I don’t want people to misunderstand me here.  When I write under each fiction novel post ‘while reading, listen to: followed by a list of awesome music’, I don’t actually want you to sit down with this exact soundtrack while reading this novel.

On the contrary, I find listening to music while reading as distracting as trying to pat my cat while brushing my teeth (I wouldn’t recommend the latter combination).  Often I concentrate more on the music than on the novel.  Or if I’m reading something particularly dense (Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, occasionally other classics) the music will make me lose my chain of thought and I’ll have to read the same paragraph over and over again.  This can be particularly vexing when Victor Hugo is doing one of those ‘let’s explain the scenery’ chapters that inevitably comes with every Hugo novel.

It can really ruin a novel, especially if you have the wrong music on.  I can remember reading the sixth Harry Potter book (if you haven’t read it/watched the movie/and are slightly interested STOP RIGHT HERE) in particular, the scene where Dumbledore dies, while Elton John was playing in the background.  Sure, it was a sad scene, but the song ‘Sad Songs Say So Much‘ doesn’t really help the tears.

However, if I didn’t have at least a little faith in my view, there’s no way I’d be searching youtube every day for songs that can apply to every fiction novel I’ve read.  I think, in some circumstances, there is music that can really enhance a reading experience, but perhaps not while actually engaging in reading itself.

For example, I used to find myself with an appalling awful modern song stuck in my head, say Lady Gaga or the like (I don’t mind a bit of Gaga, it just wasn’t the time and place) while I read sadness and loneliness in a Cormac McCarthy novel.  There is nothing more annoying, I can tell you.  It’s as bad as the Dumbledore Death Scene example.  But if I put the book down and listened to a bit of Bon Iver, which I recommend for all McCarthy novels, until it became sufficiently stuck in my mind, my concentration, and not only that, my understanding of the story increased enormously.

So I’m not advocating going out with a pair of headphones every time you read a book.  But when you read certain things, it might help to think about a certain genre of music.

But you know, I’m just advertising my own music tastes first and foremost.  This whole thing is a ruse (can’t you tell?) and I’m actually working for the record companies and youtube.

Just kidding.

But please.  Listen to the music.  (Just not while reading)