I listen to music every day and according to Daniel J. Levitin, a neuroscientist, that just might be keeping me sane and healthy. Levitin takes the reader on a guided tour of the current research into the effects music has on our health. Along the way, Levitin explains how our brains work and what we can do to keep our brains in tip-top condition.

In reading I Heard There Was a Secret Chord I learned how music can contribute to the treatment of a host of ailments, from neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, to cognitive injury, depression, and pain.

Listening to music activates certain areas of the brain, and the aim is to use that increased stimulation to help areas that have been damaged by illness or are malfunctioning to produce depression or other mental problems. 

I found I Heard There Was a Secret Chord fascinating! If you want to learn more about how music can improve your health and your Life, this is the book to read. What kinds of music do you like to listen to? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

A musical species — 1

If I only had a brain : the neuroanatomy of music — 15

Oh, the shark bites : musical memory — 36

Look at me now : attention — 60

Daydream believer : the brain’s “default mode,” introspection, and meditation — 77

Interlude — 95

Music, movement, and movement disorders — 102

Parkinson’s disease — 126

Trauma — 139

Mental health — 156

Memory loss, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and stroke — 168

Pain — 187

Neurodevelopmental disorders — 200

Learning how to fly — 227

Music in everyday life — 250

Fate knocking on your door : précis to a theory of musical meaning — 276

Music medicine, mystery, and possibility — 317

Acknowledgements — 325

Appendix: Types of Music Therapy — 331

Glossary — 335

Notes — 344

Index — 384

After the Buffalo Bills defeated the San Francisco 49ers in a wonderful snow game 35-10, the 10-2 Bills travel to sunny California to take on the 6-6 LA Rams. The Bills are 4½ point favorites. The Bills have clinched the AFC East title and are now playing for a better seating in the Playoffs. The Rams are desperate to make the Playoffs. Different motivations…

How will your favorite NFL team perform today?

Mia Farrow plays Sharon, a recently divorced woman in rural Iowa. Sharon’s never had a roommate before. Patti LuPone plays Robyn, the roommate from New York City, who upends Sharon’s placid Life.

I enjoyed Jen Silverman’s quirky one-act play, The Roommate, with its wit and surprises in a situation of developing rapport between two troubled women from exceedingly different backgrounds. Patti LuPone doesn’t sing in this play, but she’s convincing as a conniving woman with a dark Past. Mia Farrow morphs from a stereotypical housewife…to something much more liberated and dangerous. The ending did not satisfy me, but what came before it did. GRADE: B

I was late to discover the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child. When Tom Cruise brought out Jack Reacher in 2012–based on Child’s 2005 novel One Shot–I read the novel before I saw the movie and was immediately hooked. Jack Reacher is a wandering adventurer with a military past. He’s 6’5″ and 250 pounds of muscle. Cruise took a lot of criticism for “pretending” to have the stature of Reacher.

Usually I read a series in chronological order, but with the Jack Reacher series I skipped around. I found a Jack Reacher novel was perfect for trips: reading in the Airport, reading on the plane. So I saved the Reacher books for travel. On my latest trip to New York City for Thanksgiving, I decided to read Persuader (2003), the seventh Reacher novel. AMAZON Prime Video will be releasing Reacher, Season Three in 2025 which is based on Persuader.

As usual, Reacher finds himself involved in a twisted plot where a figure from his military past looms large in criminal activities in New England. Reacher manages to insert himself into the crime ring by “rescuing” the leader’s son during an attempted kidnaping at the boy’s college.

Persuader shifts from Past to Present as the backstory of Reacher’s current quest is revealed. If you’re looking for a page-turner with compelling action and thrills, pick up a copy of Persuader. I can’t wait to see the AMAZON Prime Video version of the fight between Reacher and a 400 lb. giant! Are you a Jack Reacher fan? GRADE: B+

This new live album presents a performance by the band at the legendary Fillmore East from September of 1969. All four members of the band – David Crosby, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and Neil Young – were involved in this release but it was Stills and Young who actually mixed, edited, and put the album together. While the actual performance had 24 songs, they cut it down to these 17 songs so they would fit onto the double vinyl album. All 17 songs fit on the CD version which I bought and listened to.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s first live LP–1971’s 4 Way Street–was a great album. In 2014 the band released the three-disc 1974 box which was consisted of performances from CSNY’s reunion tour in 1974 that Crosby called “The Doom Tour.”

