I recently had the chance to read Life of a Song: The fascinating stories behind 50 of the worlds best-loved songs. It's a concise collection of fifty Life of a Song articles from the Financial Times. As I rarely have a reason to visit the FT website, and I only occasionally catch the Life of a Song podcast, the book was a great opportunity to catch up on what I'd missed. Regular readers may find nothing new in the book, but for pop fans and die-hard listeners, the short collection is definitely worth a read.

The book consists of fifty articles from the regular Life of a Song column collected into book form. Each article takes on a different, well-loved tune from twentieth century popular music. Songs covered include ‘My Way', ‘Midnight Train to Georgia', ‘1999', ‘La Vie en Rose', and ‘This Land is Your Land'. There are only a few songs in the list that I didn't know off the top of my head, including ‘Song to the Siren', and ‘Rocket 88'. The articles usually include some remarks about the songwriter, often quoting them about their creation. Then they cover the journey from composition to hit recording, and usually mention other interpretations that followed the hit.

Each article appears to be less than 1000 words. As you might expect, that's a lot to cover in that much room. So each article is pretty topical, relating a single anecdote about it, and only touching on the rest. For instance, in the article about ‘Like a Rolling Stone', the author relates the recording process that shaped the final sound.

On take four of the remake, serendipity strikes. Session guitarist Al Kooper, 21, a friend of the band, walks in holding his guitar, hoping to join in. He is deemed surplus to requirements, but Dylan decides he wants an organ in addition to piano, and Kooper volunteers to fill in. He improvises his part, as he would later recall, ‘like a little kid fumbling in the dark for a light switch'. And suddenly the song turns into the tumbling, cascading version that will become the finished article.

There's two pieces of information that you need to know about this book in order to enjoy it.

1. It is a collection of short articles by many contributors.
2. Those writers are almost entirely arts journalists, rather than trained musicians.

This book was written by a lot of authors. I counted fourteen contributors, each of whom appears to be an English journalist. This can lead to the book feeling somewhat disjointed. Each author is comfortable talking about their own domain of the music industry. Some interpret the lyrics, others relate interviews with creators, others pick up on business maneuvers behind the scenes.

In the introduction, David Chael and Jan Dalley write that the book "is not about singers, or stars, or chart success – although of course they come into the story. It is about the music itself". If you are a musician, this may leave you expecting musical analysis, lyrical breakdowns, or at least comparisons to similar songs. The book "is about music" in as much as it tells stories about musicians, but it is strictly an outsiders perspective. There's no illusion that the writers were part of the culture of the song, or involved themselves with the people in the story. A reader shouldn't expect that in a collection such as this.

My favorite article is the one about ‘Midnight Train to Georgia'. That song has so much soul, that it surprised me to learn that the original title, given to the tune by its white songwriter, was ‘Midnight Plane to Houston'.

The soul singer Cissy Houston… decided to record its first cover version… But the title irked. It wasn't the collision of Houstons – singer and subject – that bothered her, but one of authenticity. If she was going to sing this song, she had to feel it. And, she later said, ‘My people are originally from Georgia and they didn't take planes to Houston or anywhere else. They took trains.'

Ultimately, Life of a Song is a great book to read on the way to and from work, or to sit in your book bin next to your favorite chair. It's a book that can be read in lots of small chunks, and each chunk reveals a little bit more about a song than the recording.

Now if you don't mind, I need to catch a plane to Houston.

When I started getting into A Room with a View a few years back, I kept reading it over and over again. In each reading, I would find something new. Something would be changed, revealed, or transmuted into something new. It was fascinating. But there were still things that I didn't understand. Some of the places and artists were obscure. Some of the referenced literature was very obscure.

I started taking notes on the novel. Whenever I came across something that was obscured by distance, time, or education, I would look it up online and produce a little note to myself about it. Eventually, I had enough of these to think, ‘hey, I should share these with other people!'

That's where things got tricky. After all, I don't want to share spurious or incorrect notes. I want to share notes that increase the enjoyment of the book for casual readers and fans. But how can I know if one of my notes is incorrect? How can I be sure that what I'm pointing out isn't very subjective or obvious?

So I thought I should at least read his other novels to get some context. I read his first novel first. Where Angels Fear to Tread is, in most respects, not a great novel. But it does begin to reveal Forster's unique approach to realism. Next I picked up The Longest Journey. That book is truly boring. It was a slog to get through, and I don't know how anyone enjoys it without knowing a lot about Forster's biography.

Then I read The Machine Stops, which is fabulous and unique and ahead of its time. So I thought maybe Forster had a particular gift for short fiction? So I read all of his short fiction that was in collections (which I know now is not all his short fiction). It was excellent, but there wasn't very much of it. So I went back to the novels. I finished with Howard's End, A Passage to India, and Maurice, each of which is a masterpiece in its own way.

Then I went back to my original task. I could finally say something about Forster's most popular book from a position of authority, right?

Well, no. I soon learned that Forster produced even more essays and non-fiction than he produced fiction. I read his guide to Alexandria, and some of his essay collections. I couldn't get through it all, and some of his collections are difficult to acquire these days.

Then I thought I should read a biography. So I read Wendy Moffat's excellent book.

At this point, I'm years away from my original task. I have more or less forgotten that I ever wanted to say anything about Forster and his most famous novel. Still, I've realized that he also wrote a lot of letters, and the selected letters are available in bound collections. I'm duty-bound to read them, right?

