Here are 80 books that Wild Harmonies fans have personally recommended if you like
Wild Harmonies.
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I took piano lessons as a kid, but my teacher was imperious and boring. In my mid-30s I started thinking about it again, and my partner bought me a state-of-the-art Yamaha keyboard as a Valentine’s Day present. I found a wonderful teacher, Rafael Cortés, who worked at a community music school a few blocks from my office. Every piece we worked on began with a conversation about the composer, the period in which she/he wrote the piece, and the other artists–painters, sculptors, poets–who were working then. I fell in love with both playing and learning about music, and more than 30 years later, I’m still taking weekly lessons with Rafael.
I was struck by the ease with which Hodges moves from her own experience learning the violin to the scientific underpinnings of her subject: from math, physics, and neurology to quantum mechanics, biology, and entanglement theory, always in search of a clue to how music informs our experience of time.
Complex topics are suddenly eased by an anecdote from her personal life and practice: a bow dropping during Paganini or the story of her mother buying her “a red dress, bright as D major.” There’s a quality of searching that runs through these essays, both for scientific meaning in music as well a deeper understanding of the dynamics of her own life.
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A virtuosic debut from a gifted violinist searching for a new mode of artistic becoming
How does time shape consciousness and consciousness, time? Do we live in time, or does time live in us? And how does music, with its patterns of rhythm and harmony, inform our experience of time?
Uncommon Measure explores these questions from the perspective of a young Korean American who dedicated herself to perfecting her art until performance anxiety forced her to give up the dream of becoming a concert…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
Music has been a passion ever since I joined my mother’s hippie jam sessions as a toddler. During my 17 years as a professional cellist-in-training, I tried Yo-Yo Ma’s Stradivarius and played Pachelbel’s Canon at a gazillion weddings. I even made it to Carnegie Hall, performing in a university orchestra on the gilded stage. But injuries, both physical and psychological, put an end to my classical music career. Trying to forget my cello years, I entered journalism, eventually becoming a staff health reporter at Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. Later, when a percussion workshop triggered a dramatic shift in my perspective, I answered the call to explore music in a more expansive way.
Like most readers, I like my science sandwiched between stories.
Tim Falconer delivers a winsome tale of a writer diagnosed with “amusia"—the clinical term for “tone deafness”—who nevertheless longs to sing. Bashful yet determined, he delves into the science of auditory deficits and musicality on a quest to uncover why he can’t sing in tune, and whether anything can be done about it.
I couldn’t help but cheer him on as he endures remedial singing lessons and a nail-biting buildup to a public performance. Will he pull it off? And is there hope for other bad singers out there? I loved how Falconer used himself as Exhibit A to prove that even extreme tone deficits needn’t keep us from the joys of making music.
In the tradition of Daniel Levitin's This Is Your Brain on Music and Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia, Bad Singer follows the delightful journey of Tim Falconer as he tries to overcome tone deafness - and along the way discovers what we're really hearing when we listen to music.
Tim Falconer, a self-confessed "bad singer," always wanted to make music, but soon after he starts singing lessons, he discovers that he's part of only 2.5 percent of the population afflicted with amusia - in other words, he is scientifically tone-deaf.
Bad Singer chronicles his quest to understand human evolution and music, the…
Music has been a passion ever since I joined my mother’s hippie jam sessions as a toddler. During my 17 years as a professional cellist-in-training, I tried Yo-Yo Ma’s Stradivarius and played Pachelbel’s Canon at a gazillion weddings. I even made it to Carnegie Hall, performing in a university orchestra on the gilded stage. But injuries, both physical and psychological, put an end to my classical music career. Trying to forget my cello years, I entered journalism, eventually becoming a staff health reporter at Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. Later, when a percussion workshop triggered a dramatic shift in my perspective, I answered the call to explore music in a more expansive way.
In the words of Joni Mitchell, you “don’t know what you got till it’s gone.” Only a person who has gone deaf partway through life knows what it means to live with and without sound. And music.
