My good friend Matt Brennan is doing a PhD about music criticism and various other interdisciplinary ways of understanding music in its social contexts.

Apparently, doing a PhD literally means you spend a full year reading a lot of books about things you're interested in. Matt tells me that he keeps asking whether he should be writing essays or something, but his advisors just tell him to go read more books.

So I thought that a good Christmas present for someone who reads books for a living would be a website, so that he might share the love and wisdom that he derives from his metier, the lucky bastard. (Though: from what I hear from other people who have completed or quit PhDs midway, this may not be the case after the year is done.)

In any case, Matt's musings (and possibly music -- he's also a musician) can be found at MattBrennan.ca.