Falling Upwards - How We Took to the Air (Richard Holmes, 2013)

Kind of disappointing - the subject matter just isn't interesting enough to me to support all of the detail.  The author runs through the history of ballooning.

I was optimistic because of how interesting and useful I found this work by the same author.  Plenty of similarities in time period and subject matter.  But the earlier book covered a wider range of topics - this book didn't benefit from tighter focus.

The first balloon passengers were pretty amazed at how the world looked from overhead - that's cool because it's rather hard to imagine these days.

Early efforts to use balloons in war - including U.S. Civil War - not terribly effective.

Something I hadn't realized:  balloonists played a key role in maintaining communications between Paris and the rest of France during the German siege of 1871.  Not that it helped France a whole lot. (Victor Hugo heavily involved at this time - he returned from his "exile" once Napoleon III was out of power.)

Author wraps up with a tale of folks seeking to use a balloon to reach the North Pole.  Touching story, good finale to this era.

The Martian (Andy Weir, 2014)

First-time novel by a software engineer (now also a novelist, I guess).

A team of astronauts runs into a bunch of challenges on a Mars mission.  But they are pretty resourceful.  It's pretty interesting throughout - repeated problem-solving exercises.

Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven (John Eliot Gardiner, 2013)

I feel a connection to Bach that is unlike whatever connection I feel to any other musician, or artist.  Quite possibly this is due to the sheer weight of cumulative exposure - my undergraduate piano teachers (and Joseph Henderson, who taught me for a semester during law school) emphasized Bach.  I've read four or five books (including this one) focused on Bach.  I listen to his works incessantly.  His B minor Mass (courtesy Phoenix Chorale) was, I believe, my single favorite concert ever.

So there's that.

This book is uniquely helpful.  The author writes beautifully and knowledgeably . . . but there is a depth here because the author also is a world-renowned musician who has directed Bach's works with pretty much unprecedented historical accuracy, precision, success.

Gardiner gave me a notion of the utter impossibility of JS Bach - the working conditions, the incredible volume of productivity, the sublime quality.  How could this be??

Gardiner gives me the idea that Bach could only have existed at that moment in that place - maybe that's true for all us, but it's true in an incredibly interesting way for Bach.  Born and bred in an old-school Lutheran style in a society still immersed in its agrarian, seasonal-cycle roots - but exposed to (and benefiting from) modernizing social developments and musical elements, including elements outside Germany.

As I've read elsewhere - the notion (foreign to us today) that someone like Bach was essentially a low-paid clerk-type figure, forced to deal with municipal flunkies, indifferent students, etc.  OK I just overstated that a bit - folks like Bach were recognized as unusual talents in their spheres - but overstated just a bit.  The towering figure of the "artist" did not yet exist.

I need to get to Leipzig, Eisenach, Thomaskirche.

It's really all too incredible. What a gift to us courtesy JS Bach, how does this happen?