3 Books to Sing Along To

Music is everywhere. I love when music pops up in books. Coming of age tales use music to show how characters grow up. They may make us think back to our own soundtracks. Historical fiction can use music to describe the landscape of the era. Poetry, a rhythmic creation on its own, can remix music or take off on a phrase to create a whole new message. Whenever I come across lyrics while I read, I stop reading for a moment and look up the song or sing it if I know it. Here are three books that can get you singing.

A Ticket To Ride by Paula McLain

The novel A Ticket To Ride is a coming-of-age all-American 1970s musical montage. Each section pins down a phase of friendship between two girls or a backstory of one of the girl’s family history that involves an unknown mom and sick elderly grandparents and an uncle who has to raise a girl. Each section depends on a song title: “Drift Away,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Stuck In The Middle With You,” “I’ll Take You There,” “Morning Has Broken.” Adolescent decision-making, semi-obsession, and sweltering summertime disasters emerge in simple, subtle ways, presenting a realistic tale that makes you relive a childhood that is not necessarily yours but could believably be.