Looking for a good book? You’ve come to the right place. Our latest series, Arts Book Club, takes a sneak peek into what Arts students, faculty, and alumni are reading. Join us weekly for different themes ranging from Arts department heads’ latest literary selections to the best in Children’s Literature.
To kick-start the Arts Book Club, we dove into Dean of Arts Gage Averill’s extensive bookshelf. A renowned ethnomusicologist specializing in Haitian music and Grammy nominee, Dean Averill shares his current summer reads.
Life, Keith Richards
Q: Why did you choose to read this book?
A: Although the Stones were never my favourite rock band, there was no escaping them and I had a grudging respect and fascination for the group and its lead guitarist-composer, Richards.
Richards’ biography is a candid and appealing account, but what most inspires me is his absolute devotion to the music, and especially the blues.
Q: What do you like about the book?
A: His descriptions of learning 5-string open-chord tuning, or of composing the canonical riffs for Stones songs, or of dissecting the early recordings of Bo Diddley or Muddy Waters are written with passion and a lifetime of insight into the music.
Oh, and then there’s the drugs, the run-ins with the law, and the great first-hand accounts of legendary relationships and incidents.
Island Beneath the Sea, Isabel Allende
Q: Why did you choose to read this book?
A: I’m only a handful of chapters into it so far. After finishing Maryse Condé’s Moi, Tituba sorcière, a fanciful reconstruction of a Caribbean slave’s voyage from Barbados to the witch trials of Salem, I thought I’d immerse myself in Allende’s account of a mixed-race woman’s life from colonial Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) to New Orleans.
Last month I presented a series of panels at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on the cultural connections between Haiti and New Orleans, so Allende’s book is a nice capstone to that experience.
The Haitian revolutionary era at the dawn of the 19th century has inspired many authors to set novels and plays in those turbulent times, and I’m interested in seeing what Allende’s brand of magical realism brings to the table.
British Columbia: A Natural History, Richard Cannings and Sydney Cannings
Q: Why did you choose to read this book?
A: When I move to a new region, I like to understand where I’m living by starting with plate tectonics, moving through geology, and eventually to flora and fauna and the history of human habitation. This book is doing it all for me.
