Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

The theme this month is Books about music/musicians. At first I thought I had so few books about music and musicians I wouldn’t use this theme, but when I checked I found that I’d read two with another two books in my TBRs waiting to be read. The rest I haven’t read.

The links in the titles of each book go to my posts on the books, where they exist, or to Amazon, or Goodreads for the books I haven’t read.

N is for Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro,  a quintet of stories exploring the themes of love, music and the passing of time. All have narrators who are musicians. These stories are full of longing and regret, something which I think Ishiguro does well. My favourite story is Nocturne, in which the narrator, a saxophonist whose manager has demanded he get plastic surgery in order to compete with less proficient but handsomer players, rooms next to a wealthy American woman while he is healing from his surgery. Their friendship results in absurdity, hilarity, and a surprisingly tender and devastating conclusion.

O is for Orfeo by Richard Powers

In Orfeo, composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab—the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find music in surprising patterns—has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive and hatches a plan to transform this disastrous collision with the security state into an unforgettable work of art that will reawaken its audience to the sounds all around it. ((Goodreads)

V is for  A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

 A book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to Powerpoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both-and escape the merciless progress of time-in the transporting realms of art and music. (taken from Amazon uk)

E is for An Equal Music by Vikram Seth, one of my TBRs.

A chance sighting on a bus; a letter which should never have been read; a pianist with a secret that touches the heart of her music … this is a book about love, about the love of a woman lost and found and lost again; it is a book about music and how the love of music can run like a passionate fugue through a life. It is the story of Michael, of Julia, and of the love that binds them. (from Amazon UK)

M is for The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce, one of my TBRs.

1988. Frank owns a music shop. It is jam-packed with records of every speed, size and genre. Classical, jazz, punk – as long as it’s vinyl he sells it. Day after day Frank finds his customers the music they need. Then into his life walks Ilse Brauchmann. lse asks Frank to teach her about music. His instinct is to turn and run. And yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with her pea-green coat and her eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems. And Frank has old wounds that threaten to re-open and a past he will never leave behind . (Amazon UK)

B is for Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, Opera is a centralising theme on many levels throughout the story; the operatic term bel canto literally means ‘beautiful singing.’

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country’s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera’s most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. (from Goodreads)

E is for Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Lost and alone in a forbidden forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica. Decades later, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each, in turn, become interwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives.(from Goodreads)

R is for The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

A sweeping history of twentieth-century classical music, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, is a gripping account of a musical revolution.

The landscape of twentieth-century classical music is a wild one: this was a period in which music fragmented into apparently divergent strands, each influenced by its own composers, performers and musical innovations. In this comprehensive tour, Alex Ross, music critic for the ‘New Yorker’, explores the people and places that shaped musical development: Adams to Zweig, Brahms to Björk, pre-First World War Vienna to ‘Nixon in China’.

Above all, this unique portrait of an exceptional era weaves together art, politics and cultural history to show how twentieth-century classical music was both a symptom and a source of immense social change. (Amazon UK)

The next link up will be on December 2, 2023 when the theme will be: Winter, Christmas, or Christian themes.