I read as much of the letters as I could, but I think you can see the problem. It's really hard to say anything with authority about a writer who produced such a massive volume of words as EM Forster. The novels, essays, non-fiction, lectures, and letters amount to such a vast quantity of work that I would put it up against even the most fecund modern novelists. It's unbelievable.

Then there's the critics, biographers, and academics. I can see how a grad student could get very dis-heartened. How can you hope to add to the vast discourse on such a popular, beloved author?

I don't know if I will ever finish taking notes on A Room with a View (and now Forster's other novels too). All I know at this point is that the journey has become the goal. Reading and studying Forster's work and the work about Forster has become a little hobby of mine. Maybe I won't ever say anything about Forster, but I'll have a lot of fun not saying it!

Forster and Tolkien are not much alike on the surface, but if you peer just a bit deeper, the similarities start popping out.

1. Both served in the First World War

Both served in the war in their own way. Neither wanted to be a soldier. Tolkien was coerced by his relatives to join the army as a matter of honor. Forster knew he wasn't cut out to be a soldier, so he served the Red Cross as a conscientious objector.

Both men were deeply affected by the war. Some people link the war with Forster's cessation in novel writing. Everyone can see the cynicism that runs through A Passage to India that just wasn't as present in the earlier novels. Tolkien wrote primarily about soldiers, at least in The Lord of the Rings. All of the characters serve the war effort, and come back altered.

2. Both mixed fantasy with Englishness

In Tolkien's books, he takes regular English people and puts them into a deep fantasy world. Bilbo Baggins is drafted from his bourgeois, middle class world, into the world of heroes and dragons. In The Lord of the Rings, the four hobbits are transformed from humble country folk to slayers of great beasts.

Forster does the exact opposite. He brings fantasy events into everyday English lives. This is particularly clear in his short stories where English people struggle to deal with fantastical events. Take the mysterious writing on the shaving glass in The Purple Envelope or the posession of a young boy's body in Story of a Panic.

But fantastic events occur in the novels too, such as when Adela Quested and Ronnie hit an animal with their car. The narrator tells us of all the potential ghosts that may be intervening.

3. Both were academics

Tolkien is still remembered as one of the great philologists, and founders of modern linguistics. He studied medieval European literature and languages and applied that knowledge to his fiction. The great mythology of Middle Earth is built upon very similar tales to those Tolkien studied. In fact, the names of the dwarfs in The Hobbit were stolen from an ancient text.

Forster did much the same thing, although at a lesser scale. Forster is remembered for his lectures that became Aspects of the Novel, but he didn't change the academic landscape like Tolkien. Still, he studied classical Greek and Roman mythologies as an undergrad, and populated all his novels with those gods, as in this passage from A Room with a View.

It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master's horses up the stony hill.

I am definitely a book hoarder. I love my books. I love the smell of the paper. I love the sound the spine makes when you open it for the first time. I love the way a bookmark looks when it's peering out from the middle of the book, keeping your spot for you.

It's hard for me to let go of books, but since I live in a relatively small house in California, I have to make a habit of getting rid of books every few months. I usually take them down to a Little Free Library, or to Goodwill.

But I've decided to start blogging about the books I donate, so that I can remember them on the internet, even if they aren't on my bookshelf.

Here are the books I'm saying goodbye to today.

Out of Africa by Isak Dineson

I love the way Isak Dineson writes. Her words ache with empathy and bittersweet longing for things she can never possess. Of course, she's writing about her time as a colonizer, and that throws a disagreeable shade over her work. But her memoir of colonial Africa in the early 20th century is still marvelous and fascinating.

I pulled this copy out of a Little Free Library in my neighborhood, and it wasn't in very good condition when I found it. The cover is battered, and some pages are falling out. Still, I think it will serve a few more readers, so I am taking it back to where I found it.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

This book made me cry at the end. I loved it. My wife gave it to me after she finished it.

I love media that is set during the AIDS crisis. Maybe it's a little dark to admit that, but I just love the gay art scene of the 1980s in New York and London. As pointed out by Rent, there is a romantic pathos about making art and dying for love, and this book captures it so well.

The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith

The Autograph Man is not my favorite book by Zadie Smith, but nothing she writes is bad. I like the way she gives us these windows into subcultures that feel so authentic. In this case, it's a window into the life a Jewish man who buys and sells autographs.

My wife read this book, then passed it on to me.

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

I was gifted this book for Christmas a few years ago. Team of Rivals is truly one of the great books about Abraham Lincoln and The Civil War, and there are thousands upon thousands of books on those topics.

Still, I think this book could have been 150 pages shorter and achieved the same thing. I'm not sure that hundreds of pages about the early lives of Lincoln's cabinet members really informs the story about their decisions during our greatest national crisis. It took me nearly two months to get through this book, but I'd still recommend it to history buffs.

The Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley

I went through a brief love affair with Aubrey Beardsley's work, and it still amazes me to see illustrations produced in the late 19th century that were so influential on later art. Many of Beardsley's illustrations look like they would be more at home in the psychedelic posters of the 1960s San Francisco rock scene. I would love to be able to pick up one of his original prints, but the market is saturated with reproductions and fakes.

I picked this book up for two dollars at an estate sale. I hope it introduces someone else to the brief career of a very influential illustrator.

Criminal Volume 1 by Ed Brubaker

Most comicbook readers will recognize this one. I've enjoyed a lot of Brubaker's work, but this one just didn't pull me in, despite being heavily recommended.