As anyone who knows me personally will tell you, I am a big fan of music. I've done marching band, jazz band, bell choir (not a joke, wish it was), and I was even a mobile DJ for four years. Sometimes I will go days without taking the earphones out. And to tell you the truth, as much as I love reading, I think one of the failings of the written word is that it's just not as expressive as the spoken (or rather, the sung).

That being said, books that try to incorporate song lyrics into their narrative drive me crazy. It never comes across to the reader the way you want it to, and usually it comes off as bad poetry. I have never read a stanza of a song written in a book (even songs that I've actually heard) and thought it was a good idea.

If it's supposed to be sentimental or romantic, it isn't. Trust me. Even books that I love that have lyrics in it make me roll my eyes and skip over the stanza entirely. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just saying I've never seen it. If I was that editor, I would have said NOPE.

So, I've had this dilemma of loving music, but not when it's involved in books. I've read a lot of books about rock stars, and being backstage with the band, and all these trappings around what people imagine go on in the music industry, but there are only a handful of books that I've read that give you a visceral, immediate recollection of what it's like to experience music.

These books do not have stanzas of song lyrics in them. They just describe to the point of painful accuracy what one might feel while listening to music - or the experience of going to a live show. In no particular order, they are as follows:

Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John:

Young Adult Contemporary
I start the list off with this book because it's seriously unique. The main character is deaf. Not profoundly deaf, but with enough hearing loss that it makes her an unlikely heroine for a novel about a band. You can go to the publisher's description here, but what I will add is that this book is full of characters that you know in real life. Real people with real hang ups and blind spots. You spend a large amount of time hating on characters you realize later are just absent-minded, not cruel; or terribly shy instead of aloof. It ends in a triumphant blaze that left me wanting to run a mile while rocking out to Nirvana.

The way the main character talks about music - and remember she can't actually hear it - is all about the expressions on people's faces, the bass vibrating through the floor, the electric energy of the crowd, the way the musicians move with their instruments. It's a whole new way to experience music that I, for one, had never thought of.

This book also happens to be a good look into the life of someone who not only can't hear you, but also who doesn't see that as a disability, even though everyone around her does. I think it's refreshing that what this character wants, more than anything, is not her hearing, but for people to stop treating her like she's disabled. She's fine with being deaf, and that's a powerful change.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan:

Young Adult Contemporary
It goes without saying that the book is better than the movie, but I had to say it anyway. Written in two different voices, by two different authors, this book is pure word magic. It's like a glimpse into the inner workings of a date that is going off the rails over and over again and just won't end. It will remind you, in different places along the way, of every date you've ever had, good and bad.

Nick is a straight boy in a gay band and Norah is the angrily responsible daughter of the music industry, silently judging the entire city. I feel like there needs to be a new verb for what she does - hate-partying? Rage-clubbing?

The inner monologue of both characters make it well worth reading, and ends up sounding more like epic poetry - poetry written on a bathroom wall, but still poetry.

As a side note, I listened to this for the first time as an audio book performed by two people, and it was really fantastic. I typically prefer to read, but these two actors were on point.

War for the Oaks by Emma Bull:
Adult Fantasy
This is an odd book. It's one of the few I would actually call urban fantasy (or magical realism?) because the weaving of the modern landscape and the creatures that crawl through it is seamless. Themes of mortality and what it means to be human pervade.

But so does awesomeness.

It starts out being just about a band, but with other weird things going on in the background. Soon it turns into a story about a literal war. This was kind of a surprise to me as I apparently didn't even glance at the title before I read it. Or maybe I didn't think they were serious?

But before you get to all the truly epic battle scenes, the book is littered with grand descriptions of the band playing on stage and the crowd reacting to them; the crowd enraptured by them; the crowd creating a new nation for them. You feel like you are there at the best concert you will ever not hear.

Come for the rock and roll, stay for the fairies.


Dirty Little Secret by Jennifer Echols:

Young Adult Contemporary
Echols has a knack for making characters who have lives I want to read about. In this story we have Bailey, who has grown up on the bluegrass circuit with her younger sister. Her younger sister is tapped to become a mega country star with the caveat that Bailey can't continue to perform. From these characters and their life, you get a peak into the world of a child prodigy who grew up to be a real person. A real angry person.

I think what I like best about this book is all the interesting tidbits you get about the music industry - the fact that it's more common than you think to be forced to perform from a young age with the hopes of being discovered. What it really means to have perfect pitch. All the little things she mentions that are signs of a professional musician, or of an amateur. What parents will give up and sacrifice in order to get just one of their children into the spotlight. And what it does to the one left behind.

Despite the emotional undercurrent, everyone in Bailey's new, illicit band, are consummate professionals, which is not something you read about teenagers these days. It's kind of refreshing. When the band is playing, it's all talk of chords and solos and the thousand infinite messages between bandmates that pass with just a nod. If you've never played with a band, this is what it's like.

This book is also full to the brim of complex and relate-able characters who are neither bad nor good, and the right decision is far from obvious.



If you don't already have these on your To Be Read list, I suggest you add them, cause they are all fantastic, I-can't-bear-to-put-it-down books. And if you're a music lover - like myself - you will definitely find the story hitting home.