In this evocative book, British journalist Bella Bathurst chronicles her profound loss of hearing starting at age 27—and twelve years later, its dramatic return. The health reporter in me gave a thumbs-up to her skillful exploration of the lesser-known science of hearing.
She introduces expert lip readers, soldiers who accept deafness as an occupational hazard, and the copper “ear trumpets” used by Beethoven as his greatest joy ebbed. When Bathurst regains her hearing, I was awed by her description of hearing music anew: “It was a thousand volts of birdsong.”
In 1997, Bella Bathurst began to go deaf. Within a few months, she had lost half her hearing, and the rest was slipping away. She wasn't just missing punchlines, she was missing most of the conversation - and all of the jokes. For the next twelve years deafness shaped her life, until, in 2009, everything changed again.
Sound draws on this extraordinary experience, exploring what it is like to lose your hearing and - as Bella eventually did - to get it back, and what that teaches you about listening and silence, music and noise. She investigates the science behind…
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
Music has been a passion ever since I joined my mother’s hippie jam sessions as a toddler. During my 17 years as a professional cellist-in-training, I tried Yo-Yo Ma’s Stradivarius and played Pachelbel’s Canon at a gazillion weddings. I even made it to Carnegie Hall, performing in a university orchestra on the gilded stage. But injuries, both physical and psychological, put an end to my classical music career. Trying to forget my cello years, I entered journalism, eventually becoming a staff health reporter at Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. Later, when a percussion workshop triggered a dramatic shift in my perspective, I answered the call to explore music in a more expansive way.
Baroque in prose and unabashedly erudite, this scholarly memoir by a Pulitzer Prize-winning arts critic may not be for everyone.
But I adored his uncanny descriptions of musical interpretation (such as Glenn Gould’s “flinty” recording of Bach) along with Kennicott’s prickly asides—“I hate the word ‘healing.’” Following the death of his beloved yet cantankerous mother, Kennicott channels his grief into learning to play Bach’s masterwork, the Goldberg Variations.
For a lapsed pianist in midlife, it’s a Herculean task. Unanswerable questions absorb him along the way: What does it mean to know a piece of music? What does it mean to know another human being? Throughout his musings and often comical childhood memories, Kennicott’s devotion to his Baroque master shines clear: “If Bach’s Goldberg Variations are not great, then nothing is.”
As his mother was dying, Philip Kennicott began to listen to the music of Bach obsessively. It was the only music that didn't seem trivial or irrelevant, and it enabled him to both experience her death and remove himself from it. For him, Bach's music held the elements of both joy and despair, life and its inevitable end. He spent the next five years trying to learn one of the composer's greatest keyboard masterpieces, the Goldberg Variations. In Counterpoint, he recounts his efforts to rise to the challenge, and to fight through his grief by coming to terms with his…
I love the mystery and wisdom of wolves. When I began researching wolves to write my own wolf stories, I discovered they had not only keen instincts but shocking intuition. I read stacks of nonfiction books on wolves and wolf stories, too. I toured a wolf conservation. One of the wolves, a white wolf, looked me straight in the eye and held me there. A wolf’s eyes do more than see you. Her communication was almost a prayer. I went home and wrote a short story about a white wolf—"Sky Wolf, A Fairy Tale." And then I wrote a wolf novel. I’m in love with wild wolf spirit.
A pack of wolves is terrorizing Paris. This is after the Hundred Years’ War, so historical fiction (and based on historical accounts).
Courtaud, the alpha male, is a mixed wolf-dog breed who leads his pack of wolves into the streets of Paris to survive on adventurous killing sprees. The loyalty of the pack, their family, all that aggressive protection is the star quality here, revealing the true spirit of wolf.
Courtaud stole my heart, no matter the savage attacks to survive or his wicked head-grip that he used masterfully to subdue his victims. Declared to be a monster and a wolf king, Courtaud falls in love with Silver, his wolf mate, with rich white fur. A love story to match Romeo and Juliet. I cried at the end.
