a) How Music Works
by David Byrne
I got this for Christmas and wasn't really sure whether I would cotton to it, the reviews made it sound like it'd be kind of dry and bland. But I have to say I'm really enjoying it so far -- it has a little of that slightly flat, affected unemotional tone that people are used to Byrne projecting as a performer, but it's also a bit warmer and more human than that and he actually gets into the nuts and bolts of how he came to perform that way. It's almost disillusioning to here him kind of pick apart the origins and motivations behind various aspects of his and Talking Heads' music, but his almost clinically removed approach actually ends up being a good way of reading about this stuff so it doesn't come off like a narcissistic "you had to be there" musician memoir. Some real food for thought about the nature of creativity and the social or financial realities of performing or recording music.

b) Music At The Crossroads: Lives and Legacies of Baltimore Jazz
edited by Mark Osteen and Frank J. Graziano
Stumbled upon this at a bookstore and snapped it up, was published in 2010 by Loyola University and features local writers, many of whom I'm familiar with or a fan of, writing essays and capsule biographies of various jazz legends and cult heroes who spent some or all of their lives in Baltimore. It's fun to get a Baltimore-centric view of Cab Calloway or Billie Holiday but since I'm not a big jazz head a lot of the stories about people Eubie Blake or Chick Webb were just a revelation and have loaded me up with records I now need to hear. Given the number of different writers, not all chapters are created equal, and there are one or two in particular that just come off very cold and academic and focused on the least interesting details, but otherwise the whole thing just radiates with love and dedication, really fun read.

c) Franny and Zooey 
by J.D. Salinger
I had read Catcher In The Rye when I was younger like anyone else and enjoyed it without really feeling too strongly about it, but it was actually my dear old dad who's been going through a bit of a Salinger phase lately and was really urging me to check out some of his other books, so I grabbed this one a while back. I guess this is just a little novella that's linked to some characters in other books I haven't read, but I really enjoyed it, just as these three long, intensely detailed scenes telling a relatively simple story but cramming so much characterization and dialogue and ideas in every page, really gave me a better appreciation for Salinger's talents.

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