Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian MIssion ****

Book 8 of the Aubrey/Maturin series is a bit short on sea battles -- to the point where a potential dust-up in the middle of the story goes by the board -- but it makes up for the lack by giving a strong sense of the day-to-day (and month-to-month) activities during the Napoleanic Wars. Much of the action takes place during the blockade of Toulon, with rows of ships tacking back and forth across the mouth of the port. O'Brian's descriptions of the political situation are clearer than they have been in previous books, so that the import and complications of the titular mission are palpable.

Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz **** 1/2

Honestly, Thinking in Jazz is overkill for a simple jazz fan like myself. It's a nearly 900-page work of ethnomusicology, filled with music theory and hundreds of pages of music transcriptions. The target audience is academic musicologists and aspiring jazz musicians. The subject is "the infinite art of improvisation."

However, nearly every one of the four hundred pages comprising Parts 1 and 2 ("Cultivating the Soloist's Skills" and "Collective Aspects of Improvisation") yields an insight about what jazz musicians do and how they go about doing it. Berliner provides very specific tips that paint a very vivid portrait of the music and the life of musicians. For example:

Pianists can make a subtle harmonic offering to soloists by presenting a non-chord tone or color tone in the inner voice of a passing chord. To present the same color tone in the upper voice of a sustained chord is a more pronounced offering, one that can produce dissonance if others ignore it.

Berliner explains ideas very clearly, although he does repeat himself quite a bit in standard academic style. He sets out to de-mystify the process of improvising. By identifying all of the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and extraneous factors that go into it, he makes improvisation less mysterious but even more miraculous.

The book deepens my appreciation of the music even as much of it went over my head. The only thing that could have made it better was a companion CD.

The Essential Schopenhauer ****

I've been a fan of Arthur Schopenhauer since I read his Essays and Aphorisms many years ago. While I think that his philosophical system is too simple to be right, I appreciate the basic idea of the will or life-force being identical to the "strange and mysterious" forces of nature and to Kant's noumena. I am also impressed by how seriously he respects and incorporates insights from Eastern and Western religious traditions.

The main attraction of Schopenhauer is his writing style. He writes directly, provides clear examples rather than abstruse terminology, and chooses excellent literary references. I frequently find him funny, even - in fact, especially - when he's expounding on the cruelty and pointlessness of life.

This collection comprises mostly selections from his major work, The World as Will and Representation. It addresses the core of his thought more directly than Essays and Aphorisms did, although I have to say that I found the essays more entertaining and wide-ranging.

The biggest drawback to this collection is a total lack of critical comment. The editor doesn't provide any information about how the selections were chosen, or when they were written, or what's missing in the ellipses that appear within the selections. It's a good thing Schopenhauer is so clear himself.