The award-winning author of The Way of the Gladiator brings to life medieval Paris and the wolves who held it hostage, in a novel based on real events. Praised as "nature writing at its best," The Wolves of Paris takes readers to fifteenth-century France, a country so decimated by the Hundred Years' War that its people became prey for marauding wolf packs (Hartford Courant). With France split among the English, the Burgundians, and the forces of the weak Charles VII, a wolf-dog rises to ensure the existence of his pack by any means necessary . . . Courtaud begins his…
I got hooked on mystery novels as a kid reading the Encyclopedia Brown stories. Something about the combination of a great story and a puzzle to solve is irresistible to me. As a historian, I’m interested in communities, and especially how people understood themselves as being part of the new kinds of economic, political, and cultural communities that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century. When I learned about Dorothy L. Sayers’ lifelong writing group, the wryly named ‘Mutual Admiration Society’, I was thrilled at the chance to combine my professional interests with my personal passion for detective fiction.
If any contemporary detective writer is the heir to Dorothy L. Sayers, it has to be Fred Vargas.
Trained as a historian and archaelogist, she writes well-plotted mysteries with complex, flawed characters. But most of all, her books are bristling with fascinating, arcane facts. In this novel, the inhabitants of a rural, mountainous region of France are being terrorized by what seems to be a huge wolf – or is it a werewolf?
The resolution is entertaining, but what I really loved was learning about everything from medieval legends to the contemporary politics of reintroducing wild wolves in Europe – not to mention sheep-farming, wildlife photography, and plumbing.
For anyone who loved Sayers’ deep dives on bell-ringing or the advertising business, Vargas is for you.
In this frightening and surprising novel, the eccentric,wayward genius of Commissaire Adamsberg is pitted against the deep-rooted mysteries of one Alpine village's history, and a very present problem: wolves. Disturbing things have been happening up in the French mountains; more and more sheep are being found with their throats torn-out. The evidence points to a wolf of unnatural size and strength. However Suzanne Rosselin thinks it is the work of a werewolf. Then Suzanne is found slaughtered in the same manner. Her friend Camille attempts, with Suzanne's son Soliman and her shepherd, Watchee, to find out who, or what is…
In an age of splendor, a heretic king strips Egypt bare—forcing his queen to quell rebellion and plunging his children into a conspiracy against the crown.
Salvation in the Sun follows Nefertiti as she ascends the throne beside Pharaoh Amenhotep—soon to become Akhenaten—just as he declares war on Egypt’s ancient…
I’ve always been fascinated by monsters. Growing up I saw television shows and read books about famous ones like Bigfoot and Nessie, and always wanted to search for them and discover the truth. That led me to a degree in psychology to learn about human cognition and perception, and a career in folklore to understand how legends and rumors spread. But I also wanted field experience, and spent time at Loch Ness, in Canadian woods said to house Sasquatch, to the Amazon, Sahara, and the jungles of Central America looking for the chupacabra. Along the way became an author, writing books including Tracking the Chupacabra, Lake Monster Mysteries, Big—If True, and Investigating Ghosts.
There are many terrifying monsters, but few were as feared as the beast of Gévaudan, which terrorized the French countryside in the 1760s.
Said to be, variously, a werewolf, a dog-hybrid, a hyena, or some unknown beast, it was blamed for killing many dozens of villagers. The French government sent top hunters to kill the beast, and conspiracy theories ran rampant. I recommend Monsters of the Gevaudan because I love the way it blends history, folklore, and investigation into a compelling mystery.
Don’t believe the mystery-mongering TV shows offering wild theories: the truth is in this book—and it’s stranger than fiction.
In a brilliant, original rendition, Monsters of the Gevaudan revisits a spellbinding French tale that has captivated imaginations for over two hundred years, and offers the definitive explanation of the strange events that underlie this timeless story.
In 1764 a peasant girl was killed and partially eaten while tending a flock of sheep. Eventually, over a hundred victims fell prey to a mysterious creature, or creatures, whose cunning and deadly efficiency terrorized the region and mesmerized Europe. The fearsome aggressor quickly took on mythic status, and the beast of the Gevaudan passed into French folklore.
