New music books - recommendations?

Any topics OK, and any styles of music - but it must be a rattling good read! Cheers.

try some random selections from the 33 1/3 collection, many of which are written by the very ILXors that you talk music with every day... :)

haha, i just finished Wynton Marsalis' How Jazz Can Change Your Life, which -- like the man himself -- was at turns interesting and maddening. Wish the dude would get off his "Miles sold out" hobby horse, but oh well ... Still, some cool jazz theory for anyone who's not actually a musician. And decent anecdotes. Dunno, Wynton is all on about how the swing rhythm is inherently BETTER than other rhythms. Like, morally. Or something. Can a rhythm be inherently better than another rhythm?

Let's ask Geir.

drew's '20 jazz funk greats' book from that 33 1/3 series is a treat, you would dig it (if you haven't read it).

Wynton Marsalis = Geir?!

It all makes sense now ... Wait, no it doesn't.

I haven't, haitch, but I'd like to. Cheers.

This is actually a request from the library where I work - the kinds of books they would be after, I think, would be interesting and informative general readers tracing new (last 100 years) musical trends - a typical example would be something like 'The Rest is Noise: A History of 20th Century Music' by Alex Ross. Another good example would be 'Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal' by Robert Walser, or one of the other excellent books on music issued by the Wesleyan press. Or any of the books on 'musicking' books by Christopher Small. But these are just suggestions. It might also be worth mentioning that books with an Australian focus are particularly useful for my organisation.

Good books about music

I think Haruki Murakami has one book about jazz...

thanks curmudgeon - lots of good ones on that thread.

James Sullivan's The Hardest Working Man, on James Brown's 1968 Boston Garden concert after MLK's murder, is essential.