Read following a major bereavement (a similar event befalls the protagoniste before the story starts) this beautifully written novel helped me to cope

Exasperated by the current activities of major record labels, a number of ensembles, including the London Symphony Orchestra, have decided to put out their own records, and at the kind of price CDs should be selling at too – £4.99 is definitely nearer the mark than £16. The recording is close into the musicians so it sounds like you’re in amongst them – it also means you hear a lot of the conductor, Colin Davis’s vocalisations throughout the piece, especially in the 5th symphony, which is otherwise brilliantly paced. LSO plus Davis is a powerful combination and these highly detailed performances are very moving and reminded me, after a long silence, of how powerfully wonderful the music of Sibelius is.

A brilliant story redolent with academic rivalries, Rabelaisian humour, mysticism and an unexpected gypsy treatment for violins. One of those yarns that’s hard to put down. This is the first of the author’s Cornish Trilogy. Must get around to the other two.

Essentially the lessons in this book lead to a position and understanding of empowerment within an organisation. That’s a greatly overused word and usually means you expect your boss to give you some autonomy that you’re not so keen to pass down to those who work in your own team. But this is not a book about waiting for the CEO to act and provide visions and instructions. It’s about how anyone in an organisation (including the CEO) can bring about change, although in the process there might be some tough and painful paths to follow – or rather, paths to create. The Spanish poet Machado doesn’t figure in this business book (there are no poets cited at all, but there are some poetic thoughts even in the chapter headings – “Build the bridge as you walk on it”; “The tyranny of competence”) and his oft-quoted Poema Caminante seems apt – caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar (wayfarer, there is no path save the one made by your walking). I can’t wait to see if anyone follows!

A cook’s recipe book, but so much more. Mark Bernstein’s blog http://www.markbernstein.org/Mar0601/HoneyfromaWeed.html reminded me today of how fascinating is this account of living off the land in various Mediterranean locations. Part narrative, part cultural discourse, part recipe compilation making use of plants and herbs that grow as weeds in Tuscany, Catalonia the Cyclades and Apulia this is the kind of book you want to dip into time and time again.

The story is set in Seattle in 1999 at the height of the dot.com boom. The livelihoods of two inhabitants, one a Hungarian-born Englishman who hosts a radio show and the other, an illegal Chinese immigrant eager to rise from exploited to exploiter, collide in a visionary tale of fateful coincidences in an alien culture.

Anyone who thinks they know about the major composers in classical music should dip into this collection of Borgesian short stories reflecting on unusual, sometimes absurd and always entertaining instances in their lives.

Highly critical of the state in which southern England now finds itself – overcrowded, self-engaged, superficial, undifferentiated – Iain Sinclair takes another of his revealing walks, this time in the footsteps of the 19th century poet John Clare and also traces family connections with the Clare family. Other literary connections emerge – Byron, Shelley, Keats, Joyce (and Joyce’s daughter Lucia). The thin line between madness and sanity is ever-present.

Back in 1971 a friend brought this album round. At the time I was into Bartok and Stockhausen and only inqisitive about jazz but the opening track ‘I have a dream’ (Tribute to Martin Luther King) made me sit up and listen: the recording of a jazz nonet made by Rudy Van Gelder to sound orchestral, the mournful alto flute, the scoring and close harmony with flashes of Ravel, Ellington and Gil Evans but in a new guise, the exquisite solos by Hancock, Coles and Henderson. This track accompanied my first year at university, bewildering or annoying other music students. I just rediscovered it on i-Tunes and have been playing it endlessly. The rest of the album is so-so, but this track is pure gold.