Once upon a time, I came to the realization that I had no idea what my parents were thinking, much less anyone else. This has turned into a life of repeated musing over how much I do and don't understand about other people. More recently, my mother's death brought to light the many different ways family and friends remembered her, with joy and pain, loss and wariness. I chose this topic for the list because these books help highlight and explore the mysteriousness of family and memory and how a person can be whole and complete and sure of what they've lived through, only to turn and see a new angle never before recognized.
I admire so much the time, patience, and thought put into Firekeeper. She's not a human wolf; she's a wolf in a human body with human limitations, faced with frustrations in trying to shift between the body-oriented language of wolves and the verbal-focused language of humans while staying true to herself.
I'm also in awe of how Lindskold layers in so many different cultures and approaches to power and how characters see themselves.
This is a book (and a series) I reread regularly, and I always find some aspects I hadn't noticed before. All that, and great characters on top. Firekeeper, of course, but I also respect and admire Derian, Elyse, Blind Seer, Sapphire, and so many more.
Born human, raised by wolves, Firekeeper seems the last person anyone would choose to back as a candidate for heir apparent to a royal throne. Nonetheless, when Firekeeper and her wolf “brother,” Blind Seer, travel with Earl Kestrel’s expedition into the kingdom of Hawk Haven, the earl thrusts the wolf-woman into the midst of the heated intrigue surrounding who will be chosen as the heir of elderly King Tedric.
Soon, the only thing the competing factions seem able to agree upon is that Firekeeper is an enemy. Firekeeper may not be able to read or write. She may struggle to…
I have always loved a good sassy sidekick, human or otherwise. I started my first book, DragonBond, at the age of fifteen, and throughout the various drafts between its inception and its completion, the dragon Axen’s sass game has always been fierce. Since then, I’ve published a total of thirteen books, seven of which are in the Endonshan Chronicles series. I have a Master’s degree in psychology which I use to create well-rounded characters with unique quirks and personalities. I hope you enjoy these picks and all the snark contained within!
This fun adventure features Alex, a bond man, and his wolf, Tala, who isn’t afraid to get her paws dirty or set Alex straight whenever he goes out of line. The two of them must deal with unjust accusations, banishment, a foreign land, and the intricacies of romance while assassins hunt them and a corrupt prince does everything in his power to bring them down. I found the relationship between Alex and Tala endearing throughout the novel, and I especially enjoyed Tala's larger-than-life personality.
An unjust beating leaves warrior Alex scarred and deformed, unfit for duty—until a voice calls him to the forests. He is chosen to bond with Tala, a silver wolf, and share a telepathic link. She heals his injuries, and he uses his enhanced abilities to serve his people. He just has to avoid the royal family.
Prince Donal isn't satisfied ruling his realm. He also wants the smaller nation to the south. But Alex and the wolves stand in Donal’s way. He frames Alex for the murder of a foreign diplomat and deploys hunters to eradicate…
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
I have a thing about bunnies! My first plush toy was a rabbit named Boing Boing and I had a pet lop-eared bunny named Br’er. The first book I wrote in my series was The Night Before Easter because I wanted to write a story for kids who love bunnies and Easter - like me! When I was a child I also liked to read books by Beatrix Potter and hope to one day visit her house in England.
It’s a silly rabbit book! Kids will love that the bunnies are trying to disguise themselves from what they think is a hungry wolf. But it turns out the wolf isn’t looking for bunnies to eat. The lone wolf wants friends. Great read-aloud story! The illustrations – part art and part cartoon – are bursting with energy and saturated color. Don’t forget to read the funny signs in the artwork as well.
A laugh-filled, bunny-filled new picture book from author-illustrator dream team Tammi Sauer and Ross Burach, just in time for Easter baskets and spring celebrations.
From the author of Wordy Birdy and the illustrator of The Very Impatient Caterpillar comes a hilarious picture book about a super-sassy bunny who tries to save himself and his cotton-tailed pals from a wolf by conning him into thinking they are not bunnies, despite the fact that a.) they are very clearly bunnies and b.) more and more (and more!) bunnies keep showing up. How many bunnies are in this book? A LOT!
