Music

How to Make Gravy

Paul Kelly
Penguin ISBN 9781926428277
Trade paperback
Price $AU 35.00
Order online | View cart

Paul Kelly's best-selling memoir is now available in paperback. It had its genesis in a series of concerts first staged in 2004: over four nights Paul Kelly performed, in alphabetical order, 100 of his songs from the previous three decades. In the book each of the hundred chapters consists of lyrics followed by a story. Some pieces are confessional, some tell Kelly's personal and family history, some take you on a road tour with the band, some form an idiosyncratic history of popular music, some are like small essays, some stand as a kind of how-to of the songwriter's art - from the point of inspiration to writing, honing, collaborating, performing, recording and reworking. Paul Kelly is a born storyteller, and How to Make Gravy is a long volume that's as tight as a three-piece band.

Musicophilia

Oliver Sachs
Macmillan ISBN 9780330418386
Paperback
Price $AU 25.00
Order online | View cart

Oliver Sacks' compassionate tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we understand our own minds. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians and everyday people - those struck by affliction, unusual talent and even, in one case, by lightning - to show not only that music occupies more areas of the brain than language does, but also that it can calm and organize, torment and heal. Always wise and compellingly readable, these stories alter our conception of who we are and how we function, and show us an essential part of what it is to be human.