Three Beautiful Things 11-12-2026: The Tribulations of Mrs. Blossom, Bats, More Classical Music Education

 1. I don't read many mystery novels or detective stories, but, earlier in the week, I wanted to read something lighter than I usually read and so I purchased Laura Lippman's Murder Takes a Vacation. 

I finished it today and the book perfectly fulfilled my desire for a story that was light, inconsequential, and way outside the world I live in. (After all, most of the story takes place on a cruise.) I gave myself over to the story, gladly surrendered myself to the world Lippman created, and had a fun time finding out why its central character, Mrs. Blossom, was at the center of a criminal enterprise she hardly knew she'd gotten pulled into. 

2. Having finished Laura Lippman's book, I turned my attention to our next Science/Nature book club selection: The Genius Bat. I'm going to try to read this book at the rate of about one chapter a day. The first chapter explore the social habits of bats and entered into an abiding question among people who study animals: Are bats (and other animals) capable of altruism? Great question. And they just might be. 

3. I finished one book. 

I read the first chapter of the other. 

It was early in the evening. 

I decided to spend a few hours on YouTube and elsewhere online learning more about classical music. 

I read an article about Sergei Prokofiev and that article provided a link to a performance I thoroughly enjoyed.

It featured violinist Paul Huang and pianist Michael Steven Brown playing Prokofiev's turbulent and, at times, soothing Sonata No. 1 in F Minor for Violin and Piano. 

I've been wanting to learn more about the inner workings of string quartets, especially the role/function of the second violin, so I listened to some experts talk about this subject on YouTube. 

One of these experts focused on Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 and told me something I didn't know at all: Beethoven and some of his friends had doubts about whether his Ninth Symphony's last movement, a choral movement (a first in symphonic compositions), the "Ode to Joy" movement, actually worked. 

Beethoven had another instrumental movement composed to replace the choral movement with, but he decided to stick with the "Ode to Joy". (Thank God!)

But, Beethoven didn't let that movement go unused. 

It became the last movement of his String Quartet No 15. 

I spent about fifty minutes watching and listening to the Ariel String Quartet of Cincinnati bring this stirring composition to life and now I want to get more familiar with the Ninth Symphony and try to imagine it ending with what is now the end of String Quartet No. 15.