Patrik Enander wrote:

>I haven't read any books about music, composer biographies, memoirs
>etc.  So I want to know if you can share with me a book about music,
>irrespectively of genre, that has given you a lot of pleasure.

I highly recommend:

Hector Berlioz: Memoirs
Berlioz' entertaining and salutary accounts of his upbringing, musical
education, relationships, travels and endless trials trying to produce his
music in philistine Paris.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Testimony
There are doubts about this book's validity as Shostakovich's memoir.
However, it remains a gripping account of his life in Stalin's Soviet
Union, with heartbreakingly sad anecdotes, a grim sense of humour, and
profound insights into human nature.

Antony Hopkins: Symphonies of Beethoven
This ever-fresh analysis of the symphonies reveals their structure,
ingenuity, context - and most of all *humour* - in accessible terms.

Stephen Davis: Hammer of the Gods
Well, you did say *any* genre.  Goggle at Led Zeppelin's scandalous antics
at the height of their fame in the 1970s.

James Kearney
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