Reading notes: 'All the Beauty in the World'

It would be an indecency, a stupidity, even a betrayal to find fault with such peaceable, honest work. By Patrick Bringley. It's a memoir of his time working as a security guard in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book is very good, and easy to recommend. Besides its quality as a work memoir, its art criticism is better than most of what I consume. What he says about work I know better rings true and offers new insights. (So, for example, I now have a much better sense not only of why Titian is important but why one would be excited about his work.) It's a New York City book, in the best sense. Don't pay attention to the dust jacket or blurbs. It is the last thing many adult readers would expect, but the first thing many childred would expect: an account of why one would spend twenty thousand hours among great works of art, what that does to one's psyche, and what one learns about the art. It's totally honest but also wholesome and non-cynical. It's shorter than it might seem, and…