📗 Books 2025, 2: Vivaldi and the Number 3 by Ron Butlin
I read about this some four years ago on Jack Deighton’s blog. It sounded interesting enough that I tried to order it via Pages of Hackney. But they told me it was out of print.
I couldn’t even find it on Amazon; no Kindle version. So I left it.
Until just recently, when I had cause to by some second-hand books from World of Books. Something made me think of this one. Quick search, and there it was.
And it’s even weirder and more fun than I imagined from reading Jack’s review. It’s a series of short stories, with some interconnections, about various classical composers (plus some philosophers). But it’s all deeply surreal. You’ll find Beethoven living in present-day Edinburgh, for example.
What’s it all for? I don’t really know. But they’re great little vignettes, easily digestible, and lots of fun.