The Voice – Encore/Russell Watson (2002) I love this album! Watson is by turns a Rod Stewartesque pop singer and then an Andrea Bocelli-like classical artist. This album showcases both styles nicely and an added bonus is his rendition of Diane Warren’s “Where My Heart Will Take Me” from my brother’s favorite show, Star Trek Enterprise.

Track Listing:
1 Nabucco: Va, pensiero
2 Volare (Nel blu, dipinto di blu)
3 Is Nothing Sacred
4 The Prayer
5 ‘O Sole Mio
6 Ave Maria
7 Mattinata
8 I Just Don’t Know How I Got By
9 You Are so Beautiful
10 West Side Story: Somewhere
11 La Boheme: Che gelida manina (Act 1)
12 Tosca: E lucevan le stelle (Act 3)
13 The Magic of Love
14 Bohemian Rhapsody
15 Aida: Celeste Aida (Act 1)
16 Where My Heart Will Take Me (Theme from “Enterprise”)

High Country Bride by Linda Lael Miller
Emmaline decides in a moment of boredom to put on one of her Aunt Becky’s fancy dresses and mingle with the guests in Becky’s brothel. She’s tired of being prim and proper and is excited to catch a cowboy’s eyes. Once Holt figures out she is out of her league and too drunk to care, he puts Emmaliner in bed to keep her from the rest of the customers and because he feels sorry for a girl he assumes is desperate for funds, leaves a stack of gold coins on the nightstand. Emmaline wakes up the next morning and assumes the worst considering she’s stripped to her unmentionables and money was left behind. Aunt Becky gets the same impression and Emmaline decides to escape the humiliation and wrath of her aunt by following up on an ad in the Kansas City newspaper asking for brides to go out west. Meanwhile back on the ranch, the Triple M ranch in wild Arizona that is, 75 year old Angus McKettrick is tired of waiting for his three sons to quit carousing, womanizing and playing cards. He announces that instead of dividing up his estate three ways, he’s going to give it all to the first son to marry and produce a child. Rafe, the oldest, immediately sends off for a mail order bride while the other two devise their own plans. Despite the fact that Emmaline was bought and paid for, she is discouraged that her new husband isn’t concerned with romance and looks on their marriage as a business partnership. She decides to make it work, besides, she thinks she might already be pregnant by that cowboy from back home. Their relationship lurches along, and they seem to be making headway when a new cowboy arrives in town. It seems Emmaline isn’t the only person on the Triple M with a secret past, old Angus plum forgot that he left his son from a first marriage with the baby’s mother’s family after she got sick and died. Holt has come to decide if the McKettricks deserve to be part of his family and is shocked to see that little hussy from Kansas married to his half brother just months after he left her at the brothel. On top of that, Emmaline’s Aunt Becky sells off the brothel and moves to Indian Rock to make sure her precious girl is okay. It takes some dire circumstances, but Miller pulls the McKettrick clan together in the end for a real wedding for Rafe and Emmaline. One of Miller’s talents is painting the picture of a place and the Arizona of that time and space is magnificent and wild.

Now that the Memorial Day weekend sales have come and gone, we’ve moved (in our state at least) into the next season. Yes, I’m talking about The Construction Zone! From now until Labor Day, worker bees will tear up good roads to repave them (ignoring the ones with potholes), repaint one or two of Seattle’s major bridges—further tying up traffic, and our apartment complex will send around flyers declaring that all items must be removed from our patios so they can repaint the building which they won’t do until August (thus eliminating our ability to plant our hanging baskets until aster and chrysanthemum season). They will reroof a building or three, making it impossible to hear each other over the roar of machinery and pounding of hammers, and smell up our environment so that we’ll be forced to keep our windows closed during the only warm months available (necessitating the use of fans to move the air since we can’t take advantage of natural breezes). And why is it that even with gas nearly $4 a gallon that the landscape crew power mows the barely visible lawn each week and then uses a gas powered leaf blower to move the detritus from one spot to another?

