It isn’t often, when I choose a book to read, that I like the author to tell me much about what I’m in for as a reader; I want to experience the book first-hand. However, I was delighted to read in Booth’s Overview, “If you are annoyed by books that are in any way polyphonic or contrapuntal, perhaps you should just stop reading now and go write a history of Occam’s razor and the law of parsimony.” I have very little idea what the music terms really mean and had to ask my husband, one of whose hobbies is physics, about Occam’s razor, but finally “translated” the sentence into my own terms to mean, “This book is a glorious mess and was an exciting adventure to write.” That was what I was hoping for when I chose it. I’m currently exploring personal messes and motivation as it applies to self-help, and this book looked like it was going to be very helpful in that exploration.

The author immediately raised my own questions, “Why bother at any stage of life to work for some new skill or know-how instead of dwelling comfortably with skills already mastered? If you can be certain that you’ll never even come close to professional competence, what’s the point?” and proceeded, using his “hobby” of playing in a quartet with his wife, to explore possible answers, at length. It was because of the enormity of the task of finding answers, he explained, that he wrote a book instead of an article or essay.

The book is subtitled “Amateuring and Its Rivals” because there are those who feel one should not pursue activities if one is doomed to be an amateur, but rather, leave the activity to “experts”. Booth covers this point of view and refutes it quite handsomely. There are also rival pleasures that don’t take as much “work” and energy to pursue. It’s harder to learn to really read a book well than it is to watch, television. Booth devotes a chapter to “keeping at it”.

The only aspect of the book I had some trouble with was the use of the study of music for examples and actual framework. I understand the necessity, since music is Booth’s amateur hobby and its study the reason the book came to be written at all, but I’m not that knowledgeable about musical terms (though he thoughtfully includes a music glossary) and had to constantly “translate” his experience into how it applies to my own.

I would have written the book and covered the subject differently, but then, I didn’t write the book at all. I consider writing an amateur pursuit of my own and found this book both encouraging and slightly humiliating. I didn’t get as many ideas as I wanted for “how to” but got an adventure and hints for further exploring to do on my own.

Categories: ClientReviews, MentalHealth, Memoirs

Keywords: composers, musicians, biography, music, hobbies