A couple of weeks ago, I saw a book packed with a cd in the lobby of my apartment building. The title of the book is Too Far, and that of the cd is Dawn Remembers, both of them released in 2011. I haven't read the book yet, but my only comment on the cd is the following: the cd lasts around 45 minutes, but it feels like 5 hours, it's slow and repetitive, and makes me skip the book from my reading list (Mr. Shapero, if you're reading this, don't worry: I will eventually read your book, probably the next time that I'm on morphine in a hospital).
Before writing this post, I did some research about Mr. Shapero and his book (as I always do before writing), and I found that he's a California venture capitalist who writes awesome books and beautiful music in his sparse time -or at least that's what he thinks. He's giving away his books (he has published two so far, with his own money) for free to enable people to see his own work. Or something. If you want to find out more about him, you can check his website and download Too Far and Dawn Remembers to your Ipad for free.
Shapero is not part of the new wave of self-published authors who have benefited from the reduction of market entrance costs to the editorial industry: he has put a lot of his own money to publicize himself and his work. There's something I don't like about that, probably the fact that Shapero thinks that he can buy readers as he can buy copies of his books.
I was given this book & CD at work (there was a lady in the lobby at my school giving them away for free). As someone teaching music composition at undergraduate and graduate levels...whose ex-students are doing pretty well on the international music markets in both mainstream and esoteric composition...this CD is AWFUL! It's a similar sound to a high school student who had heard of something called "the liberation of sound", but has no technique or knowledge to execute it. After the CD, I doubt that I'll read the book. Great paintings, though.
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