I’m a big fan of  1974, but this “new” live album from 1969 has a lot of energy with CSNY at the height of their talents. The “Acoustic Set” is good but I prefer the “Electric Set” especially “Wooden Ships.” Are you a CSNY fan? Any favorite song here? GRADE: A

TRACK LIST:

ACOUSTIC SET:

1.    “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”
2.    “Blackbird”
3.    “Helplessly Hoping”
4.    “Guinnevere”
5.    “Lady Of The Island”
6.    “Go Back Home”
7.    “On The Way Home”
8.    “4 + 20”
9.    “Our House”
10.    “I’ve Loved Her So Long”
11.    “You Don’t Have To Cry”

Electric Set:

1.    “Long Time Gone”
2.    “Wooden Ships”
3.    “Bluebird Revisited”
4.    “Sea Of Madness”
5.    “Down By The River”
6.    “Find The Cost Of Freedom”

Back in the 1960s when I started reading Science Fiction constantly, my “Favorite SF Author” changed by the week…depending on what I was reading. One week it was Asimov, the next week it was Heinlein, the next Simak, the next Laumer, etc. But the author I would drop everything to read was Murray Leinster (aka, William Fitzgerald Jenkins). Leinster wrote consistently excellent SF stories and novels.

One of Leinster’s series, the Med Series, captured my interest early on. The Med Series consisted of four books: 1 The Mutant Weapon (1959)
2 This World Is Taboo (1961)
3 Doctor to the Stars (1964)
4 S.O.S. from Three Worlds (1966)

I could have picked any of these wonderful books, but Doctor to the Stars made a big impression on me back in 1964 as a 15-year-old reading addict. For a while, I thought about becoming a doctor. These stories revolve around Calhoun, a stellar adventurer, troubleshooter, and physician.

If you’re in the mood for galactic problem solving with a medical twist, you’ll enjoy these interstellar exploits. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

The Grandfather’s War — 7

Med Ship Man — 75

Tallien Three — 120

Maybe Happy Ending is based on  an original South Korean one-act musical with music composed by Will Aronson and lyrics written by Hue Park, and book written by both Aronson and Park.

The Broadway musical version Diane, Katie, and I saw follows two android helper-bots, Oliver and Claire, who discover each other in a Seoul warehouse for “retired” robots.

Oliver is a Model 3 who misses his owner, James, desperately. Claire is a Model 5 who knows more about the situation than Oliver does. The two helper-bots develop a connection when Claire’s charger and battery run low. Oliver, resistant at first, decides to help Claire. But Oliver’s Wi-Fi chip fails and no replacement parts are being produced to extend “retired” robots’ lives.

Oliver and Claire then have to deal with challenges that test what they believe is possible for themselves, their relationship…and love. Maybe Happy Ending has humor and profundity along with two brilliant actors: Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll think differently about Artificial Intelligence. GRADE: A

Tom Holt (aka, K. J. Parker) works the same side of the magical comedy street that Terry Pratchett did. Several cases at the commercial sorcerers firm of Dawson, Ahriman, and Dawson converge as a deadly asteroid is heading for the Earth in an Extinction Event when it hits.

“When Mr. Teasdale was a young junior trainee at JWW, one of the first jobs he’d been given was tidying up the firms main archive and storage area, generally referred to by the partners as the Abyss and the junior staff as the Caves of Khazard-Dum…. The Abyss certainly provided him with [challenges] but he survived, his left arm grew back eventually and he learned several valuable lessons about self-reliance, ingenuity, and never turning your back on a thermal binder.” (p. 20-21)

Mr. Teasdale has a good heart and is willing to help clients who can’t pay the high rates at Dawson, Ahriman, and Dawson for free. But, Teasdale has a conniving ex-wife named Consuela who works for a rival firm but always has her own ambitious agenda. Despite the imminent Apocalypse, Consuela tricks Mr. Teasdale into revealing a potential magical discovery that would give her a magical university professorship.

“Mr. Dawson was a man of many talents. He could turn water into Chablis and policemen into terrapins. He could wind back the clock, transmute base metal into government bonds, summon spirits form the vasty deep, pull a rabbit out of a hat, conjure up tempests, raise the dead, restore lost youth and adjust the fabric of reality so that his Rolls Royce River Ghost counted as an agricultural vehicle for tax purposes.” (p. 148-149)

Along with Dawson, Mr. Sunshine, Gina, Tiamat the Destroyer, and the shape-shifting Tony Bateman and a cast of quirky characters propel the plot in various surprising directions.If you’re in the mood for some wacky Christmas fun, take a ride with the eight Reindeer of the Apocalypse! GRADE: B+

The 9-2 Buffalo Bills are coming off their Bye Week to take on the visiting 5-6 San Francisco 49ers. The Bills are 7-point favorites.

THE SKINNY is Jim Gaffigan’s 11th stand-up special. The 60-minute TV special begins with Gaffigan making fun of his losing weight…with the help of Mounjaro. Gaffigan then moves on to his problems with being a parent and the confrontations with teenage angst. My favorite routine was Gaffigan’s story of how he and his family acquired a dog during the Pandemic despite his wife’s allergy to dogs.

Diane loves Jim Gaffigan’s humor. I’m a bit more reserved. I find Gaffigan mildly entertaining. His sardonic wit is okay in small doses. You might enjoy this new comedy special if you have HULU. GRADE: B