Music and books can define a lifetime

Submitted: 10th September 2017

There are some novels which stick in your mind like a song. Songs which take you back to a time gone by, memories, faded photographs and a time when worries seemed so far away. Songs like smells, and for bookworms, good books take you back to a time in your life which was defining for one reason and another. So when you read a book that takes you back for all of these reasons and more…the effect is quite stunning…

Greatest Hits by Laura Barnett doesn’t really feature a booktrail as such, but it does take you on a musical mystery tour. A tour which takes you back to the past and through the thrills and spills of the London Music Scene

Laura Barnett is working with acclaimed Kathryn Williams on the songs featured in the novel (the lyrics are featured in the novel) and they will be making an album. The lyrics of each song act as a framing device for the entire novel and frame the chapters surrounding it. Themes of childhood, growing up, working on music, relationships with friends and boyfriends merge together to fix up a musical interlude of life itself.

Greatest Hits

There is mention of places Cass has travelled to including Washington DC and the world’s biggest library and events hall where she finds it stranger to hear her music sung by other people. A tour of the music halls and musical interludes of one girl and woman’s life

Step back into the past into the glitz and glamour of the music business throughout the 60s and 70s. This was the heyday of Brit pop, new and upcoming stars of tomorrow and of course as well as the singing and music, there were also days of hedonism. You can smell the cigarettes in the dark recording dens, hear the echos of the underground pubs…and of course hear the music of Cass’s life throughout. Any one who has lived through the 1960s and 1970s will find this novel musically very accurate and evocative indeed.

Got me thinking – what music has defined your life and of course which books? This book makes you realise how powerful music is and how memories based on both the musical soundtrack of your life as well as the bookish one would take you back to some wonderful memories indeed!

Songs which have stuck in my head for years for various reasons –

Billy Joel- We didn’t Start the Fire – Learned a lot about American history in this song and I can still quote all the lyrics!

Deacon Blue – Ah these songs take me back to university and the days of the disco!

Gloria Estefan – This lady helped me learn Spanish! Listening to her songs, reading her lyrics…got me through GCSE Spanish she did!

Books?

My entire life has been marked by books – The Magic Porridge pot was one of the first I learned to read. Phileas Fogg and Around the World in 80 Days as it reminds me of times with my dad when small and is the reasons behind the BookTrail and Kate Morton’s The Distant Hours for reminding me of the magic of Enid Blyton books and the many old castles I loved exploring as a child. Many years later, it would take me to Sissinghurst which inspired that very book..

Jane Eyre is another iconic read which I read every so often in a different language to practice my foreign tongues, books by Gabrielle Roy which took me to Quebec in the first place to discover French language fiction and Garcia Marquez and Carlos Ruiz Zafon novels which showed a new side to the magic of books and made me want to live in their world.