Category Archives: Grady Harp

Stories of Music (Book 2)

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‘Music is the universal language … it brings people closer together.’ – Ella Fitzgerald

Review by Grady Harp

Now and then along comes a book that simply changes everything. STORIES OF MUSIC, of which this is Volume 2, is that kind of book, though ‘book’ would hardly define this heart work: this is a multimedia project that includes audio and video aspects of the physical, very handsome book that can be held in the lap for musing and with the little miracles of modern technology expand that reading experience spherically. Art, poetry, stories, songs, photography from around the world are gathered as a tribute to the influence of music in our lives.

STORIES OF MUSIC is the creation of Holly E. Tripp, a musician, freelance writer, editor, and marketing consultant based in Denver, Colorado who stepped from the corporate world to respond to her own memories of childhood and stories from her grandmother, realizing the impact music has had in her history. Appreciating that relevance she decided to merge all of her talents to create a multimedia anthology featuring works from more than 40 authors and artists from around the world – a book that now includes poetry, nonfiction, photography, audio, and video presented in a print book with a free companion web edition. She is accompanied by California ‘blue collar’ poet Bill Cushing who has absorbed life across the USA, gaining his education from the University of Central Florida and earning an MFA in writing from Goddard College in Vermont. Bill teaches English at East Los Angeles and Mt San Antonio colleges and lives in Glendale, California. Continue reading →

Improving Mental Health

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‘We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.’ Anaïs Nin

Review by Grady Harp

New York’s Chief Psychiatrist Lloyd I. Sederer, M.D., is Chief Medical Officer of the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH), the nation’s largest state mental health system, an Adjunct Professor at the Columbia/Mailman School of Public Health, and has been Medical Director and Executive Vice President of McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA, a Harvard teaching hospital, and Director of the Division of Clinical Services for the American Psychiatric Association. His contributions to his field and to the community at large have been rewarded by the American Psychiatric Association (Psychiatric Administrator of the Year), Scholar-in-Residence grant by the Rockefeller Foundation and an Exemplary Psychiatrist award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. He has published books for both professional and lay audiences in addition to many articles in medical journals and non-medical publications like TheAtlantic.com, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Commonweal Magazine, and Psychology Today. He is Medical Editor for Mental Health for the Huffington Post and Contributing Writer to US News & World Report. Continue reading →

Land of Hidden Fires

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‘He that lives on hope shall die fasting.’

Review by Grady Harp

Kirk Kjeldsen simply has it! Having worked through the hoops of preparation – an MFA from USC and serving as an assistant professor of cinematic arts at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts – Kirk lived in Shanghai, adapted the poetry of Yarjei Vesaas into a feature film, and has a résumé that reads like an actor’s tryout for heavy movie roles. He now lives Essen,Germany with his family.

But to have all that background and then come to the literary table with a debut novel as polished as TOMORROW CITY suggests that his rightful role may be as an author or a screenwriter. Now with his second novel LAND OF HIDDEN FIRES he is becoming well established as a novelist of the first rank. His use of language is so appropriate and filtered free of extraneous clutter that the reader soon understands that to lose attention for a moment on a page will be like falling off a cliff! Continue reading →

Jesus and Magdalene

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“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the Earth, that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Review by Grady Harp

Portuguese author João Cerqueira, having won a PhD in History of Art from the University of Oporto, happens to be one of the more clever and creative humorists writing today. His novels satirize modern society and use irony and humor to provoke reflection and controversy. Satire is the form of humor that holds people, or society in general, up for examination, and ridicules the follies revealed. Good satire should offer improving examples or at least make us consider choices we often take for granted. In this sense, satire is of huge value to society. While satire can be cruel to the victims it mocks, it should always be funny. Some of the great satirists whose ranks João Cerqueira joins include Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, Jonathan Swift, Günter Grass, Charles Michael Palahniuk, and P. G. Wodehouse – and I’m sure many have been left out of this too brief list. Continue reading →

Stories of Music Volume 1

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Review by Grady Harp

‘Without music, life would be a mistake’ – Friedrich Nietzsche

Now and then along comes a book that simply changes everything. STORIES OF MUSIC, of which this is Volume 1, is that kind of book, though ‘book’ would hardly define this heart work: this is a multimedia project that includes audio and video aspects of the physical, very handsome book that can be held in the lap for musing and with the little miracles of modern technology expand that reading experience spherically. Art, poetry, stories, songs, photography from around the world are gathered as a tribute to the influence of music in our lives.

STORIES OF MUSIC is the creation of Holly E. Tripp, a musician, freelance writer, editor, and marketing consultant based in Denver, Colorado who stepped from the corporate world to respond to her own memories of childhood and stories from her grandmother, realizing the impact music has had in her history. Continue reading →