Will I love Every Good Boy Does Fine?

Although a trusted friend recommended this recent book, I picked it up with some trepidation. A memoir about piano lessons did not exactly sound thrilling. But Denk is one of America’s greatest living classical pianists, also blessed with a talent for witty and poignant prose, and his book is totally engrossing. I love books that weave together discussion of music and musicians in ways that illuminate the creative process as something very human—flawed and messy and communal, marked by moments of dramatic failure and searing inspiration. I’ve tried to write such books myself, but as a mere historian, and I've… show more.

Practically every page of this book has something fascinating to say about music, and Denk has an appealing, charming, often funny voice that one doesn’t often encounter in books about classical music.

As an amateur pianist I learned more about technique from Denk than I ever expected from a memoir, from how to use my thumb “as a transit system” to rolling chords at different speeds as if I were “unrolling a carpet.”

He teaches us how to listen more acutely to the messages in music, whether it’s Bach, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Chopin, or Philip Glass, and page by page, he… show more.

Jeremy Denk is a world-famous concert pianist and MacArthur grant recipient. In this “musical memoir,” he tells the story of his musical education from his grade-school days to the Julliard School in New York City.

I like classical music but am far from being an expert. He intersperses his personal journey with dollops of musical theory. Denk writes well and often employs a self-deprecating tone, somewhat surprising for someone of his level of accomplishment.

I found it to be an engaging story—and I learned something about classical music along the way.