While my musical tastes have broadened over the years, at the core I’m a 70s rocker. That’s the music I began listening to in my formative, high school years. Do you ever outgrow your musical “first love”? Well, actually, the first album I ever bought was the Carpenters’ “Close to You.” I don’t listen recreationally to Carpenters music anymore…and yet, I perk up when I happen to hear a song from that album.
But at the core, I love “Old Time Rock & Roll,” “Jet Airliner,” “Joy to the World,” “Shambala,” and any of the great Stones classics. That’s been “my” music for 40 years. I can’t imagine out-growing it.
Now let’s extrapolate. When I’m 80 years old…will I still be grooving to “Brown Sugar” and “Proud Mary”? Or will I, at some point, graduate to Hank Sr. classics or showtunes? Can you imagine an 80-year-old, sitting in his wheelchair, wearing earphones attached to an iPod and listening silently to Boston?
And yet…why would that NOT be the case?
I can’t say they keep getting better, because the third book in the series, The White Lioness, was my favorite thus far. But this ranks second, and kept me captivated. The novels are set in Sweden (Mankell is Swedish, and the books are translated from Swedish). I love the way national boundaries mean little, and are easily crossed, in Europe.
