Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 364 pp, hardcover

There’s a book by Alex Ross that I’d like you to buy—but it’s not this one.

Or perhaps it might be better to say that Listen to This isn’t the first of Ross’s books you should purchase. The American music critic’s debut, The Rest Is Noise, does a remarkable job of making the complex terrain of 20th-century composition accessible and deserves a place in any civilized person’s library.

Listen to This tackles a wider range of musical topics, from Bach to Bjí¶rk, and suffers from a corresponding lack of focus—which is understandable, given that it’s a compilation of articles originally published in the New Yorker, where Ross appears on a regular basis. Within this omnibus format, there’s a lot of typically illuminating writing, but it’s better dipped into than read from cover to cover.

As the author notes in his introduction, “music criticism is a curious and dubious science, its jargon ranging from the wooden (”˜Beethoven’s Fifth begins with three Gs and an E-flat’) to the purple (”˜Beethoven’s Fifth begins with fate knocking at the door’).”

Ross’s genius lies in the way he walks the middle path. He’s studied composition, so he’s capable of providing the kind of structural analysis that can clarify a work’s formal elements, even for the nonmusician. But he gives equal or greater weight to music’s emotional dimension, and he possesses the rare gift of being able to explain exactly why a particular tune, sonata, or symphony matters.

He’s also compelling enough that owning either of his books is likely to result in some expensive indulgences. My shelves are stacked with CDs I discovered through The Rest Is Noise, and now Listen to This has given me further reasons to shop, thanks largely to Ross’s nuanced analysis of Franz Schubert’s “uncommonly immediate” oeuvre. Others may find his writings on Radiohead, John Luther Adams, or Marian Anderson similarly inspirational, so get reading and your 2011 Christmas wish list will write itself.