Soundtracks to Reading
I practice a strange and controversial reading technique that has its share of detractors, Mrs. Bookmarking prominent among them. There are certain books, almost always fiction, which I can enhance the hell out of by listening to a soundtrack of carefully chosen music while reading.
As someone who usually has a difficult time trying to do two things at once in life, it seems pretty counter-intuitive to attempt to deal with multiple media intakes, both of which can demand full attention. While I’m rarely able to pull this off with any success while reading non-fiction, creating a playlist to accompany certain novels can bring out the best qualities of both music and books.
I’ve recently been deep into the novels of Dennis Lehane, starting with Shutter Island and moving straight through the fantastic five-book “Kenzie & Gennaro” series of Boston detective stories. Patrick Kenzie, the private eye/narrator, has a well-defined musical sensibility that occasionally clashes with that of his partner, and the blue-collar, ethnic, northeastern setting suggests more than a few soundtrack possibilities.
Kenzie loves the Rolling Stones and Nirvana, while his partner is way more into “mopey 80s alternative bands” like The Smiths and Depeche Mode. In one scene, a character almost gets capped in a bar by Kenzie’s loveable psychopath pal Bubba for mistakenly playing The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” on the jukebox. While I was reading the series I also saw an interview with Lehane where he mentioned his love for Bruce Springsteen, whose sensibilities are often a close match with the themes and settings of the novels.
With all of this in mind, my great enjoyment of Lehane’s books has been increased by strapping on a pair of headphones and blasting a series of Stones, Nirvana, Springsteen, and U2 CDs while reading. Maybe novels like these have a built in cinematic quality (or maybe I’ve just seen too many Scorsese movies), but the addition of a tune like “Gimme Shelter” to any of Lehane’s tense, riveting passages just cranks the drama up to 11.
Nick Hornby’s books are also steeped in knowing pop culture nods and opinionated musical references. My reading of his great first novel High Fidelity several years ago was constantly interrupted while I hopped over to the CD player to change out a disc in order to keep up with his web of musical allusions. I eventually settled into a rotation of obscure Motown and Stax tunes leavened with English post-punk discs by The Jam and Elvis Costello that seemed to perfectly suit the novel’s tone.
Hornby’s next novel, About a Boy, centered on references to Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, whose music lends a reading of the book an extra layer of intensity and sadness. In How to Be Good, two of Hornby’s misanthropic characters even compile a list of people they consider “talentless, overrated, or simply wankers” that includes James Taylor, Paul McCartney, and Jim Morrison (along with Homer, Shakespeare, and the Pope). Among the only figures they consider properly rated, along with Graham Greene and Quentin Tarantino, is Bob Dylan, whose music makes a great soundtrack to Hornby’s novel.
One of the only successful pairings of non-fiction reading with music came while I read Shelby Foote’s massive Civil War trilogy. By the time I reached the final volume, the weight of sadness and national near-self-destruction made every page seem like a ten-pound sheet of lead. During the final chapters I was already hearing in my head one of the saddest classical pieces I know, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, which I repeated on a continuous loop in my CD player as Foote’s elegy described the final battles and surrenders and the assassination of President Lincoln.
Just what I didn’t need
Like a junkie looking for his next fix after a dramatic, once-a-year weekend bender, I recently used the awesome NoveList database to, *gulp*, search for more book recommendations.
NoveList is a diabolically useful tool available through the Metropolitan Library System website to any of the half-million or so Oklahomans with a valid MLS library card. Once you’ve logged in at the “Catalog and Databases” tab with your card number, you can proceed to the “Databases” link to the tab labelled “Readers Advisory.” From there, a quick click on “NoveList Plus” opens up this fiendishly helpful guide to great reading.
I recently finished Dennis Lehane’s gripping psychological thriller Shutter Island, which I picked up after learning Martin Scorsese is currently filming an adaptation of it for release later this year. The book didn’t disappoint, with stomach-churning twists and turns that seemed movie-ready from the first page. The director of Cape Fear and The Departed, among his other masterpieces, should knock this gothic noir tale out of the park with a seriously great cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, and Patricia Clarkson.
I was so fired up by the novel that I turned to NoveList to see what else it would recommend along the same lines. The database allows searches by author, title, series, or plot description and can also be limited by age group. Among the wealth of book information it provides is a list of “similar authors” as well as “author read-alikes,” while an extensive list of subject headings is also provided to search for similar books. A collection of full reviews from Booklist, Library Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly is also available for most titles.
A helpful and extensive essay on “author read-alikes” for Dennis Lehane described the writer’s themes, settings, and characters before thoughtfully linking him to other authors like Pete Dexter, S.J. Rozan, and Archer Mayor, none of whom I had even heard of before, much less read. (Great, juuuust great.) The “advanced search” option allows users to refine their search by means of targeting genres, nationalities, and even number of pages, among many other categories.
NoveList is exactly what I didn’t need — another source of book recommendations to add to my already overstuffed pile. For readers who’ve exhausted the complete works of a beloved writer or genre fans who are looking for expert opinions for where to turn next, it’s a pretty great resource.
