He added, helpfully: “… an aging hipster. I called my barn-sitter, Alex, to find out what books were sitting there:ĭaniel Gilbert’s “Stumbling on Happiness” (never opened - but I did spill a cocktail on it), “Don Quixote,” Emeril Lagasse’s “Creole Christmas” (for the banana cream pie recipe ), “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson,” Horace’s “Odes,” an essay collection called “Against Everything” (purchased after one November’s daylight saving time switch) and “Barns of New York.”Īfter listing all these, Alex said, “You’re a hipster. But in my barn in the Catskills I have a large, weathered bed table - it could almost be a dining table. In Manhattan, my night stand has been commandeered by a CPAP machine.

3’ (I think) … made it cool to be excited about Beethoven’s birthday,” says the musician Jeremy Denk, whose new memoir is “Every Good Boy Does Fine.”