I long for the quiet summer days in the countryside of my youth where the only sounds were kids playing, push lawn mowers cutting, rakes sweeping, and dogs barking at pesky door-to-door salesmen and evangelists. Well, maybe those days weren’t so idyllic after all. I think I’m in the mood for some lemonade or iced tea.

The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason

I have just read one of the most interesting novels so far. The 62nd book I’ve read this year is the kind I will remember and chew on for years to come. It was macho in the way of “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Remarque and quirky like Amelie Nothomb’s “The Book of Proper Names” and lyrical like Irène Némirovsky’s “Suite Française.” “The Piano Tuner” by Daniel Mason was short and sweet and said so much.

The most interesting aspect of this novel to me is that Daniel Mason wrote this after spending two years in the jungles of Myanmar (Burma) studying malaria and before beginning medical school in San Francisco. The impetus was hearing a piano playing somewhere on the shores of the Salween River as he made his way by boat.

“The Piano Tuner” is set in Burma at the end of the 1800’s when Britain was in its colonization phase and prior to having control of the whole country, especially the southern Shan states. A Major-Surgeon by the name of Anthony Carroll (reminiscent of Antonio Correlli perhaps?) has set up a clinic in the only British fort in the area and appears to be brokering peace in a non-military fashion that the rest of the army either loves (soldiers) or hates (officers). One of his tools for peace is music (oh dear, this sounds like about four other war novels I’ve read lately) and specifically, piano music. He’s finagled an Erard grand piano into his jungle outpost and now has demanded that the Army supply him with a piano tuner. The finest Erard piano tuner in London is Edgar Drake.

Mr. Drake is commissioned by the army to travel by steamer and train, train and steamer to the jungles of Burma to repair and tune this magnificent instrument and his wife encourages him to go because she sees that this flight out of his own life will add the passion he so desires. The journey is long, arduous and at times perilous and Edgar has never felt more alive. The actual tuning takes relatively little time, but is followed by a bout of malaria, intense scenes of negotiating with the princes in the area for peace, Edgar’s love of a Burmese woman who is already attached to Carroll and then Edgar’s ultimate lack of desire to return home. He is forced to make the return trip when news of an imminent attack on the fort arrives. Unfortunately, Edgar’s wife will never truly know what happens to him since none of the letters he wrote and mailed ever made it out of the country.

“The Piano Tuner” is thoughtful, engaging and thoroughly prone to flights of fancy. The over-arching theme of the story is the fugue, both as a piece of music which Edgar is wont to play and think about; as well as the French origin of the word – flight which Edgar has certainly done by taking flight from his ordinary life. Readers will be enchanted by this exotic fiction based on historical figures and events.

Faking it by Jennifer Crusie

Matilda Goodnight comes from a long line (400+ years) of art forgers and fakers and even now her claim to fame is that she creates wall murals in homes and businesses of masterworks like Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers.” Unfortunately, a collector has taken an interest in work she did as a child under an assumed name and bought a piece she’d been hiding from the public in her family’s art gallery basement. When she attempts to “retrieve” the painting from Clea, the buyer, she encounters Davy, a con man who was bilked out of his money (or mostly his) by Clea’s next to last boyfriend. Davy and Matilda join forces to help each other and he wonders what kind of circus he’s joined as a colorful cast of characters hustle and bustle through the art gallery and the apartments above the store. Hilarity ensues in the midst of trying to figure who is conning whom, and love does indeed bloom like the sunflowers Tilda paints. The only character that kept confusing me was Steve the dog. I kept thinking that he was one of the many young men flitting in and out until and then remembering he was the dog Tilda adopted from her last mural commission. Crusie kept me laughing out loud throughout and I read it straight through in a day. What a hoot!

