If that subject is too narrow for you, try the fourth volume in the Da Capo Best Music Writing (Da Capo) series, edited by Paul Bresnick, which pulls together some of the finest music writing published in 2003. It is rife with typos, but all of the articles are compulsively readable and they cover “rock, pop, jazz, country and more,” as the subtitle informs us.

Ashley Kahn’s book A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album (Viking), a lovingly detailed account of the creation of John Coltrane’s classic album of the same name, is a cause for celebration. Following the same format he used for a book on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, Kahn documents the gestation, birth and life of Coltrane’s signature album.

What is there to say about Glenn Gould that hasn’t already been said? Anyone who is interested in the subject is already familiar with the many mythologies surrounding this gangly, pill-popping agoraphobe who wore winter coats year-round and played the piano with neurotic precision and stunning clarity. Yet Glenn Gould: A Life in Pictures (Doubleday)—filled with rare black-and-white photos from the CBC, the National Library of Canada and Columbia Records, as well as family snapshots—is still a fresh and relevant book.

For the uninitiated, the poetic mysteries of baseball can seem elusive if not downright silly. Diamonds Are Forever: Artists and Writers on Baseball (Chronicle), a print version of the Smithsonian Institution exhibition of the same name, doesn’t set out to answer that unanswerable question: “What is it about baseball?” Instead, it quietly illuminates those fragments and impressions—the feel of a well-worn glove, the smell of rain delay—that constitute the magic of the game.