I ordered it as soon as it was up on Amazon, and now that it's finally arrived, I've set aside all my nightstand and subway reading to dive headlong into Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise. I'd already read the first chapter in a journal somewhere, and I haven't got much further than that, but so far it's as good as anything I've ever read about music (or about any art, frankly). I've said before that Ross is my favorite critic currently writing on any subject; to get a whole book of him, and on the particular subject of 20th-century music, is an embarrassment of riches. An advance blurb from an old L.A. colleague, Alan Rich, is almost unbelievably overstated but it captures more or less how I feel (or at least want to feel) about Ross's book: "This will be the best book on what music is about--really about--that you or I will ever own."
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