Reading Envy 155: Music Reading Recommendations with Thomas

Thomas and Jenny huddle up in the music nerd corner of the pub, trading recommendations for books that include music in all the best ways. We start out with a few non-fiction titles then move into novels. You'll also hear about an epic list of books including music, and a few books that didn't do as well as would have liked.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 155: Music Reading Recommendations

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Books discussed:

The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain
The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Chimes by Anna Smaill
Chamber Music by Doris Grumbach
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
Us Conductors by Sean Matthews
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
The Baritone wore Chiffon by Mark Schweizer
The Student Conductor by Robert Ford
Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty
Orfeo by Richard Powers
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
Pastoral by Andre Alexis
Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
White Tears by Hari Kunzru

Books Jenny meant to mention:
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton
Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper
The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe


Other mentions:
Bibliography of musical fiction
A Late Quartet (film)
On Chesil Beach (film)
On Chesil Beach (soundtrack) 
The Ensemble by Aja Gabel
Compass by Mathias Enard
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby


Related Episodes:

Episode 012 - Some Bookers and Some Madness (Orfeo)
Episode 025 - Mule and Plow with guest Jason Roland (Us Conductors)
Episode 044 - Of Survival and Memory with Luke Burrage (The Chimes)
Episode 072 - Books Are My Bag with Sarah K (Do Not Say We Have Nothing)
Episode 085 - An Acquired Taste with Thomas Otto
Episode 086 - The Queen of Bailing with Shawn Mooney (The Gustav Sonata)
Episode 110 - The Accidental Love Episode with Casey Stepaniuk (White Tears)
Episode 144 - For the Fans with Thomas of Hogglestock


Stalk us online:

Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy
Thomas on Twitter
Thomas at his blog, hogglestock

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It took a long time to get to this book. When it was nominated for the Booker, and then for the Giller prize, it still wasn't available for purchase in the USA.  (You can refresh your memory with my rant here.) Edugyan won the Giller prize for Half Blood Blues, and then was also included on the long list for the Orange Prize. I finally tracked a copy down, and I am so glad I did.

Half Blood Blues goes back and forth between 1939 in Berlin, 1940 in Paris, and 1992 in a handful of countries, circling around the world of jazz musicians from the Berlin scene and how their lives were impacted by World War II, particularly Nazi racial politics.

I don't usually gravitate towards war novels, but that is merely the background of the story. The way the author is able to combine dialects from Baltimore to the German-Africans to just the jazz culture - without it being grating - is laudable. More than anything, the characters are imperfect but incredibly likeable, and the ending was amazing.

Plus, it is about jazz in Berlin, which I simply don't know enough about. I would be completely shocked if this didn't end up on the Orange Prize shortlist, with its other accolades as well as my own positive experience.