Shanna and the Hawk/Shanna and the Hawk (2005) One of my fellow book lovers at BookCrossing.com has put out this album and it is fantastic! I especially enjoy “Willingly” and “Ain’t Gonna Give up on Love.” I got this album at emusic.com, and it is available at iTunes as well as other retailers or you can listen at http://www.myspace.com/shannaandthehawk.

Track Listing:
1 When Love Is Gone
2 Married On the Moon
3 Ain’t Gonna Give Up On Love
4 Regina
5 Willingly
6 Broken Diesel
7 Done It All Wrong
8 I’m Leaving You
9 Brokendown
10 Expectation

Appassionato/Yo-Yo Ma (2007) I played cello in my youth and Yo-Yo Ma is one of the best musicians, lending his talent to so many genres. He is maybe not recognized as such, but has many times been the driving force behind a movie score—Koyanisqattsi, Memoirs of a Geisha, among others. Give a listen here to “Sonata In A Major for Violin and Piano: IV. Allegretto Poco Mosso”

Track Listing:
1 Going to School (Live Version)
2 Sonata In A Major for Violin and Piano: IV. Allegretto Poco Mosso
3 Three Preludes: II. Andante Con Moto e Poco Rubato
4 The Four Seasons – Violin Concerto in F Minor, Op. 8, No. 4, RV 297 – “Winter”: II. Largo
5 Doce de Coco
6 Concerto No. 1 In G Minor for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 49: II. Largo
7 Cinema Paradiso: Looking for You from Giuseppe Tornatore Suite
8 Carnival of the Animals: The Swan (Chamber Version)
9 Yanzi (Swallow Song)
10 Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra In A Minor, Op. 102: II. Andante
11 Soledad
12 Five Finnish Folk Songs: No. 4 Mikin Pekko
13 First Impressions
14 Song Without Words, Op. 109
15 Gabriel’s Oboe from the Mission (Excerpt)

Cosmo’s Factory/ Creedence Clearwater Revival (1970) My teenage years were nothing without CCR. From the plaintive “Who’ll Stop the Rain” to the rollicking “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” so much good ol’ rock.

Track Listing:
1 Ramble Tamble
2 Before You Accuse Me
3 Travelin’ Band
4 Ooby Dooby
5 Lookin’ Out My Back Door
6 Run Through the Jungle
7 Up Around the Bend
8 My Baby Left Me
9 Who’ll Stop the Rain
10 I Heard It Through the Grapevine
11 Long As I Can See the Light

Gord’s Gold/Gordon Lightfoot (1975) Another trip down memory road. When our family stood at Whitefish Point Lighthouse on the shores of Lake Superior, I could only hear Gordon Lightfoot sing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Since they didn’t see fit to include it on this album, I’d have to recommend “If You Could Read My Mind” as a ‘must hear’ track.

Track Listing:
1 I’m Not Sayin’/Ribbon of Darkness
2 Song for a Winter’s Night
3 Canadian Railroad Trilogy
4 Softly
5 For Lovin’ Me/Did She Mention My Name
6 Steel Rail Blues
7 Wherefore and Why
8 Bitter Green
9 Early Morning Rain
10 Minstrel of the Dawn
11 Sundown
12 Summer Side of Life
13 Rainy Day People
14 Cotton Jenny
15 Don Quixote
16 Circle of Steel
17 Old Dan’s Records
18 If You Could Read My Mind
19 Cold on the Shoulder
20 Carefree Highway

The Diary of Alicia Keys/Alicia Keys (2003) Keys is such a winner! There isn’t a clinker in any of these tracks and I especially like “You Don’t Know My Name”

Track Listing:
1 If I Ain’t Got You
2 Karma
3 You Don’t Know My Name
4 Diary
5 If I Was Your Woman/Walk On By
6 Heartburn
7 When You Really Love Someone
8 Wake Up
9 Dragon Days
10 Harlem’s Nocturne
11 Feeling U, Feeling Me (Interlude)
12 Slow Down
13 Samsonite Man
14 Nobody Not Really (Interlude)
15 So Simple