Xerxes in Full Score Book

I'm giving this five stars even though while reading it I sometimes wanted to crush my own hand with a big rock just to generate some sort of excitement. It sustained me through a difficult period in a foreign country. Studying abroad in England, although it might have been a time to get insanely wasted, was actually when I really started to love classical music history/biography, I kid you not. Elgar is actually a lot more appealing than he seems. He was really nice to his dogs, and he was endearingly whiny. Sample quote: "No one in my whole life has EVER been kind to me."