good things about, but the food was disappointing. It's an interesting hole in the wall at the corner of Buchanan and Greenwich streets that is probably better for cocktails and the atmosphere than it is for its rather pedestrian steak-and-potato menu. It was fun to try something different, but I don't imagine I'll be going back soon. I really miss Monsieur Benjamin for after-concert meals.