Books About Music

Snooze break at GovBall

I went to GovBall a few weeks ago! It was my first music festival and I had a blast. I saw so many amazing artists - Florence + the Machine, Kate Tempest, Marina and the Diamonds, Angus and Julia Stone, Drake, et cetera. I could go on forever but I'm probably boring you all, so I'll just say that I've had music on the brain since GovBall, and this reading list is a result of that.

1. Elenor and Park by Rainbow Rowell: This cute YA romance is made interesting because it dares to break several conventions of the YA romance genre. For example, the girl is not drop-dead gorgeous. Anyway, the couple, Elenor and Park (durr), connect through music - Park brings his Walkman on the school bus every morning, and they share earbuds on the ride to school.
2. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan: Another romance in which the characters are united by their love of music! Don't get cynical on me, though. This book is hilarious and it's full of fun details about New York City nightlife.
3. Dispatches by Michael Herr: In order to capture the feel of the Vietnam War, Michael Herr sprinkled his stream-of-consciousness narrative with songs, album titles, and artists that he heard and listened to during his time in Vietnam.
4. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: This classic memoir is packed with music, from hymns to swing. Click here if you want to read my review.
5. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess: My last post was a review of this book, but in that review I only touched on the protagonist Alex's love of classical music. The kind that he likes is as dark and violent as he is. If you read a passage of this book and Alex mentions a song, play it and read the passage over again. I swear it will take on a whole new, sinister dimension.

- Carly

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Book Review: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Alex's drink of choice is milk spiked with drugs. Classy! This book left me conflicted and disturbed, as all good books should. It's set in a future world where teenage gangs terrorize the streets while the Government attempts to control and reform them. The protagonist, who refers to himself as Your Humble Narrator, is a rat bastard named Alex who spends his free time looting and raping with his friends. (Keep in mind that there are lots of graphic and violent scenes in this book. Don't read it if this will upset you.) At the tender of age of 15, he is a proud sadist and his society doesn't know what to do with him. His story is a meandering answer to several tough questions: Is it better to choose to do bad or to be obliged to do good? Can the price of goodness ever be too high? The best part of this book is probably that it dares to deal with such controversial questions. The next best part ...

Junkie Metaphors and Books About Our Inner Crazy

So, recently I was doing a spot of (mandatory) community service for my gym teacher when I experienced a rare instance of karmic payoff. Me and a bunch of other temporary bond-slaves were unloading this huge file cabinet onto the gym floor, sorting everything from Dance Revolution DVDs to pamphlets on Your First Visit to the Ob-Gyn! into neat piles, when I uncovered quite by chance a crumbling copy of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. Elated, I carried it around for the remainder of the period until my teacher took pity on me and offered to let me borrow it. It's falling apart before my very eyes I swear... I fell in love with this book the moment I heard its title quite a while ago - Naked Lunch ? What the hell kind of weird awesome twisted name is that? I am only now realizing how twisted it really is. The book is a compilation of notes that Burroughs took while under the sick influence of heroin. ...

My Irrelevant Opinion on Teen Dystopias

I read books indiscriminately. I am just as happy reading Beowulf, a crusty old Scandinavian epic poem, as I am reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. So I'm not a snob who only reads first-edition classics bound in leather or anything like that. But I do have one requirement when it comes to the books I read and recommend, and that is that they be good . And I do see a problem emerging in one of YA's most popular new genres, the teen dystopian novel, and that is that many of these books are not good. The dystopia craze started, I believe, with the success of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (a book that I very much adore) . It's hard to make it as a writer, so when people saw how well her parable of futuristic teen angst and bloodshed did, they understandably thought Aha! Here is the formula for success!! And ten seconds later, the front display tables of every Barnes a...

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